my younger brother is looking to do his first crit race. I am trying to decide what is more important to prepare him for his first race on tuesday next week. H has just taken a few weeks off after doing some zone 2 and 3 work, he did some big rides (for him) 40-60 miles, he also did a little bit of sprint training, but overall he isnt super fit. he doesnt have power, but I am lending him one of my older garmins and an hr monitor. his longest week is about 10hrs. the power curve I did with him in November, dramatically favored the 5 second sprint. I would like to see what people think I should have him do for his 2-3 key workouts leading up to the race. the primary goal is to keep him with the pack for as long as possible, It is actually a pretty smooth crit, due to it being on a race track. I’ve heard different things about what intervals I should put into his tp, I’m pretty experienced, but I’m used to working at a far higher volume, so my 3 hour interval sessions wont work for him.
if you could share anything about the crit (an old strav link would help).
In a weeks time you won’t increase FTP or any lower level energy systems to the point of making an impact. I’d be looking at Vo2 and repetitive efforts to hold the surges as long as possible. When I started crits I think I got dropped in the first 5-10 of them just because I was always yo-yoing till death.
An alternative focus for the week - pack riding, holding a wheel, fighting for position to stay away from the back. Its always easier near the front
looks like fun with 0 sharp turns and elevation to manage! I’d suspect pack skills, drafting, hiding, and staying calm will help said rider stay with the field.
It’s a good route, I don’t know if I should have him do more vo2 max or anerobic or steady state or neromuscular. My coach has me doing steady state work twice a week and lots of junk milles the rest of the week, but my little brother doesn’t have the time to train that I have, im also not training crit races so much, I’m still racing them, but my focus is 17-18 usac road nationals and lotoja. So I don’t really know what I should loading into the Garmin for him.
Just give him sweet spot workouts if he doesn’t have the time to do z2.
You can find decently cheap training plans on training peaks, where you don’t need a power meter. they might be cookie cutter and not personalized. But, they will offer structure and some proper progression. IMO, that’s better than random intervals at random times. Consistency > random all the time.
I looked at some, he is pretty busy so I’m kinda just putting stuff together around his schedule, because he’s in all these honors and ap classes.
Today he went out and did tabada intervals, He did 3 sets of 10x30 with 15 second recoverys, and 10 minutes between sets. we need to work on his cadence for sure though, he spent way too much time grinding. I met up with him after 2 hours at zone 2(~210w average) he was finishing up the first set at that time.
The current plan is for me to bring him out with me on my Thursday recovery ride so he can practice riding Wheels, also it should be a pretty hard ride for him, because he struggles to average anything about 17mph, my recovery ride is 18.5-19.5mph,