Running and marathon, winter training: rollers and their usefulness

Usually, in the winter season, runners can dedicate themselves to different training sessions. The bike has many advantages: here’s how to use them

Carlotta Montanera

@
Runningcharlott

There winter season is perhaps the most difficult one for runners: in the morning and in the evening dark and the temperatures are sometimes unmanageable, in the hottest hours you have little time, the important races are far away and there motivation drops. If we also include your own and your children’s seasonal ailments, going out for a run can seem like a gamble. Some of us have equipped ourselves with Tapis Roulant, but it is a bulky and expensive tool and is not always suitable for apartment living. The cyclosimulatoron the other hand, is a much smaller tool, can be cheaper and works very well as cross training.

roller training

Let’s take a step back and see what we mean by cyclosimulator. We are talking about a device that allows you to use your own bicycle at home, transforming it into a static training tool. They exist on the market two types of “rollers”, the so-called “wheel-on” ones and the “smart” ones. The former allow you to mount the bike as it is on the roller, which by lifting and braking the rear wheel creates a simulation of the friction of the wheel on the road. They have the possibility of increasing the action of the roller on the wheel with a regulator. The cyclist can also adjust the bike’s gear to make the pedaling more or less smooth. Smart trainers, on the other hand, involve removing the rear wheel and connecting the bike to the cyclosimulator, on which we will have previously mounted the bike’s sprocket set (or an identical one). In this case the cyclosimulator, controlled by an app, will regulate the resistance by simulating the difficulties and slopes of a hypothetical journey and will also calculate the input data, i.e. power, speed and pedaling performed. Wheel-on rollers are cheaper, they take up little space and are very simple to assemble, but on the other hand they have less precision in managing the resistances and significant wear of the rear tyre. They are also quite noisy. Smart trainers, on the other hand, are very accurate in simulating pedalingsilent and fun, but more expensive and cumbersome.

runners and rollers

Let’s now come to why they can be excellent winter training. Aside from the convenience of being able to use them at home, rollers can be used to create very profitable workouts. THE There are two advantages for a runner in using this training. First you can run low impact aerobic workouts without overloading the musculoskeletal system. Setting up easy workouts, without great resistance and with agile pedaling allows you to practice aerobic activity at home with a low impact. This can be perfect for those who have some small joint or inflammatory problems and don’t want to stop physical activity, or for those who want to add a weekly workout without overloading the system. Also ideal for those who want to work on low heart rates and find some difficulty with running.

strength training

Another very useful workout on the rollers at this time of year is strength training. In fact, with the bike you can work very well on muscle strength, whether resistance strength or maximal strength. By setting up fractional work with intervals of almost maximum resistance and slow pedaling we will stimulate muscle strength. If we want to work on resisting force, useful in longer running races, we can choose this workout: after an appropriate warm-up we will do intervals of approximately 2 minutes at medium-high intensity with appropriate agile recovery of approximately 3 minutes. A total of 8 to 10 total repetitions. If instead we want to work on the maximal strength, useful for short and fast races, we can, after warming up, run fractions of about 30 seconds at maximum power, around 40 rpm. The recovery will be quite long, around 2’30”. Here too we can perform from 10 to 12 repetitions.





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