My main reason for participating in Hayden’s Le Race Group was to get a plan and strategy in competing in Le Race, my biggest weakness (apart from my weight and fitness) was my inability to climb hills, the first test I had to do, the test hill (Dyers Pass Road, Christchurch) took me over 34 minutes and I had to stop 5 times. After discussing this with Hayden, he came up with a plan of climbing that hill and in my final test I improved my time by over 7 minutes and no stops.

I found Hayden’s advice and experience invaluable and an inspiration and would highly recommend him as a coach for either cycling or nutrition.

Hayden helped me out training for some races in summer/autumn 2017. By sharing his knowledge and great passion for the sport, Hayden helped me rediscover my enjoyment not just for riding my bike, but for training harder, racing more and working towards specific goals. I am thankful to have access to a wealth of experience and Hayden was always their answering questions. I always heard professionals say training consistently, maintaining a routine and quality training was most important to them. The training that Hayden provided definitely covered those three aspects whilst still fitting around my lifestyle.

Having ridden Le Race twice with a lot of training I was still not getting the times I wanted. When given the opportunity to get trained by Hayden Roulston for this race I jumped at this. At my age with 17 years of cycling the change of diet and training was a huge step, I did stick pretty close to the diet and lost 4 kg in 4 weeks then stabilized at that.

I found some of the training pretty hard but as the weeks went on I could feel the benefit and was getting results on the test rides.

On race day I improved my time from last year a massive 40 min with my max heart rate going done around 5 beats per minute.

The training works and I will use Hayden again for future big races.

I have no hesitation in recommending Hayden Roulston to anyone wanting to improve his or her speed and endurance on the bike.

I joined Hayden’s 8-week Le Race program in 2017. This was the first time I had tried joining a formal training program in the lead up to an event (Le Race). Previously, any training I did was pretty sporadic as I have a young, busy family and also a full-time job where I can spend up to a third of the year travelling overseas on long-haul flights.

I have always been a recreational cyclist – mostly riding for fun with a great bunch of mates and have previously completed Le Race twice. However, I had always wondered whether I could do a better time in Le Race and I was also interested in a bit of healthy living advice. Whilst I would’ve described myself as being generally healthy, I also wasn’t getting any younger and had been putting on a bit of weight over the past ten years (mainly due to work travel) and couldn’t see any realistic way of losing it.

Overall, I was pretty apprehensive about joining Hayden’s program – would I be able to fit it in? Could I keep up with a program set by a pro?

I was also pretty skeptical when we first started the program – why all the talk about nutrition? And the training doesn’t look too full on… why isn’t the training “hard out!!!”

Boy did I learn a heap in those first few weeks. Hayden placed a huge emphasis on the nutritional side of the program and a graduated approach to the training compared to your starting fitness levels. It was a really big wake up call to look at how much sugar I had in my diet, and also a revelation about how easy it is to give it up.

Oh … and the training got harder too! The hill repeats were a killer on Tuesdays and, at times, I thought I was going to blow my heart rate monitor up! But, at the same time, I couldn’t believe how much better and faster I felt on the bike within a few weeks.

I can honestly say I enjoyed all the training sessions. Having a program to work to was good for me and the benefits were becoming very clear. Unfortunately, my preparation hit a disaster two weeks before Le Race. I had a massive crash downhill and broke my collar bone (I got hit by a rogue animal!). I was gutted after all the hard work I had put in and felt a bit cheated out of my end goal of a better race time. However, afterwards I realised I had a lot to be happy about. I had lost 11 kgs since starting the program (6 weeks earlier), was really enjoying eating healthy and, most importantly, I knew I was going to keep up with the nutritional side of the programme whether I was at home, or on the other side of the world for work. In fact, I wasn’t able to exercise at all in the weeks after the crash but I kept my weight the same – not a single kg added. This was important to me as it was probably going to resemble the reality of when I jumped back on a plane for work again.

Doing Le Race would have been the cherry on top but I had really changed the way I was living (and now I’ve got a goal for next year’s race).

I can honestly say I’ve never felt in better shape – ever! Hayden was a great mentor throughout the programme. He was always honest and professional and it was cool that this Olympic champion was actually out there doing the same training with us week-in, week-out. His approach to training over the 8-week period was well thought out and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to others.

The training programme gave me a really clear focus each week, with a good breakdown of each session objective. I knew what I had to do and I could hear from others what they were struggling with. The end result was I loved the hills on the race and looked forward to them rather than dreading them. The race was really enjoyable and I surpassed my race goals too!

Hayden has a real talent in coaching a group of vastly different abilities concurrently. He customised my program to suit me well, and accommodated everyone on bunch rides. I am a relatively new recreational rider and have come ahead heaps in my riding technique, ability, fitness and especially my confidence. Le Race was my third ever bike event and I had registered for La Petite but changed my entry after doing 6 weeks of the training. Hayden’s support both on and off the bike far exceeded my expectations and his generosity with information sharing was incredible and facilitated massive change in both areas.

I have been cycling for a couple of years which I really enjoyed but lost some interest, mainly because I was struggling to lose weight and not having any structure to my training. I came across an invitation to join a training group for the ‘le race’ with Hayden Roulston. I joined with some trepidation but was quickly put at ease, and that is where my journey began. I can say without hesitation that Hayden’s training and nutrition advice has been truly life changing and has given me my enjoyment of riding back. Through the program, I have lost nearly 20kgs and greatly increased my fitness and general wellbeing. I can honestly say I would not have achieved what I have, without Hayden’s advice, encouragement and his belief in me. Thanks again Hayden and I look forward to working with you again.

As a keen cyclist and computer buff, I thought Google would provide enough information on how to train without needing a coach – classic Kiwi DIY. Simply wrong. Hayden assessed my ability and provided me with an appropriate training plan that literally revolutionized my performance on my bike. Constantly he was seeking feedback and providing advice on how you would and should feel, how you shouldn’t feel and took a personal interest in my well-being. Value for money is not even an issue, retrospectively it was a no-brainer. You cannot carve out over a 12% improvement in a timed segment over a 4-week period on the same volume of training without focused attention from someone that knows.

The experience of having Hayden coach me has been 8 weeks of continual eye opening self-satisfaction at performance gains and weight loss. His approach and communication was perfect and despite for me residing 1,000km away from him, I never once felt I was forgotten. I was part of his first training group yet you would never have known this. Not once did he seem like he didn’t know or couldn’t explain what he was doing, or convey that what we were doing was wrong. You cannot go past his professionalism, where he has competed, and at the highest levels of competition around the world. I feel that this experience has translated into a perfect platform for him to launch his coaching career. I would thoroughly recommend his coaching services to anyone and I will continue to use him now I can see and feel the benefits both on the road, and in my life.

My Training plan consisted of 3-4 times a week just hopping on the bike and doing kilometers after kilometers. This worked at first with gaining some strength and endurance, but I was taking more and more time to get gains and this with work and family just wasn’t going to be sustainable. Hayden as part of his 8-week plan made gave me more structured based training and this could be worked around my work and family life a lot easier than my old way of doing things. I was now doing intervals and HR zones combined with power zones all things I had never used before. This level of training improved my times and energy levels just within the 8 week program. I now have the tools and knowledge to progress this further and see where this can take me.

Training was great. I was doing exercises that I had regarded as outside of what I could do and needed to do. Having Haydens program gave me the focus and motivation to do what I had perviously thought was of limited use. This really did play off at race time, where previously I have found some activities difficult I now almost didnt’ think about them. For example, when the groups surged I would have worked hard to stay on but after training it was almost a breeze.

The actual race, le Race, was the best race I have had in the 2 years that I’ve done in cycling. I finished the race, feeling good, no sugar low and having paced my self correctly. This state something that I have never done before and I was very happy with this. And all this in the space of 8 weeks. Didn’t realise that my body could do this 🙂