About 35 years ago, I was interviewed prior to a cycling stage race for a documentary about it that never got made. This particular stage race consisted of four separate events over three days where the overall winner would be determined not on a points system but lowest total accumulated time.

The guy holding the microphone asked me how I had specifically prepared for this contest. I told him I didn’t think tomorrow’s 50 km road race was difficult enough to create big time gaps, so I saw winning today’s hilly 5 km time trial as the key to winning the overall event.

Because of that, I added, I had traveled to the course three times in the last two months and had ridden it again and again and again.

“So you’re a believer in specificity?” he asked.

“Is that a word?” I joked. For I knew it was, and I knew my belief in specificity of training would lead me to at least a top-three finish that day.

And it would’ve ... except for what happened about 50 meters from the finish line.

Before you hear about that mishap, though, you need to know I was absolutely on form that day. Passed the two riders who had started 30 and 60 seconds ahead of me somewhere in the middle of the early six-turn ascent that reminds cycling fans of L’Alpe d’Huez.

Caught the guy who started two minutes before me at the base of the final 1 km climb that conceals the finish line no more than 75 downhill meters away. So I was feeling really good when I first saw two commissaires and the finish line.

So good, in fact, I gave the pedals one last all-out ungh! And what the ... ?

Ugh!

My bicycle chain was now on the road. Its connecting pin had come free.

Feeling as if I were racing against Fred Flintstone in his Flintmobile instead of a stopwatch, I foot-powered the bike for the rest and finished seventh.

While this mishap taught me indelibly about the need for preventive bicycle maintenance, that day’s ride up until that point assured me I was spot-on about specificity of training. For a commissaire later told me my split time at the crest of the last climb had been the fastest of the day.

Which is all well and good, yet fails to explain why I’m sharing this bit of personal, peculiar, and ancient history. That’s because the arrival of winter should never keep you from getting a bit fitter even though it’s likely to affect in what ways and how often you exercise.

Apply specificity to whatever you do and whenever you do it, however, and you’ll surely see improvement. Well, at least in one measurable way.

Just don’t expect improvement in all areas, for there’s give and take that’s part of training specificity. Which is why I’ll share another personal, peculiar — albeit far more recent — piece of history.

After recently doing two months of riding indoors twice a week on very hilly virtual routes where increasing average power as measured in wattage was the objective, that number improved by about 6 percent. When I rode a relatively flat 25-mile indoor course at race pace the following week, however, I was actually a bit slower than when I did that same course 18 months ago.

While you may think that loss of speed’s a natural result predicated on my advancing age (after all, I’ve had a Medicare card for eight months now), I knew that wasn’t the case. Rather, it’s a result of specificity’s give and take.

Riding those steep hills time and time again required standing on the pedals and turning as big a gear as possible while keeping the cadence right around 60 revolutions per minute. That’s as close as you can get to lifting weights while riding a bike and hardly the type of riding that leads to going fast on flats.

So I did four indoor rides during the next two weeks where I specifically focused on going fast on flats rather than maxing out the wattage on climbs. Then I tried the aforementioned 25-mile course at race pace again.

That effort ended 5 minutes and 55 seconds and 2.1 miles per hour faster than the one six weeks before, an effort that put me in the top 99.6 percent of the 17,500+ riders who had already ridden the course. Yet my average power number was 9 percent lower than the first.

So if you’re a cyclist, a runner, or even a walker whose never lifted weights aggressively in the winter for fear it would make you slower, you’re probably right — and definitely missing the big picture.

For the slowing needn’t be permanent, not if you understand and take advantage of specificity of training’s give and take.