To climb or not to climb: specialty plan

Training
21

Yeah, I think something like that is perfect.

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22

ok, Iā€™ll definitely give a chance to this :wink:

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23

Hi JackNipper and McNeese.chad - I read your thread with interest. I am signing up for the Tour of Utah Ultimate Challenge in 2019 and was wondering how the blending of century and climbing road race plans ended up working out. Did the one ride from each per week (Tuesday century and Thursday climbing) make sense with longer rides on the weekend? Aside from dialing in the gearing, pacing, fueling, etc did this blending of specialty plans plans help? I just completed a 149 mile ride with > 9k ft of climbing so need to maintain fitness for two months and am trying to determine the best approach. I appreciate your guidance. Thanks.

24

Iā€™m training for Peaks Challenge over here in Australia in March (235km, 4500m ascent) and would also love to hear how you have gone with blending the two plans.

Cheers

25

finally I mixed up the two plans as I said: Century WO on Tuesday and Climbing WO on Thursday.
I closed my first part of the year with the GF Sportful Dolomiti Race (140km, 3500+) with a pedalling time close to 2016 but more than 2017 (my best): but weather was bad, 3 of my friends left the race for problems, so itā€™s very hard to say if mixing plans was better than follow only one of them (prev years I did the Climbing one).

The thing that I noticed, however, is a greater ā€œfreshnessā€ of the legs in the we during training weeks .
May be that mixing VO2Max and other WO with longer intervals has tired me less, but Iā€™m not sure.

however, I believe that I will do the same next year even though I am considering mixing up plans in a different way, century for the first half and climbing for the second half, rather than mixing them into the WO week.

2 Likes
26

Thanks for the followup.

I was going trough some old podcasts and hear Coach Chad mention that climbing rr is more about punchy climbing but have also heard them say climbing is good.

So a bit of a mixed message but they have followed up with saying that what is best will depend on exactly what is being trained for.

My A race will be long steady climbs so I think I will compare the two plans, use the Century as a base and mix in a few elements of the climbing rr that seem appropriate to what I am training for.

Cheers

1 Like
27

Iā€™ve been flip-flopping between Rolling Road and Climbing Road for my specialty now Iā€™ve abandoned my 70.3.

Couldnā€™t quite decide which might be more apt, but the climb on each lap of the race Iā€™ve entered seems to be a punchy vO2 ramp, so Iā€™ve settled on Rolling Road to sharpen the pointy end of my power profileā€¦

28

Iā€™ve honestly always done this. And mostly just for variety. But the Climbing plan has more pop, which becomes useful in steep ramps.