Train Smarter This Autumn

The clocks go back, the mornings get darker, and the temptation is to treat the next few months as time to survive rather than time to build. It's the wrong instinct.

Autumn and winter are when the engine gets built - and how you train now largely decides how you race in the spring.

The good news is that smarter, not harder, is genuinely the right approach at this time of year. Here are five things worth getting right.

1. Go easier than you think you should

The single most common autumn mistake is training the easy days too hard. When the weather turns and sessions feel harder, effort creeps up, and you end up in the grey zone - too hard to recover from, too easy to drive real adaptation.

The aerobic base you build over the next few months is what everything else sits on top of. Most of your volume should be genuinely conversational. If you can't hold a conversation, you're going too fast.

2. Train your body to burn fat more efficiently

This is the quiet superpower of winter training. The better your body becomes at using fat as fuel, the longer your limited carbohydrate stores last - which means less fading late in long runs and rides, and a stronger finish come race day.

Steady aerobic training is the main driver. But it's also where nutrition can genuinely help. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of the published CurraNZ research found it shifts fuel use towards fat oxidation during exercise. That's the reason CurraNZ has become a staple in a lot of endurance athletes' winter routines - it works with what base training is already trying to achieve, rather than against it. It's a good fit for the season for another reason too: the effects build with consistent daily use, and winter is when you have the runway to be consistent.

3. Keep the strength work in

Strength training is the first thing to go when time gets tight and it should be the last. Two short sessions a week is enough to hold onto the resilience that keeps you injury-free through higher-volume months. Squats, single-leg work, calf raises, and something for the posterior chain will cover most of what a runner or cyclist needs. Thirty minutes twice a week beats an ambitious plan you abandon in December.

4. Make the dark and cold a non-issue

Consistency is the whole game in winter, and the things that break consistency are usually logistical rather than physical. Lay kit out the night before. Buy the head torch and the reflective gear now rather than in December. Have a treadmill or turbo session you're willing to do when the pavements ice over.

Warm up for longer than you would in summer - cold muscles and tendons need more time, and most winter niggles start in the first ten minutes of a session.

5. Protect your recovery - and your immune system

Higher training load, plus less daylight, plus more time indoors with other people is a combination that catches a lot of athletes out.  Prioritise sleep as seriously as you prioritise sessions.

Don't under-fuel: the calorie cost of training in the cold is higher, not lower. And be realistic about backing off when you feel something coming on rather than pushing through and losing three weeks instead of three days.

Be consistent with CurraNZ. Its researched benefits show it increases immune defences, so let it go to work during the cold and flu season. 

Winter is the difference between arriving at spring race season ready and arriving at it hoping. Get the next few months right and you'll start next season faster than you finished this one.

How to take CurraNZ

Standard use & immune support: One capsule daily, taken one to two hours before training. Each capsule provides 300mg of standardised New Zealand blackcurrant extract, delivering 105mg of anthocyanins.

Fat oxidation, longer or harder sessions: Two capsules daily, taken one to two hours beforehand.

Consistency matters more than timing. The research protocols use daily intake over a period of at least seven days rather than one-off doses, so treat it as a daily habit through your training block rather than something you take only before key sessions.

Best taken with or without food. No need to cycle on and off. Avoid consuming with bananas.

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