Plan recommendations for esports racing?

Training
1

At the risk of poking a hornet’s nest, what plans would you guys recommend for those of us who do all of our racing indoors?

I’m in the middle of SSBLV II. Short power build and then maybe a crit plan? Cross?

Races tend to be less than an hour.

@AndyGajda any thoughts?

2

I don’t race Zwift as much as many others (and may be off the mark as a result), but I think General Build (with it’s split of spiky VO2/AC efforts and longer Thresh efforts) is a better match to most of the racing I have done and watched.

  • There are hard starts, but it seems to stabilize at various points in the race (maybe 10 mins in), to almost a TT-like effort, and then includes more hard surges after that.
  • And if the above is accurate, I see the Rolling Road Race Specialty being a better fit for similar reasons.

Depending on the particular events and your preference for racing approach, I could see adjusting any plan to blend in anything you feel is missing from one of the existing plans.

3 Likes
3

And adding to your poking… I saw this the other day and hesitated to share it here… but since you brought up the topic… :stuck_out_tongue:

They’re very much surge-steady-surge-steady-sprint. These plans place less emphasis on training long, steady state efforts and more focus on going above threshold and then quickly recovering at or slightly below threshold.

  • I swear I didn’t read their text until just now, and the similarity to my post above is purely concidental :smiley:
4 Likes
4

Ha, wasn’t going to bring that up but it did prompt me to wonder what the best TR plan would be.

2 Likes
5

I’ll also try not to poke a hornets nest here too!!!

Successful Zwift racers have big 1 min and 5 min power, and most can sprint. Endurance isn’t so much of a factor as you’re right that most races are short. (that said, if you do want longer races, they are there)

You’ll improve at racing on Zwift, by racing on Zwift. There’s an art to playing the game, which you can’t learn by training. You have to do it. Learn how to stay in the draft and recover when you can, learn when the effort will ramp up and when it will ease off. Climbs on Zwift are never easy. Even the short ones have a particular method to them. I’ll never forget the time I figured out how to ride the short climb on the London Classique course - strangely satisfying.

If you need 20 min sweetspot efforts, ride a race on the Innsbruck course or Epic KOM. You need 2 min efforts, Watopia Forward KOM, etc etc…

I’d suggest racing 2-3x per week, pay attention to your recovery and don’t bother with zone 1/2 rides. Focus on your top end. Join a team. Learn to “play” Zwift rather than just focusing on your power. If you haven’t already done, register on Zwiftpower and ignore the “official” Zwift results at the end of a race - the Zwiftpower results are the ones that matter.

Hope that helps?

Oh, and join a team!!!

2 Likes
6

Thanks Andy. I’m not ready to go all in on racing just yet. I’ve been doing pretty well in D races. Now that I’ve gotten smarter drafting, I place top 3 on zwiftpower most races.

The dynamics in D races are pretty strange since there are so few riders. I’d like to get strong enough to bump up to C and learn race dynamics there.

This is my first time doing structured training (or really any training) and I’m getting stronger quickly. Maybe I’ll do my build phase and then take a little time off and race more consistently. I could treat it like a season.

I can definitely see my TR training (sweet spot) in the races. I’m pretty good steady state but my Sprint is terrible. ZP says my punch is 38% :man_facepalming:t2:. Hopefully a build phase will fix that. Although, my Sprint seems to gets better every race.

2 Likes