From Trails to Snow: How to Navigate Seasonal Training

Duncan Koehn, MS | October 2026

The fall season is upon us in the Colorado mountains.  Though this time of year is beautiful, it can be difficult to schedule and determine your workouts.  This can come from a variety of sources, from a multi-sport focus to difficulty scheduling due to weather and shorter days. There are some tips and tricks to find success and guidance for this time of year.

Be honest about your goal. Health, enjoyment, and keeping up with your kids are valid goals. But if you secretly want to perform well in a race, plan for it. Having a goal and knowing why you are getting out there makes it easier to stay focused during shoulder season.

Choose one main priority per season. Put your objectives on a calendar and decide which matters most. Build the schedule from there with some less important events and practice races.

Identify your biggest gaps. Assess endurance, strength, technical skills, durability, fueling, and mental preparation. Direct effort in the off/shoulder seasons toward what needs improvement.

Let each sport’s emphasis change. One sport can progress while another stays at maintenance level. Equal attention year-round can leave you stalled. If you are trying to maintain volume in both summer and winter sports all year, burnout is more likely; do one to two season sport specific workouts in the offseason (summer for winter sports, winter for summer sports)

Make training more specific as your objective approaches. Cycling supports general fitness, for example, but preparing for a ski race requires time on your skis.

Keep strength training, adjusting its volume. They argue that conflicts often arise from excessive volume or poor timing. As endurance training increases, reduce strength volume while retaining it.

Count the workload across all your sports. A hard ski, trainer interval session, and demanding run still add up to three hard workouts, even when they appear in different columns of your training log. Review the whole week before adding more.

Change one thing at a time. Seasonal transitions are a good time to change one major training variable at a time. If you are returning to skiing after months of cycling or running, start with lower volume and intensity before adding speed and distance. Strong endurance in one sport does not automatically mean you are ready for the repetitive demands of another.

Give each discipline a weather backup. Decide ahead of time how you will preserve a workout’s purpose when conditions deteriorate. An indoor ride can preserve planned aerobic work when temperatures drop. Adjust duration and effort to the replacement activity rather than chasing identical mileage.

Keep fueling connected to the work. Shorter daylight hours do not necessarily mean shorter training days. Maintain regular meals, plan food around longer sessions, and make recovery nutrition practical, especially when one workout leads quickly into another.  Avoid automatically cutting food intake because racing season has ended. 

Keep drinks accessible. Cool weather can make fluid needs easier to overlook, while indoor cycling can still involve substantial sweating. Reassess your drinking routine as conditions change rather than assuming last season’s habits will always fit.  This is particularly true if you are accustomed to onboarding the majority of your calories in liquid form.

Make recovery part of the seasonal plan. Protect sleep when alpine starts and changing daylight disrupt your routine. 

Before your next training week, take ten minutes to check the forecast, inspect your equipment, choose backup sessions, and review where the hard efforts fall. These small decisions make it easier to train consistently through whatever the season brings.