Once the road race season kicks off, what do folks do - train to maintain or keep pressing for gains? I’m in a week’s time I’ll be starting an 8 week block to get me set for my first road race of the season, once completed what’s best going forward into the season?
Throw your races into planbuilder and usually speciality phase will carry on through race season depending on when you plan to peak
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Depends on goals for the season. If you want to focus 100% on your fitness gains for the season then stick to a training plan and do your workouts outside if you want to be outside. If you want to ride outside and have fun then accept you’re fitness won’t peak as high and will fall off at some point. Adjust the slider to a point that matches your goal for the season.
I’ve done mid volume base, and build, group rides will pick up as I’m redoing base and I’ll drop a workout from the MV plan and add in group rides, and then focus hard on my specialty doing the MV 5 rides a week, and maybe 1 group ride a week, and subbing the Saturday rides for race days.
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Thanks folks, looks like proper planning regarding my race season combined with the plan builder is the way forward. I want to be as fresh as possible while racing as much as possible, will certainly have to find a compromise!
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depends on your goals, but you want to be improving in some aspects of your cycling all year round, especially as you lead up to events, detrain, and then rebuild.
good luck this season!
Brendan
Thanks Brendan, goal is always total world domination, lol, but realistically I wanna be a consistently competitive 2nd cat racer here in the UK. Interested in detraining, sounds counter productive but that’s just taking it face value - would a period of detraining allow me to push beyond a ceiling I might get to?
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Really depends on how much you’re racing and how much fatigue you’re building up from the races
I actually have more success staying away from specialty plans during the season and tend to just continue on with an approach similar to build. I will grab some things from a taper week if I’m trying to cycle my fitness up for a specific event, but generally I just keep at it for B and C races. Some of my best results last year came after relatively heavy training weeks
I’d strongly suggest you allow yourself some time off mid-season as well, similar to what @brendanhousler suggested. Taking a week or two completely off the bike can really help your body recover from what can be a long season of racing
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That’s good to hear, as I know what I’m like, once the warm weather hits I know I’m just gonna want to ride alot and race as much as possible which makes the structured side of things very difficult to adhere to. Usually compete in 2 road races a month with a mid week crit every week too, so the fatigue will certainly be accumulating!
so 3 weeks on, 1 week off, and repeat?
then, get specific training for:
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your events; if you see how you can win, improve those strengths. i.e. If you"re a sprinter, increase your max watts and repeatability.
I’m a breakaway artist, so I work threshold and race winning moves from small breaks when I’m 3,000 kj into a ride. -
train your weaknesses based on w/kg in max aerobic or FTP areas (think 3m to 45 or 60m range)
for me, it’s vo2 repeatability and some neuromuscular 1m efforts -
if you use wko, peak at power duration curve for holes to test on weekends when fresh to keep data up to date.
does that clarify it a bit more. when in doubt, look at the event and ask yourself, what do I need to do to do well here? Everything can’t be an A race, and use B Races to get faster for the A Race
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That’s fantastic, thanks Brendan 
keep us posted how it goes!!
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