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Lots of beer and Full Irishes: Dan Martin knows the value of ignoring your diet (for a while)

Even if your scales don’t stop at 66 kilos like Ireland’s top cyclist, there are merits to taking time out from your intense training regime,

WHILE MANY AMATEUR athletes are smack bang in the middle of a winter break and looking forward to treating themselves to all the trimmings of Christmas dinner, cyclist Dan Martin has his off-season behind him and is preparing to go again.

Not that there is much of an adjustment to make between the two.

Martin says he would have come back from his November break touching the 66 kilogramme mark on the scales, just four kilos over his race weight.

He happily passes on the opportunity to put it down to raw dedication, he knows how fortunate he is to have an environment and a metabolism that is forgiving to the rare indulgences.

“I’m quite fortunate in that the family’s quite sporty and healthy,” Martin says.

“My girlfriend [Jessica Andrews] is quite a high-level cross-country runner, so the house is mainly a healthy eating household. I don’t get the opportunity to gorge myself much.

“I’ve got quite a relaxed approach to dieting. It works best for me when I don’t think about it too much. I eat what I want when I want. But I end up eating healthy anyway. I don’t really crave the stuff that’s bad for you. But obviously there’s a time to let yourself go a bit.”

That time, insists the Cannondal-Garmin rider, is vital in giving body and mind a little reprieve and a chance to properly recover after an intense campaign of endurance cycling.

“That’s part of the off-season as well, I just don’t watch my diet at all. I spend 11 months a year when I’m – not obsessed, but I’m – quite careful and I’m trying to watch the fuel that I’m putting in to the body. This time of year, I don’t think about it. I drink as much beer as I want to, a couple of Full Irishes every now and again doesn’t really hurt the recovery.”
“The hardest bit is not putting on weight when you’re not riding at all,” he adds, but that period is not a long one for Martin. Yet they are relatively short rides to keep his legs ticking over.

His pre-season training began with this month. And even then Martin enjoys the benefits of training as an individual, mixing up his regime between putting miles on the clock and strength in his legs.

“I’m all the time changing things around. I’d probably go to the gym three times a week and just do an hour  or so each day.

“It [weights] works well for me and it helps me to maintain my weight really well and really gain some fitness quite quickly. That’s why I like doing it so much, it’s less miles than you have to do on the bike.”

“You’d be doing a lot of weights in December and getting some easy miles in and stuff, but when January comes the races are just six weeks away, so you’ve really got to be thinking about the season ahead.”

DM - Copy

Dan Martin pictured showing his support for the DID Cycle4Life event in aid of Temple Street Children’s Hospital.

In pics: Dan Martin pulls up at Temple Steet

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