Hi all,
Seeking a little feedback from the masses (and the other coaches here too!). Through an unfortunate circumstance befalling the race director for my “A” event, a two-day “classic”, it’s been cancelled. The event is in mid-September, in the southeast. There are few events around that time of similar nature, mostly Fondos anyway, with the closest one being six weeks earlier, similar multi-day classic event that I’m also planning to do.
I’m wrapping up my second base session of the year coming off of Sustained Power Build (mostly… kinda hard with a newborn). This is my first season focused solely on cycling, so Cat 5 road, and I wasn’t really even planning to race much. Got in my first crits here at home last month.
I’ll be leaving home for four months with work down in the southeast, and had planned to start Short Power or General Build, which wrap up with recovery week leading into the first classic. Along the way, I am planning to do one Fondo and a series of weeknight (sanctioned) crits. I’ll still be able to get in my 10 starts to move up to Cat 4 headed into next season.
The bummer is, now I have no “A” event, so my plan to do six weeks of the Criterium plan after the first classic is kind of moot. I won’t be in a position to do any e-racing as I won’t have internet connectivity where I’ll be training. I can download TR workouts via LTE then walk inside, but can’t run Zwift.
I’m a recovering triathlete. I have goals still in that sport, but with young girls at home and a career transition coming up, I may or may not go back to tris in 2020; I may just race bikes again because the training volume and complexity better suits my current lifestyle.
I’m currently planning to start SSB again in mid-October leading into the local Grand Prix crit event again next April. Between early August and October, I have jack squat (except work) planned now. I had planned to shut down structured training from mid-September until starting again in October, still riding and still on TR, but no scheduled plans or workouts. Just as I felt.
So, WWYD? Maintenance? Crit or RRR plan anyway, but the full 8 weeks because why not (I’ve literally never trained short power stuff on a bike before)? Or train my weakness, which is longer sustained threshold and suprathreshold efforts via 40KTT, which also might be more relevant whenever I return to tris?
Going in, I think the TT plan would be a slog that I wouldn’t look forward to day-in, day-out, particularly with no goal event. The Crit or RRR plans might hold my interest and be a new training stimulus. Maintenance might just take the edge off and allow a little bit of recovery from training fatigue.
Curious what you think you’d do in my situation?