I’ve just finished the rolling road race specialty. Currently, it’s race season for me with B or C races most weekends. My “A” Race is not for about 26 weeks. However, its only really an A race in the sense there are not many big events to lead up to - and if its rainy on the day for example i won’t be doing it. More of an A race by the process of elimination. This race is 185km with 4000m. My results in the weekly B races is just as important.
I had planned on doing both SSB, then Build, and climbing road race - which basically gives me the right amount of time to do all 3.
My dilemma is that i have a lot of B races which i need that top end for, and doing sweetspot for my entire race season will affect that. These B races are between now and August really.
Thoughts on how to structure my plan? I feel i’ve got pretty good race fitness at the moment. I’ve held close to 80 CTL for the better part of a year, so base is also decent. My smallest week in over a year is 400TSS.
Feel like my Vo2 type power has fallen a bit since specialty focuses on shorter duration. My power curve is very TT/Climber weighted with short power being a weakness.
I think your plan is good and you’ll get some top end workouts in SSB 2. You may want to swap out every Tuesday or Thursday during your Build phase with the workouts in General Build. This will give you some punchy workouts at least once a week. Or, just do the General Build plan as it’s a mixture of both sustained and high end efforts. You’re correct though, if you do nothing but longer sweet spot and threshold efforts, those repeated high end punches during your B races are going to feel horrible.
i think you answered your own question; if you’re racing, you need more than sweet spot and should be incorporating higher intensities, like vo2max intervals. Those will also help boost your FTP and overall fitness.
You made a comment re: race fitness and CTL; they are not synonymous. While fitness is important, for racing, Form is more important. You can have an amazingly high CTL and not be anywhere near ready for a race; you could be extremely tired. Subtle but important nuance.
It’s not really an A race then by my reckoning! No point in building a season and training plan so you are peaking for a race you might not even do!! How about picking one of the B races and treating it as an A? Then adjust your training around that?
If you’re racing pretty much every weekend, that’s your top end power training right there. The weeks you’re not racing, just either add in a suitable higher intensity TR workout or do a race-type group ride (if you live in an area where there are races most weekends then I guarantee on the weekends with no races there will be some kind of group ride where all the local racers go hammer it).