The Empty Calendar

Four days. Four stages. A Vermont summer's worth of climbing packed into one long weekend.

One of my athletes crossed the finish line at the Green Mountain Stage Race this past Labor Day, and with it, closed the book on another road season. No more taper weeks. No more race-day nutrition timing. No more staring at the forecast three days out, wondering if the crosswind is going to matter.

Just legs that are fit, and a calendar that's suddenly, wonderfully empty.

This is the part of the year nobody trains for, and it might be the part that matters most.

The fitness is still there.

Here's the thing that catches riders off guard come September: you don't lose your fitness the week after your last race. Aerobic capacity, muscular endurance, the ability to suffer — none of that evaporates overnight. What you're holding onto right now is the most fitness you'll have all year, and for the first time since March, nothing is asking you to spend it on anything in particular.

That's not a problem. That's the whole point.

Permission, not punishment.

Athletes tend to approach the off-season with hesitation and uncertainty — as if every easy ride is a workout skipped. It's the opposite. The nervous system that's been pushed through threshold efforts and race starts for five months needs the same thing your legs need after a hard stage: recovery, but the kind you can't schedule into a training plan. Sleep in. Ride with no computer. Take the long way home because the leaves looked good.

This is also where a lot of the mental restoration happens that determines whether you're hungry again in February or already burnt out by March.

Building without building.

The transition period isn't just rest, though. This is when strength work sneaks back in, when a rider refines their position on the bike, when the skills that got rusty — technical descending, cornering, the stuff interval workouts don't teach you — get some attention without a power meter watching.

It's also, if you're being honest with yourself, when next year's goals start to take shape. Not as a spreadsheet or list of events. As a feeling. A race you watched from the sidelines and thought, I want to be there next year. A climb you rode and thought, I could go faster than that.

Write it down now, while the season's still warm. You'll thank yourself in December.

The turn.

Somewhere between your last summer riding goal and the first structured workout of 2027, there's a version of you that exists without a training plan at all. Just a rider. Just a bike.

Don't rush through it.

See you next week,
Steve