Hello All,
35 year old Advanced cyclist. Used to race road as a Cat 1 before dabbing with long course triathlon and now I’m back into mountain biking. Been riding for 20 years.
I am a cargo Airline Pilot that is gone for 10-12 days at a time and then home for 10-14 days. Usually average 14-17 days at home/Off per month.
My current training strategy has been to get big blocks of training while at home and then do my best to “maintain” while on the road. I don’t always have access to a fitness bike so “maintaining” is typically a run.
I am planning on doing some marathon mountain bike races this year with my big race being the Pisgah Stage Race and the Pisgah 555 or the 111.
How would you approach training in my situation? Big training camp like blocks when at home with the focus on maintaining with running and the occasional fitness bike?
Cheers
I fly on the passenger side of things, and not gone for as long a blocks as you, but basically do what you said. With multiple days at home tend to do a fair bit of training, knowing that Im going to be off the bike for several days at a time.
Having said that, of course it depends on your own ability to absorb and not push too far during big blocks on. I would still put some easier days in there of course, don’t just do 14 straight days of intensity. Then when I’m away I try to get in some weight training in hotel gyms, and some lower intensity stuff like runs and exercise bike type stuff. I’m also considering trying some heat adaptation work when on the road….theres usually no fans or airflow anyway, so I have found doing low intensity on hotel gym bikes are usually miserable and sweaty anyway, so I’m going to try to make use of that 
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As a cargo pilot, do you have the opportunity to bring you bike and a trainer?
Like @DavidYYC and I’m sure many others, I travel for work but usually not more than a couple of nights at a time. I re-arrange my workouts to do intervals when home and Z2 on a gym bike / hotel Peloton when on the road.
Are you a 777 driver too? Looks like a GE90 on your photo. Sounds like we do similar stuff. I def don’t hammer out huge training blocks when home, but def try to overreach a bit and then recover on the road. I like your idea go doing heat adaptation on the road.
As a guy who dreams of making it into that world someday (just got my PPL), my plan would be to just do running when I’m away.
Nope, little smaller…it’s a Max LEAP engine, but it’s related to GE.
Congrats on the PPL! I remember doing mine like it was yesterday….plus 30 years 
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Running is, y’know, fine.
But I like to rent bikes when I have longer layovers, I’ve done it in several cities. But my favorites are Hawaii’s, both Maui and the Big Island. It’s pretty amazing being able to do some of those epic rides as part of work.
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