Road season is around the corner. When is your first race? Are you ready?

I want to get excited for the season, but don’t have many friends who road race or are excited for it. Soooooooo

  • When is your first road race of the season?
  • How far along are you in your training plan?
  • Will you finish your TR plans before your A race?
  • Roughly how many races do you plan to do this season?

My first race is Jan 26, and I’ll be partway through SSBMV 2. I’ll finish general build before when I think my A race will be (it hasn’t been added to the calendar yet), then continue with the crit plan probably low volume. And I’m thinking I’ll do at least 10 races this year, maybe double up some days and jump in some men’s races!

Season doesn’t start for a few months yet here in UK.

First race is likely to be 10 mile TT at the beginning of April, followed by a 2-up 25TT the week after. Two main targets this year - Scottish National Vets RR championships in June and Scottish Team Time Trial championships in August.

I’ll probably race 2-3x per month between April and September. It’ll be a mix of road races and TT’s. The two above are the only ones I’ll do a proper peak and taper for, A raced if you like. There’s two that I’ll treat as B races, the rest will be C.

Good luck with your season😊

  • First race is end of march, which will be a spring training crit ( there is a total of 8 spring training crits before the season kicks off/warm weather)
  • I had knee surgery in November, and I’m currently 4 weeks into my SSB Mid volume 1 plan. Things are tracking well for my A race of Tour of America’s Dairyland. I should be able to get in a whole 28 weeks of training before the end of June.
  • In 2018 I raced 44 times, across all different disciplines of cycling. A lot of those were double down criterium races on the same day. I was chasing upgrade points (went from Cat 5 to 3 in about 4 months). I’m guessing that I’ll be racing the same amount as last year.
  • Early spring will be a mix of gravel races and crits, dependent on weather. A few mountain bike races in April and May. I’ll be hitting the crits hard this spring and early summer to be ready for ToAD.

What’s a 2-up TT?

I will likely be doing the TTT for our state this year, but I’ve never really done a TT, so there will be tons of training and practicing before we get to that point!

And your break between your A races seems to be perfect to take a quick break and start back up again. That’s great! Good luck with your season as well :leg:

2-up is TTT with a team of 2👍 Great fun😊

My work schedule dictates everything. Very hard to race around as it’s not the same week to week, month to month. However, I am planning:

  • First road race is a crit in a couple weeks.
  • Just started a specialty phase.
  • It won’t be complete before the first A race.
  • I generally race 30+ sanctioned and non-sanctioned events/year.
1 Like

I have a couple of friends who target ToAD every year. They love it! I hear the roads aren’t too good, but they love it nonetheless.

That’s a ton of racing! Will you be continuing with mid volume plans the entire time? Will you just substitute that day’s ride for a race?

Ah, I see! I like the sound of that more than a 4-person team! :fearful:

My first event is a crit in two weeks time. Had planned to start racing on the second weekend of February but I thought it would be fun to throw my irons in the fire and see how things shake out.

I’m actually quite far along with the training I’d planned to complete.

I’ll have finished my ‘planned’ training well before my ‘A’ races.

I will aim to complete 15-20 sanctioned/points races and a handful of sportive and fondos.

1 Like

First crit got cancelled this last weekend due to poor weather. But hopefully we will be able to race next weekend. We have early bird training crits in our region which makes it a good opportunity to get some racing in before the season ‘officially’ starts.

1 Like

@PusherMan How will you continue to implement TR since you are finished with your plan soon?

@DylonFujifilm that happened to me last year, with out first big race being canceled due to really rough weather. I wasn’t sad about it though. I call myself a weather weenie. I chicken out haha

@runriderandi

I’ll repeat a couple of weeks of my Build phase and then go back to Sweet Spot Base II. After that, I’ll switch things up and start a different Build phase for the road races I’ve picked out.

This will be my first ToAD, and I’m very excited! I’m fine with spotty pavement, as that seems to be the norm for criterium racing.

I’ve been manipulating my Mid volume SSB plant for it to be a middle-ground between mid and high volume, roughly 475-550 TTS per week. Once I finish up my hybrid SSB, I’ll move to high volume Build, and then by the time I make it to specialty phase, the weather in Michigan will be nice… therefore I’ll drop the plan to low or mid volume. Basically trying to just do all the “specialty” workouts indoors, and the sweet spot/endurance riding outdoors.

*First race for me might be first weekend of March. TT. But, it’s a bit of a drive so I may wait till mid March a weekend of crit followed by RR
*I’m in the second week of SSB MVII. I’m doing 10 weeks of SSBMV and then starting over with SSMV then build then speciality
*I have several A Races, but the one that matters the most is in August and thats what I’m building up for. 50 mile XC race July 4th is sort of an A race and state RR is in august as well. So no. I supplement weekend/weekday races for TR workouts/days. CX ‘A’ race will be early December.
*I race about 40 or so times a year across road, mtb, and CX. I am doing a gravel race this year - don’t care much for it but we got a very discounted rate so thought why not.

What state are you in? I think our road race is in April or so which seems so early to me. But the schedule hasn’t been ready for state championship road races yet. I’m in Southern California.

Colorado @runriderandi. Our state crit race is in mid July and road race end of August.

1 Like