Best weeks to remove for upcoming CX season

I had planned my pre-season to slot seamless into the start of the upcoming CX season (Southern Hemisphere). However, towards the end of December I had a back to back run of sickness and essentially lost 2 weeks of training, so I ‘re-did’ the two weeks I misshed and I am now on my final rest week of SSB High Volume and my plan is to move into Short Power Build- Medium to allow for some days on the bike doing skills/trails and into Cyclocross-Mid Volume with the same plans for outdoor training. I am happy with sitting around 700TSS per week.

My question, now that my training calendar has been pushed back, my first race of the season is slated for the 4-5 of May, which drops me in to racing without the final two weeks of the CX plan, which is the taper/maintenance part. Should I just sub the Fri/Sat plans of the week of the with races and continue the plan as normal or cut 2 weeks out somewhere else and taper into the race?

The race is of medium importance. It will carry points for the upcoming season which are important for seedings in more important races but it isn’t the end of the world if I carry a little residual fatigue into the races. What would be the best path of attack?

Thanks!

In this case, I would just grab the Thursday ride from Week 8 of Specialty and then substitute the weekend’s rides for the Race and a recovery ride.

Effectively, this is just a mini-taper :+1:. If it were a more important race, you might do all of Week 8 leading up to the race, or if it were an A race, you might do Week 7 and 8 leading up to it. The basic formula is that the more important the race, the more time spent tapering for it.

I hope this helps!

Thanks mate, makes sense!

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