Managing Holidays during my training

Training
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Hi All,

Been loving my time on TrainerRoad. Joined up earlier this year and been great, During my outdoor training ride yesterday I hit PR’s on climbs I’ve been targeting as part of my training to gauge progress.

The family is contemplating heading overseas for a 12-13 day holiday in mid February… I’m terrified of losing any fitness as my main target event is the first week of March.

Would I lose a significant amount of fitness in essentially 2 weeks? I am suggesting/negotiating we go holidays after the event instead.

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For planned breaks like family holidays I usually try and do a big training block beforehand so use the vacation time as recovery.

If you do this then I don’t think you’ll loose any fitness

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I doubt you’ll lose anything and will maybe bounce back stronger if your body just needs a rebuilding break. The half life of endurance muscles is massive and over a longer break the only thing that starts to fade is the fast twitch (sprint) muscles and they come back quickly. I had a forced lay off of about 5.5 weeks due to an operation I doubt I lost any of my endurance stuff and only really needed to polish the high end stuff. Enjoy your break :+1:

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Over this summer, I had little training time availability (3-6h) every 4th week (on-call duties) but could push very high volume before/after. Due this enforced recovery, I actually peaked every month according to Garmin :slight_smile:

Basically, do what @UKCarl suggests.

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Are you managing the holidays around the training or managing the training around the holidays?

Deciding which is your priority will go a long way towards answering your question.

To be clear, we all want both, but one will take precedence

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Spend the time recovering with your family. The bike will be waiting when you return and your spirit will be refreshed and ready to train/race. I’ve never regretted taking time off with my family.

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There’s lots of good advice on this thread already. :raised_hands:

I totally understand your worry about taking time off before your A race. We work hard and put in countless hours while preparing for our target goals, so it’s natural to look forward to them and place a lot of personal priority around them.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to communicate this to your family. If it’s really important to you and they support you, maybe you can all agree to move that vacation to the week after your event. There’s no better time to relax than after your A race! :beach_umbrella:

On the other hand, I do agree with a lot of what’s been said here already. You could plan your vacation for the week of ~ February 3rd and use that week to really focus on resting and absorbing all of the training stress you’ve accrued over the past few weeks/months. You’ll likely pick up right where you left off when you return and should feel physically and mentally refreshed for your last few weeks of training.

Either way, accept the decision you make and look forward with confidence and you’ll do well. :dizzy: