Just finished my first century I was training for and did it around 6 hours 36 min.
As I finish out this last spin week of structure and plan my time off the bike what would you recommend as my next steps.
Goals for me next year are 3000 miles, 2 centuries, 5 cycling events (gran fondos, sportives, charity rides, etc), 225w ftp. Stretch goal of 4,000 miles. I’m not a racer though I think gravel racing would appeal most to me.
Should I
Base train till a month before cycling events happen then build
Set a plan builder for the approximate timing of an event.
Focus on improving ftp knowing the summer will demand much longer rides so I can ride those quicker.
Apologize for asking a relatively simple question. This is my first season of structured training and I’m not too confident in handling the off-season training amd want to get it right.
I’m a bit in the same boat. No real goals or targets except get fitter and faster. Doing longer rides. So what i usually did was just SSB1/2 + Sustained power build en repeat. Now with AT, i’ve used plan builder for the first time and set an end date two weeks before new years, looked at the type of plans and went with Rolling Road Race because it looked like a fun training schedule with some more vo2 work then i was used too.
Might not work for everyone (training without a real goal), but just seeing the numbers go up gives me great motivation to keep going.
This is what I did after my last race. I went with climbing road race since climbing is my biggest weakness, and then put my expected events on the calendar.
For everything I’ve done on TR I’ve always seen improvements after each phase of the process. Beginning of the year I got back on the bike after about three months off. FTP went down from around 270 to around 225. First watts came back really quick but it’s been steadily going up and I now sit at 286 even tho I’m also losing weight at the same time.