Cat 4-prep race week

davoj

Hi Guys,

I have just done my first cat 4 races and really enjoyed it but I need some advise on what to do on the the week of the Cat 4 race. My club do the club league racing on a Thursday but I am wondering would that me to much an effort been that the cat 4 race is on a Saturday or should I be taking it easy leading up to the race?

Any advise or a plan would be really appreciated.

Cheers.

joey54321

I think it kind of depends how much you have been doing recently, if its a lot it may be too much. For 4th cat races my opinion tends to be take a rest when you need a rest regardless of racing and train through all the races you are doing.

Remember, if you take a couple of rest days before the race, its important to do some easy spinning with maybe a couple of mins of hard work to 'wake your legs up again' the day before.

AK_jnr

At the beginning of the year I tried to 'taper' but then I just used to smash a chaingang the night before a race as well some weeks and noticed zero difference.

If there's time to train I take it as with work I don't know when I will be home late and have to miss a session.

Toks

davoj wrote:

Hi Guys,

I have just done my first cat 4 races and really enjoyed it but I need some advise on what to do on the the week of the Cat 4 race. My club do the club league racing on a Thursday but I am wondering would that me to much an effort been that the cat 4 race is on a Saturday or should I be taking it easy leading up to the race?

Any advise or a plan would be really appreciated.

Cheers.

You haven't given us enough information to really help with this question. For example, how well you recover from intensive efforts, training history, is it a priority race etc. I've got quite a lot of training behind me so and i need at least a moderately intensive ride a day or two before a race other wise my legs feel quite 'blocked' during the race. It may however be best to go into the race feeling fresher and not carrying any residual soreness from previous training efforts. Whatever you decide i hope it goes well :-)

davoj

Toks wrote:

davoj wrote:

Hi Guys,

I have just done my first cat 4 races and really enjoyed it but I need some advise on what to do on the the week of the Cat 4 race. My club do the club league racing on a Thursday but I am wondering would that me to much an effort been that the cat 4 race is on a Saturday or should I be taking it easy leading up to the race?

Any advise or a plan would be really appreciated.

Cheers.

You haven't given us enough information to really help with this question. For example, how well you recover from intensive efforts, training history, is it a priority race etc. I've got quite a lot of training behind me so and i need at least a moderately intensive ride a day or two before a race other wise my legs feel quite 'blocked' during the race. It may however be best to go into the race feeling fresher and not carrying any residual soreness from previous training efforts. Whatever you decide i hope it goes well :-)

Thanks for the replies. I have quite a lot of training done this year (6000km of group spins,hill repeats, sprints etc ) but not a lot of racing in Cat 4 so not used to what I should do the week of the race but as you asked about whether it's a priority than no it's not so I have decided to do the club race on Thursday and than the Cat 4 on Saturday.

I figure I will have to be doing this regularly next year so it's no harm getting the body used to intensive days close together.

Thanks for all the replies.

napoleond

It's an amateur Cat 4 race. Don't look too deep into it. Just enjoy it without worrying about preparation.

racingcondor

I used to worry about this too much as well. In the long run as a 4th Cat you need to get fitter so for me tapering just got in the way of mileage.

The only adjustement I'd make is that I'd probably take it easy on the Thursday session, ride in the bunch, do some work to stretch yourself but then don't contest the sprint. As long as you don't destroy yourself you'll be fine for Saturday.

declan1

I wish we had more races here in the Highlands. Up my way we have one crit per year and a road race that's way out of my league

davoj

Update: I went pretty hard on the Thursday training spinning, i worked hard at times and put in big efforts and contested the sprint came in 5th out a bunch of 25 and managed to beat a few cat 3 and one cat 2.

On the Saturday i paid for the big efforts as it took me over 20km to get in to the Cat 4 race and was suffering at times but i hung in till the end and came in 4th on a nasty hill finish. Maybe a lesser effort on the Thursday might be a better option in the future but taking everything in to account i would do it again.

Hope that may help a novice or two and thanks for the feedback and replies.