September reset: 9 training tips for runners and cyclists over 30
September can be a useful time for runners and cyclists to review their training after a summer of changing routines, holidays and travel. Rather than trying to make up for missed training, start with what you have done over the past few weeks and build from there. These nine training tips cover setting goals, identifying key sessions, scheduling strength training, managing recovery and rebuilding consistency for the months ahead.
Strength training for runners and cyclists over 30 is a game-changer for performance, resilience, and long-term health.
If you want the full breakdown, check out my Strength Training Over 30 Guides:
TRAINING BREAKDOWN
"September is a great opportunity to have a look at your training, where you’re at right now and what you want from the rest of the year."
By Emma O'Toole
Hi there,
September always feels like a bit of a “reset” month.
The kids go back to school, new clubs start, work routines change and after a summer of holidays, days out, travelling and fitting training around more plans than usual, you might finally have a little more structure to your week… or you might be trying to figure out an entirely new one!
Either way, September is a great opportunity to have a look at your training, where you’re at right now and what you want from the rest of the year.
There are some brilliant goals being worked towards inside my free coaching community at the moment. We have a runner going after a sub-60-minute 10 miler, another training for their first marathon, a triathlete making the final touches to their upcoming 70.3 and a cyclist prepping for a multi-day cycling trip around France. Very exciting and different goals there, with different training needed for each.
With around 16 weeks of the year left, there is still plenty of time for you to make some really good progress towards yours. To help with this, and because September is the 9th month of the year, here are 9 things I’d review in your training this month.
1. What would you like to have achieved by the end of the year?
Start here.
Maybe you have an event booked and there’s a very clear goal sitting in the calendar. Maybe you want to run a PB, improve your FTP or build up to a distance you’ve never covered before… or perhaps your goal is simply to get back into consistent training after a slightly chaotic summer.
Write it down.
Your goal gives some context to the decisions you make about your training over the next 16 weeks.
2. Work backwards
Once you know where you want to get to, work backwards from there.
If you have an event, how many weeks away is it? What needs to happen between now and then? Where will your bigger training weeks sit? When will you deload? When do you need to taper?
Then add real life… Work trips, weekends away, school holidays, birthdays, family commitments and the weeks you already know are going to be manic (I wasn’t going to mention the “C” word but I did see an advent calendar in a local supermarket!!!)
Planning gives you a framework for the next 16 weeks and makes it much easier to adjust when things change.
3. Meet yourself where you are
This one is particularly important if your training has been a little inconsistent over the summer. Train as the athlete you are today, rather than the athlete you were 6 weeks ago before the school holidays.
If you were comfortably running 30 miles a week before the summer and you’ve averaged 15 since, jumping straight back to 30 because that’s what you used to do probably isn’t the best idea. The same applies to your cycling and strength training if things have been a little sporadic or you’ve had a few weeks away.
Have a look at your training over the last 6 weeks and build from there.
4. Decide what your key sessions are
Look at your training week. Which sessions are most important for what you set out to achieve in point 1?
That might be your long group ride on Sundays to get in a solid aerobic stimulus or your 45 minute strength training sessions to help build your resilience to injury so you can consistently train for the next 16 weeks!
Know what these sessions are, what you’re trying to achieve from them, and then plan the rest of your training around them.
5. Protect those sessions, then adjust when you need to
Perfect training plan vs reality!
You might have your key session perfectly placed on Tuesday, then a meeting gets moved, one of the kids starts a new club or you wake up after a terrible night’s sleep and Tuesday is no longer the best day for it.
So we adapt, don’t abandon!! Could Tuesday’s session move to Thursday? Could you take an additional rest day and remove a recovery focused run/ride? Could your strength session move by a day?
I use this approach all the time with the runners and cyclists that I coach and this is why the best training plans are the ones written in pencil; they need to be able to adjust with your life.
The original plan gives us direction, then we adjust it when life (inevitably) gets in the way.
6. Plan strength training as you would endurance
If you don’t schedule your strength training and hope you’ll find 30 mins somewhere for it, you probably already know what happens… strength doesn’t!!
Strength training helps you build your capacity to tolerate your running and riding, and if you want it to support your endurance training, it needs to be part of the plan rather than the thing you do when you happen to have time and motivation to do it.
Put it in your calendar!
7. Audit the other pillars of your endurance training
If you’ve read the above 6 points and think, “yeah I do these, my training is already pretty solid.” That’s brilliant! The question now is: where else could you make an improvement?
Nutrition
Sleep
Stress management
Recovery
Look at the pillars that underpin your training and choose one thing that could be better. After all, we need to be able to recover from the training we're doing if we want to adapt to it.
8. Pay attention to what has become normal
You’ve probably heard the idea of 1% better every day.
There are some obvious limitations to that because training adaptation doesn’t happen in a nice straight line where you simply improve by 1% every 24 hours.
However, I do think there’s something useful in the idea when we look at our habits, especially because those micro-decisions add up both ways.
What I mean here is, skip one strength session and it’s really not a big deal. Skip it most weeks for two months and suddenly not strength training has become your “normal”.
Underfuel one long ride and you'll survive! Make a habit of heading out without enough fuel and you've created a very different pattern.
The same goes for going to bed later or letting one missed session turn into four. Before you look round, that becomes your “normal”.
Have a look at what has become normal for you over the summer. What do you want to
keep, and what could do with changing?
9. Give yourself time to find your stride
16 weeks is a decent chunk of time between now and the end of the year and you can make some serious progress if you use it well.
However, progress and change aren’t going to happen overnight. Give yourself time to adjust, get some consistency back into your training and find your stride.
You don't need to make up for the training you didn't do over the summer. Start with where
you are now and make the next 16 weeks count.
If you want some accountability with your training over the next 16 weeks, come and let us know what you’re training towards before the end of the year in my free coaching community for runners and cyclists over 30.
And if you have any questions about your training, please get in touch.
Happy running and riding!
Emma x
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