Best way to spend my time for race preparation

imtooslow

Hi all

I ask this question as I am fairly new to racing, this will be my 2nd year, and because my winter training only began at the end of December due to surgery and injuries sustained in a crash in my last race last season. I have a lot of catching up to do !

Basically I am a Cat 4 racer with about 6 hours a week to train, maybe between 8 and 10 hours when there is more daylight.

For the past 7 weeks I have been doing 2 or 3 turbo sessions building up from 2x10, 2x15, 3x10 etc now at 2x20, and some sessions now of 5x5.

I get 1 or 2 road rides between 1.5 and 2.5 hours.

My CTL according to Golden Cheetah is at 40 now, it has risen from 6 on 14th December. My FTP is currently around 235 tested indoors, have not tested outdoors yet it could be a little higher.

Last season I was riding 10TT at between 285 and 300 watts.

Since I have started training late, and from such a low level of fitness due to not training for over 3 months, I will not be doing the early season races during Feb and early March, but my favourite race of the year fall on the 24th March, I would like to do it.

Based on my level of fitness at the moment, and the time I have to train, how do you think I should spend the next 5 or 6 weeks.

glasgowbhoy

I'm sure the coaches will be along soon with advice but would think if you are road racing you've got it a bit back to front and should maybe have started with endurance rides to build stamina and spent the last 3-4 weeks before your first race working on intervals and speed work.

SBezza

Well your fitness is likely to increase during the season, I wouldn't aim to be in peak fitness for your first races. Alot of your races you might be racing tired etc, just spend your available time training to prgressively get fitter. I would expect your FTP is greater than 235 if you were doing 300 watts for 20 mins in the summer, you wouldn't expect to lose that much power, even with 3 months of no training, and even if you did, it would come back fairly quickly I would imagine.

Now this means you might well be training sub optimally. I would do a test, even if it is only a 20 min test on the turbo, and base an ftp estimate on that, perhaps stick to 90-92% of the 20 min test, I would guess it would be higher than 235.

If you are only doing road rides of that duration, I would make sure they are at least L3, or very high L2, that will help improve endurance and speed. Anything that increases FTP will help, but closer to the date, focus on the specific adaptions you will need for that race. If it means lots of sprinting out of corners concentrate on that, if it requires a more sustained effort, concentrate on that.

imtooslow

Hi SBezza

Thanks for the reply, I did really struggle when I came back to the bike, maybe a combination of losing so much training, but possibly I was not fully recovered from my injuries and the operation. My LTS was down to 4, so I had lost most of my fitness, and I was really disappointed how my legs felt, no power at all. Even the warm up on the turbo was a struggle !

I know it will take a while, I am not aiming to set any records in the early season, but would like to be prepared enough to start racing mid or end March.

I did the FTP test on the turbo just a few weeks ago, and my last set of 2x20 this week was at 212 watts each, so just bang on 90% and they felt tough. I didnt intend doing another test maybe for a couple of weeks ?

My road rides have varied between 200 and 240 watts.

Could I be struggling because of lack of hours on the road. Last winter the turbo never felt so hard, but then I was coming off the road season with just a weeks rest and also was doing MTB races in the winter.

I am just wondering if I should gave up the turbo sessions and just try to get a few weeks building up road miles first, or continue with what I am doing mixing what time I have on the road with a few mid week turbo sessions.

The races I aim for are all on circuits between 7 and 10 miles usually, on rolling or hilly courses.

SBezza

You can do both, no real need to just do one or the other. If the weekend is the only time you can get on the road then that is fine. If you are doing rides on the road of between 200 and 240 watts, then I can not believe your FTP is 235 watts.

2x20 will be tough, especially if you are not that fit and may be more difficult sometimes if you are tired.

I am sure you will get fitter by doing what you are doing, but you also need to make sure you shake up your training as well, don't do the same stuff week in week out. Even when on the turbo you don't have to stick to intervals, try an hour at a high tempo level, again good for muscular endurance and helps push up FTP from below, I would use the 20 min intervals and even more so the 5 min intervals to try and pull up the FTP, by doing them harder than FTP, perhaps shorten the interval to achieve this.