New Content: A Week With Phil Gaimon!

Well, look at that. You just got invited to spend a few days in Los Angeles with the legendary Phil Gaimon: former WorldTour pro cyclist and the star of ‘Worst Retirement Ever’, in which Phil chronicles his adventures bagging Strava KOMs from around the world.

Joining Ian Boswell and Neal Henderson with his own A Week With Series, we’re excited to let you know that A Week With Phil Gaimon is now available in SYSTM!

During your time training with Phil, he’ll take you out for a few rides in the hills around LA to practice pacing maximum threshold efforts – an essential skill if you want to make your own KOM or QOM attempt. But it’s not all hard work. Along the way, Phil’s going to share his love for LA, tell stories from his time in the pro peloton, introduce you to his crew, show you how he manages multiple businesses and maybe even make you a cookie or two.

Here’s the plan, which you can apply to your calendar in the training plan section of SYSTM (or you can just pick and choose the sessions you want to do, when you want to do them):

Day 1/5: Introduction
Day 2/5: Openers
Day 3/5: Short KOM Training Session
Day 4/5: Neighborhood Ride
Day 5/5: Long KOM Training Session

PS. Enjoying 'A Week With? Then stay tuned – in the coming months, we’ll release another AWW featuring one of top riders in women’s MTB racing.


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Aww c’mon @David.McQuillen.KoS , do we HAVE to be releasing all of these during ToS prep month? Gods man, there’s only so many hours in the day - or miles in the legs.

:roll_eyes:

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Ha! Well-played. :joy:

Sir @David.McQuillen.KoS, will there be A Week With Phil Gaimon Wahoo event like there was for Ian Boswell?
I received an email from Wahoo SYSTM suggesting there’s something on Feb 14th to 20th, but there are no details, and the plan gets created on five consecutive days (so Feb 14th to 18th, not the 20th).
I’m trying to determine whether to do AWWPG as of tomorrow or wait two weeks.

Rob

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Super excited.
Will be doing this in late Feb, between my current plan & my next scheduled plan. I have around two free weeks of nothing scheduled due to an event date. This will be a perfect fill-in.
Thanks so much.

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Ok, now you’ve created a dilemma: I’m about to start a 12 week preparation plan for “La Doyenne”, but I really want to ride a week with Phil.

Perhaps I exchange the first week of the plan with these sessions…

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Sounds like a, uh, plan! Alternatively – replace any recovery ride in your 12 week plan with the Neighborhood ride and then swap in the Short and Long KOMs for when you see a similar style workout in your plan. The Openers session is good before any fitness tests.

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Now there’s a solution! :+1: Just gone through the schedule to do just that.
(also keeping 26 Feb - 6 Mar free for the ToS)

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I had finished all scheduled workouts for the week, and some bad weather forecast.

So I did
Openers, followed by (after 10 minutes easy) by KOM efforts.
Don’t mind the workouts, never heard of Phil Gaimon, can’t say I took to him much.

And when he stopped at the view over LA all that smog. It can’t be good for a cyclist

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He’s fairly popular in the states. He has gained some notoriety by stealing the KOMS around Los Angeles and for an impressive record setting Everesting. A combination of technique and power, but his record did not stand for very long. That and his charitable efforts and legendary love of cookies.

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@Stonechat , Sounds like you found the experience similar to me. I guess from your post you haven’t done all of the workouts from that week. All I can say is nothing is really different in the other sessions so I wouldn’t concern yourself with them!

If you haven’t tried it yet, the week with Sir Neal Henderson is very good and well worth doing so don’t be put off the whole “A Week With” category.

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I see. Yes I fished all my workouts for the week, except I chose a harder one in place of the middle,of three consecutive endurance efforts. Making sure I put in some efforts before the TOS.

I would disagree slightly. The long KOM ride, the last one of the week, is the only workout from any of the “Week With” series that I have noted as one that I will definitely do again. I found the scenery nice, the commentary pleasant but not omnipresent enough to get grating when you hear it again, and the workout structure is consistent with my goals. Although it won’t be a frequent choice, I will probably ride it a few times.

And after writing this, this morning I think I’ll try Ian Boswell’s stretching routine from his “Week With” instead of one of the Abi Carver yoga workouts I usually do to start the day. That one also registered as “new and different” in my brain, but the usual workouts have a flow that is very familiar.

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Interesting. I feel like that about several of the On Location rides which I would happily ride multiple times to get ostensibly the same training benefit as PG’s long KOM.

Good job we’re not all the same!

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As a non-US cyclist, I wasn’t familiar with him until I came across his take on the infamous Velominati Rules at Cycling Tips.

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I’ve completed two so far, Openers and Short KOM efforts. I’ll probably tick them off in time but they’re not grabbing my attention as much as AWWIB of AWWNH. I’d definitely repeat both of those weeks.
And what was with the gunshot sound effect half way through the first KOM interval?! Scared me to death.

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So the last kom effort is half of a 4dp test gosh. That was fun.

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It was fun! And I nailed that last long effort… :sunglasses:

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