Training for criteriums

37monkey

I have been looking at the Black Book is this a good program to follow to get me into shape for crits? or should I look at something that deals with the slowing down and speeding up that crits do? Has anyone gained their cat 3 in their first season? how did you train for this?
Thanks

softlad

crits are usually a collection of sustained threshold and VO2 max efforts - so if you have a programme that details that kind of work, then try it. Not many crits around this time of year though...

jibberjim

37monkey wrote:

I have been looking at the Black Book is this a good program to follow to get me into shape for crits? or should I look at something that deals with the slowing down and speeding up that crits do? Has anyone gained their cat 3 in their first season? how did you train for this?

Lots of people have gained their Cat 3 in a single race, let alone a season. Those people who've done that are not people who've trained for crits, but people who've trained for overall aerobic fitness.

Cat 4 races even crit races are not endless slow down, sprint out of corner, slow down, sprint out of corner that you might expect of a professional race simply because the majority of the field aren't fit enough, nor do they have any reason to string out the field like that. So yes there's different times when you're either going very easy, or very hard but it's not regular and your best bet is just to be as aerobically fit as possible and don't try and train specifically for crits. Particularly as lots of the circuits are not of the technical nature that requires any slowing down and speeding up - the speed change is due to attacking / rest collections.

Training is like any other way to get fit - personally I prefer lots of threshold and VO2max efforts (ie go climb 5-8 minute hills with lots of rest in between, and go out and ride 40-60 minutes all out regularly.)