VO2 workout 2 days before A Race

Just curious if this seems correct to others. It’s Bird -2, scheduled for tomorrow, and my spring A Race is Sunday. I’m inclined to skip or do something shorter in length and without 1 min intervals.

Any thoughts…lemme know. Have already ridden 8 ish hours this week with a hard Hill repeat group ride on Wednesday. Race is a 50 mile Road Race w/a 6-8 minute climb each 10 mile lap.

Do you have openers scheduled on Saturday?

You already know the answer. It’s not going to make you faster at this point. Just spin easy this close to an A race. If openers work for you, do them on d-1. Hard workouts on d-2 tend to be counterproductive.

I had the same issue this week. I have a 62 mile mountain bike race on Saturday with over 7000’ of climbing and TR had me doing a bunch of really hard workouts this week. I wish I hadn’t deleted them but I know one was a really hard threshold workout on Monday plus long sweet spot workout yesterday and no openers the day before the race. It looked more like the training weeks it has been giving me and nothing that you should be doing the week of a big race. I ignored all of it and followed a LT100 plan I have with the week of the race.

What is the duration of the workout?

Tapers work by reducing volume, but keeping intensity. This is to try to keep your fitness up with some hard efforts, but avoid taking on any more fatigue.

If the workout you’re referencing was less than an hour long, then it’s a part of the taper and is likely worth doing.

Spinning easy won’t keep you sharp for race day, but a 45-minute on/off will. :crossed_swords:

I wish I didn’t delete the workouts but Monday’s threshold and Wednesday threshold/sweetspot were 1.5 hours and I believe it had me doing a 2-hour endurance ride on Thursday (two days before the race). It was definately not a normal race week taper with some efforts.

Also, from prior races for me I do need to keep some intensity up and not taper too much but this was way more than what I typically would do. Race weeks I will take a day or two off with some easy rides and 3-4 days prior will do a longer endurance ride with short vo2 max / threshold efforts that is much easier than what I typically do but keeps some intensity. Race being tomorrow I will do 4 openers and one short threshold effort today.

It looks like, at one point this week, you might have had a 60-minute easy ride on the 9th, and a 60-minute sweet spot on the 10th? :thinking:

Regardless, I’ll share this with the team. :+1:

Yeah I scratched the hard on/off workout. Even though it was only 45 minutes it’s not something I’d expect 2 days before a race. 15 minutes of +400 watts. I do have a traditional opener scheduled tomorrow.