How best to get crit fit in 4 months

trainbynumbers

After a promising start to winter, I had to take so time away from the bike for various reasons and am only just getting back on the bike now. I have given myself the goal of entering a few end of season cat 4 crit races and I was just wondering what is the best solution going to be to get the fitness required to complete a race of say an hour + 5 laps?

Is it going to be a case of spending 2 months building a small base and then 2 months adding speed and sharpness or should it all be focused on aerobic capacity to last the hour + 5?

jibberjim

I'd enter some crits...

trainbynumbers

Fair point- do you not think they require some level of base fitness to not get dropped?

jibberjim

trainbynumbers wrote:

Fair point- do you not think they require some level of base fitness to not get dropped?

If you know what you're doing on many UK crit courses, have a reasonably natural "sprint" and your only aim is that you do not get dropped, then you can generally do that on under 200w, most people can do that "untrained" If you don't know what you're doing and are bad in a bunch, have very low peak powers - these tend to respond much less to training and degrade much less to no training, and tend to be lower in women or paracyclists etc. then 400w may not be enough to stay in the bunch.

The way to get those skills, or to find out if you need even more fitness is to race... Once you've raced you may get some guide to your fitness. You cannot develop a training plan without first knowing what needs training.

trainbynumbers

jibberjim wrote:

The way to get those skills, or to find out if you need even more fitness is to race... Once you've raced you may get some guide to your fitness. You cannot develop a training plan without first knowing what needs training.

This seems like good no nonsense advice. I best get entered into a crit or two to see how bad the damage is!

cyco2

Take a look at the crit on ITV4, channel 24 next Wednesday to get an idea of what you have to do, in principal. 2 months is plenty of time to develope the fitness for 4th cat. crits.. Your training sessions should have plenty of short intervals and sprints in them. That goes for the hills as well. The first couple of climbs in a crit. usually sorts out riders. Also, if you can get out with other riders on training sessions you'll build some group riding skills because most crits are about race craft no matter how good you are.

ric/rstsport

trainbynumbers wrote:

After a promising start to winter, I had to take so time away from the bike for various reasons and am only just getting back on the bike now. I have given myself the goal of entering a few end of season cat 4 crit races and I was just wondering what is the best solution going to be to get the fitness required to complete a race of say an hour + 5 laps?

Is it going to be a case of spending 2 months building a small base and then 2 months adding speed and sharpness or should it all be focused on aerobic capacity to last the hour + 5?

what do you mean by "base"?

start racing as soon as you can. it's not just the numbers that are important (e.g. power output) but also how well you can draft and corner. i've ridden 1st cat crits and survived on about 200 W

in terms of your training you want to be building your aerobic power and sprinting ability (but also looking at other things such as fat loss and fatigue resistance) depending on exactly what your goals are

Our plans are pretty useful as well for building fitness, or look into some coaching http://www.rstsport.com/event-training- ... ompare.htm or http://www.rstsport.com/event-coaching.htm

cheers
ric
ric

hasbeen

Start at the front. If you start at the back of the field you'll be dropped pdq. If you can lean on another rider or barrier and be clipped in ready to go from the off even better. The best crit riders keep an eye on the start time then , with 3 or 4 mins to go, make sure they're 100m in front of the start line. When the comm blows the whistle for the riders to assemble, they go back to the FRONT of the pack rather than the people who will do another lap and arrive at the BACK.

As with cyclo-cross, gridding is everything.

If you can practice hard and fast starts, you will manage to drop a fair portion of the bunch quickly, especially on a tight, small circuit

nferrar

I wouldn't bother too much with the base, just do lots of z3 & 4 stuff and some HIIT sessions with decent recovery in between.

jibberjim

hasbeen wrote:

If you can practice hard and fast starts, you will manage to drop a fair portion of the bunch quickly, especially on a tight, small circuit

I can't think of any crit courses like that in the south east other than Crystal Palace...