I am currently working my way through Sustained Power Phase after completing SSB 1 + 2 with the aim to start Climbing Road Race week commencing 18th February. I have my A race planned for the 9th of June with a long haul holiday booked for the 2nd to 18th of March inclusive.
Any advice on how I would manage my plan leading up to my A race?
Do any members have tips on how to slow the loss of fitness during this period?
I can just about manage to find the time for running intervals during my holiday, but my wife has already said no bike
Load your Specialty plan to end the week of your A race. Then see how much time you have in between. You should be structuring your annual training working backwards from your A race, makes planning easier. Without putting the plans into a calendar and knowing how much time you have, looks like you could do an abbreviated SSB2 with an abbreviated “re-Build”. Tough to exactly say without knowing how many weeks you have to work with.
You will loose some fitness, but you have months to recuperate that. If you already run, then running is better than nothing just be careful of injury. Also you can lift weights or possibly find a spin bike in a gym just to do something.
Another solution is if your vacation will be truly relaxing, you could hit it really hard the week before you leave (possibly even doubling your normal TSS) knowing that you will have recovery weeks following. Just be sure you don’t over do it.
I will do an abbreviated SSB2 after completing my Build Phase prior to my holiday, I’ll try to lift my TSS that final week. Yes my timing sucks but in my defence I didn’t commit to an A race until recently.
When I get back I will have exactly 4 weeks before starting the Speciality Phase. Would you recommend jumping straight into an abbreviated 4 week re-build after my break?
You’ll not lose much fitness during your holiday, certainly your base will be ok but your Vo2 will degrade a bit, however it’s largely irrelevant as your speciality phase plan will sort that out so you peak for the A race.
Your break is short enough, and far enough out from your race as to not pose too much of a problem. You might lose a bit of fitness, but not so much as to be concerned. Don’t sweat it and enjoy your holiday!
| would say that you are too early on the specialty plan, it is designed to end the week of your A event. And build should come before that. So that is 16 weeks back from June 9th means you should only really start build at the middle of February, the 11th February I imagine.
Given your holiday I would now do a week of SSB now, a rest week and then start build W/c 28th Jan. Starting it a bit early to offset the holiday. Then Ideally increase the training load of build the two weeks before the holiday. After the holiday I would say it would be a good idea to re do a couple of the build weeks you did before the holiday, rather than just continuing were you left off so that you can build the progression in difficulty in sessions more slowly to compensate for any lost fitness. Would probably be a good idea to add in some sweetspot sessions in the couple of weeks after the holiday just to try to recover some of your muscular endurance that you will lose.
Then just keep going with the rest of your build plan as normal, start the specialty half way through April and do that until the event. that is how I would approach a situation like this.
You have started training earlier than you require so you will have a higher training load over a longer period of time than if you just followed the 28 week cycle, so a longer 3 week deload is not necessarily even a bad thing, not ideal but something that is easy to work around.
