Which Specialty and when?

I’m in week 4 of the build phase. I’m trying to choose a specialty phase and decide when to start it.

I don’t really have any A races on the calendar yet. My A race was going to be a 2 man team time trial that was 50k but I think they may shorten it to a 25k this year. It’s in the first week of July. I am also targeting a duathlon in the first week of June which has a 13 mile bike ride and a duathlon at the end of July. I plan on getting in some various time trials throughout the summer and maybe a few mountain bike races here and there. At some point I want to find a 40k time trial and give it go to see how close to an hour I can get. Other than those things I will be riding for fun and 1 or two group rides during the week one of which turns into a hammer fest at times.

If I go into specialty right after build I will be done the first week of May. What then? I’d be done well before any of my races.

I’m also trying to decide which specialty to choose. 40k would good for the time trials I want to do but rolling road race might be good for the group rides and few mountain bike races I want to do.

Any insight or thoughts are appreciated.

Use the plan builder. You have to chose at least one A event and it will build you the best plan (speciality and timing wise). For example the builder may have you extend or redo a build phase if you have time for it.

https://www.trainerroad.com/forumt/introducing-plan-builder/25201

If you redefine your races priorities in the future, just update your plan using plan builder again.

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I haven’t done this myself but its not uncommon for other forum members to just repeat base and build rather than going in to speciality. I think this may have been recommended on the podcast too although,granted, that was before they introduced plan builder

Exactly, you don’t have to do a speciality phase after build if you don’t have any race coming. :slight_smile:

@petitek good advice for the plan builder. I picked a couple of races and the plan builder has me finishing build phase, then going into specialty 40k then back to sustained build and then back into 7 weeks of specialty 40k again. I’m waiting on the final 2020 calendars to come out so I can actually pick my races and then adjust my calendar accordingly. Depending on what events I pick the plan builder may change things up.

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Cool! IMHO the best addition to TR with the calendar feature. Very simple and straight forward, and easily adaptable if you update your goals during the season!

@petitek I noticed that with my plan builder that the workouts for the build phase changed. I would assume that is because it it tailoring my build phase to fit the type of races I chose? For instance I added 3 races all of which were time trials or duathlons. If I added more races like a mountain bike race and maybe a road circuit race it would again change my workouts slightly?

I haven’t played enough with it to answer you properly but I think the workouts and phases are really aimed at preparing you for your A event. I have tried adding cyclocross B events in the builder and it hasn’t changed my workouts at all (training for OLY triathlons). What has changed exactly for your build phase? You can compare it to the sustained build plan to see how it corresponds.

If you chose to have taper weeks for B events your workouts could have been replaced on race weeks.

Have a look at the plan builder topic as I am sure similar questions have already been asked.