Road race training for next year

Training
1

Hello,

I’m going to do some Cat 3/4 road races next year, March-August 2020. When is the best time to do the Rolling Road Race training programme to prepare for this? I’m going to do the Mid Volume, I already have a good base and I’m currently doing some CX races.

Thanks

2

The vanilla TR approach would be 12 weeks of Base plans, an 8 week Build plan, then an 8 week Specialty plan culminating in your season A race.

So if there is a particular event you want to target next season then work back from that, and fit in other races along the way around your training. Some possible ways of tweaking it would be:

  • Aim to finish Build plan in March so you’re hitting the start of the race season in good shape, then use a mix of Specialty plan and racing to sharpen up your top end.
  • Aim to finish Specialty plan in March so you’re absolutely in top form for the early season races. Hold that peak as long as you can using a mix of racing and the Maintenance plans, sweep up a load of points, then take a recovery week or 2, do a block of Base and Build and peak again for late season
1 Like
3

What’s the thinking on ‘peaking’: peak for first race; peak for last; or somewhere in the middle… :thinking:

4

somewhere in the middle

5

Depends on goals. If you want to upgrade quickly then peaking for the beginning isn’t the worst idea. Show up on peak fitness while a lot of people are still shaking out the cobwebs.

Pick a race in the middle or back half of the race season peak for that and ride out the rest of the season on the HIIT maintenance plan.

6

Given a 5 month racing schedule I would strongly recommend you not come in too strongly cooked. Maybe time the middle of your build (week 4 or so) to coincide with your first race. That will give you a decent amount of fitness but you won’t be risking too much burnout by the end of the year

Alternatively you could aim for a March/April peak (finishing specialty around a particular early season race) and plan a mid-season break in the May time frame and then jump back into racing for June-August while doing some build or specialty work