The one thing that will make the biggest difference to your running and cycling in 2026
- Emma O'Toole
- Jan 11
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 12
Consistency is the real performance multiplier for runners and cyclists over 30, not a perfect plan, not more motivation, and not an all-or-nothing January push. The biggest reason athletes struggle to stay consistent isn’t willpower; it’s a mismatch between training demands and real life capacity (work, sleep, stress, family, mental bandwidth). This article explains why consistency is about being repeatable and adaptable, how to avoid the “life capacity vs training capacity” trap, and how consistent training improves not only performance but your relationship with running and cycling.
Strength training for runners and cyclists over 30 is a game-changer for performance, resilience, and long-term health.
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TRAINING BREAKDOWN
"When training is consistent, training becomes part of what you do and who you are."
By Emma O'Toole
Hello!
If I asked you what will make the biggest difference to your running or cycling this year, you could probably list a few things straight away:
A better training plan.
More structure.
Strength training (which, yes, matters).
Better nutrition.
More sleep.
More time!
All of these are very important and will move the needle forwards with regards to your running and cycling, but there’s one thing that underpins the all and if this one thing isn’t there, you could have the best of the very best of the others, but they won’t really matter.
This one thing is consistency. Consistency is the thing that decides:
How you perform.
How you feel about training.
Whether or not you see yourself as a runner or cyclist.
Whether you make progress this year or don’t.
However, consistency is also the thing that most runners and cyclists struggle with.
Most runners and cyclists don’t struggle with consistency because they lack willpower. The struggle comes from training not working around their day-to-day life that has the flexibility to ebb and flow with the ups and downs of life.
Being consistent is about being repeatable. If you can’t repeat your training week, not just once or twice, but month after month, then it doesn’t really matter how good it looks on paper.
This is where a lot of people misunderstand consistency.
Consistency doesn’t mean stubbornly sticking to the plan no matter what, rather it means adapting without quitting.
It’s things like getting caught in traffic on the way home and realising your 60-minute training window is now 30 minutes, and instead of blowing the session off completely, you do those 30 minutes.
It’s being up throughout the night with a poorly little one, waking up knackered, and recognising that today isn’t the day for a threshold session, so you rearrange the week and switch it to a base run or an easy ride instead.
Basically, you’re making sensible adjustments to reflect that life is never going to be perfect, so you need to be flexible with your training in order to remain consistent.
Why consistency is so hard to maintain
Most runners and cyclists don’t struggle to be consistent because they don’t want to train, they struggle because they aim beyond their current capacity. I don’t just mean current training capacity, I mean life capacity. We’re often told that we all have the same 24hrs in the day, and a 1hr workout is just 4% of that day, however that thinking minimizes what needs to go into training in order for it to be successful and how everyone has different lifestyle arrangements.
Your training capacity is affected, to name just 5, by:
Your work schedule,
Your family commitments
Your sleep
Your stress levels
Your mental bandwidth
When training places more of a demand than your life capacity currently allows for, consistency is usually what drops off and why we can see such huge swings in training weeks. It’s also why strength training is one of the first things to fall by the wayside in a runners and cyclists training week, which is a shame on so many levels because it is one of the most important things to help keep you consistent.
A life capacity - training capacity mismatch is where runners and cyclists can, unintentionally, set themselves up to struggle by setting big challenges, events, PB targets that are undoubtedly impressive, but unfortunately don’t match where your current fitness is or the life your currently living.
These challenges can be highly motivating to begin with, however ask yourself honestly, if you can sustain your this when: work gets busy? sleep takes a hit? motivation dips? If the answer is “probably not”, the issue isn’t you, it’s that you’ve likely bitten off a little more than you can chew for your life and training capacity right now.
Consistency does more than improve performance
Consistency improves performance. Physiologically, this part is simple: aerobic fitness improves through repeated exposure. Muscles become more resilient through gradual, consistent stress. None of that happens in one training session or one big training week, it comes from your average, repeatable training week and why effective training often looks quite boring on paper.
I think we’re quite used to hearing that, however, consistency does so much more than that, it also determines your relationship with running and cycling.
When training is inconsistent, your relationship with the sports becomes fragile. It can open up negative thinking patterns like: “I can’t stick to anything”, “I was doing well until life got in the way”, “I’m always starting again”…
… and quite frankly, that narrative is exhausting.
When training is consistent, training becomes part of what you do and who you are.
The strongest runners and cyclists I coach don’t rely on motivation, they train because it fits into their week, it improves their mental and physical health, they’re chasing goals, their training stays solid when life unexpectedly gets busier.
Their relationship with running and cycling is shaped by what they do week after week.
The one thing that will determine your success in 2026 isn’t a single session, race, or block of training.
It’s whether your training is consistent enough to:
Improve performance
Improve your relationship with the sport(s)
Strength training helps with consistency so you’re less likely to be sidelined by niggles and injuries.
Structure helps to know your plan and how your training pieces together.
Good coaching helps to do the above for you, remove doubt and provide your with support and accountability, but none of it works without consistency underneath it all.
Consistency comes from structure, support, and perspective. If you want help applying this thinking to your own training, my free community for runners and cyclists over 30 is there to support you. It’s a space for sensible training, great questions, and strategies to keep you making progress even when life gets busy.
Enjoy your week!
Emma x
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