Hey y’all,
I’m about to finish up my first full periodized cycle on TR – SSB thru crit speciality. I’ve gotten way stronger, pushed myself harder than I knew I could on a bike, and had a blast.
I initially signed up for the crit specialty intending to, you know… race some crits, but there’s nothing on the horizon yet here in NY and I have no idea when to expect things to come back, so I have nothing scheduled in the plan builder. The builder is telling me to start over back in base, but my traditionalist ‘base is what you do in winter’ prior makes me skeptical of doing that going into the spring. Who wants to lose their top end now that its time to go make some people suffer on the group ride? 
On the other hand, with no racing on the horizon, my actual training goal should be to get as strong as possible going into the late summer when races might return. My sense is that the coaching advice here is that I won’t be able to keep my top end for months at a time. Since the timeline to racing probably is probably about another full periodization, maybe going back to base is the optimal move in terms of building fitness?
What’s the play here? Should I trust my robot overlord and go back into base, or is ‘base is once a year’ kind of sensible? If the latter, what do I do?