In my opinion the best way to get ready for cyclocross is to work on general fitness over the spring and summer; any TR program will do. Then from mid summer attend one group training session per week and really blow your doors off whilst also maintaining the finesse cx requires. Just riding a cx bike at a steady pace through mixed terrain for the remainder if the week will make it feel like an extension of yourself and maintain a nice fresh fit feeling.
Once race season starts then thats 2 hard sessions a week so resting becomes top priority in between.
I think for 50+ CX racers, who race hard once or twice per weekend, should do a mid-week endurance (upper zone 2) ride for 2.5 to 3 hours on say Wednesday. Too many masters CX racers lose steam during the race season because they aren’t doing any longer zone 2 rides. Forget the mid-week intervals if you race twice per weekend.
I think the challenge to planning for next seasons upcoming CX is sticking exactly to the TR Cyclocross specific plan or trying some of the many suggestions.
This is actually a somewhat common confusion point.
Not all of the workouts in the VO2 Max power zone are designed to have you working at your true VO2 Max. Those workouts like the 5x5 you mentioned are there, but there are more exercises to be done in that window between Threshold and Anaerobic other than traditional VO2 ones.
Shorter intervals have quite a few benefits. Here are a few of them:
- Strengthening the neuromuscular connections that are used when pedaling hard while seated
- Building pedaling form & strengthen biomechanics
- Building fast-twitch muscle fibers
- Improving controlled accelerations
- Improving aerobic base & high-end power output
- These can be great gateway workouts to those longer, more specific workouts down the road
Similar to the speedwork done in other sports such as running, these types of efforts sit somewhere between traditional VO2 intervals and shorter anaerobic intervals. They aren’t quite as physically taxing as either one of those which means they are easier to recover from, but you can likely do more of them.
These aren’t designed to replace traditional targeted VO2 work but are a different type of stress altogether.
That sounds like either a very specialized workout where you’re focusing on form (your items 1, 2, and 4) or just why you might want to do 30/30s instead of sustained 4 or 5 minute intervals. That’s a fine reason to have a variety of workouts and is great if they’re assigned appropriately.
I think the disconnect is that the software is giving people nothingburger workouts because their PLs decay too far. If I just came off of 12 weeks of base training how could I possibly be so weak that Mound is going to meaningfully contribute to my sustained power? I’m not strawmanning either, I was actually given that as a VO2 workout in Sustained Power Build.
I totally get that, if you haven’t done superthreshold work in a long time, you would want to ease back into it. But not like that. If I was not particularly proactive or if I hadn’t done enough intervals in my life to know better, I would have wasted all the VO2 time in that block just noodling around on my bike.
i’m with you here, i was looking back to 2021 when I did the adaptive training CX plan and in the build phase I had stuff like this
and this (45/45’s)
i was doing this in erg mode too, so I didn’t get any sort of maximal efforts. so, like with the 45/45s, this was neither a good vo2 workout nor was it hard enough to be an anaerobic capacity workout. If I’m doing 30/30s, I’m going doing on or near 500w (160%) and off completely, and I’m spent in 5mins, or if I’m going for a vo2 workout, I’m going 4min as hard as I can each time, and not 2min efforts which basically aren’t even the bare minimum to achieve a maximal aerobic state
We still think that you can be productive in the VO2 Max power zone in ways other than simply working at VO2 Max.
What would you suggest as a low-level VO2 workout? We’re always open to feedback!
I raced at a reasonably high level for a bit, had a lot of success using trainer road for base and builds, but leading up to CX for CX, I would only do the more traditional CX workouts outdoors. When I moved top a colder climate and couldn’t do as much outdoors I switched to trainer road fully. I think it was “ok” but missing some of whats needed for atleast new england CX courses. Maybe it was based around CX courses in different parts of the country. Some of this could have been compounded with my motivation dropping a bit as well, so its a bit hard to tell.
I think I tended to have better luck with hyper specific CX skills (including v02 and aerobic) and power 2 nights a week, with threshold workouts (over unders as well)+ a bunch of endurance.
The problem also is, if you are racing every weekend, the plans are not perfect (which is to be expected).
Lastly, racing is what worked best for me, if I had the base and the building blocks, Wednesday racing, with and against your competition is really the ultimate way to push yourself to that next level.
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I’m not a coach and I don’t have any particular insight so there’s nothing I can add that you don’t already know. But if anyone is reading this thread and cares what an internet rando thinks, there’s plenty of stuff in the current TR library that’s good.
Pick your interval length
30/30s: Sleeping Beauty
1 min: Thimble
2 min: Monadnock
4 min: Black Pine
Turn off erg mode (especially for shorter intervals), use the power targets for your first WO as a way to measure yourself. After that progress by increasing power.
For the 2 minute intervals, when you can, it’s probably better to bump it up to 3 sets of 3 or 2 sets of 4 so that you’re at >15 mins TiZ. Same for the 4 min ones, add a 5th when you can or switch to 4x5.