@Jake - You helped me out before looking at my TP and making some adjustments for me.
I had everything dialed in correctly to do the 32 week plan, then 6 weeks of mtb intervals before my 1st mtb series race (A race). Then the date for the race got moved up, I chopped off a week of the lifting program awhile ago but I just dropped the 6 week mtb plan into TP to see how things were projecting and I'm not sure if I should adjust some things around to best maximize the 6 week plan.
I'm in a regeneration week of the 32 week plan and start Base 3 on Monday. The 32 week plan ends at the end of the week of 4/13 and I have the 6 weeks of "intervals for mtb" starting the following week 4/20. My 1st A race is 5/31. So the week of the race is my last week of the 6 week program. My form number going into the race is projected right now at 14 but that doesn't include a potential pre-ride the day before the race.
Can you check what I have going on the weeks leading up to my 1st A race and see if there’s something I should organize better, or if I should have a rest week in there that I don’t currently have? If you think I should have maybe an additional regeneration week built in, if I could build that into the week of 4/27 because the first weekend in May my wife is doing a 50 mile trail race. I’ll have my 5 year old and offering trail support to my wife and potentially won’t have any chance to ride for 2 days.
Also - on my computer the beginning of my post is in a separate box you have to scroll across to read, I have no idea why it’s showing like that. Has never happened to me before posting on here. I can try to repost if it’s hard for you to read too.
" I had everything dialed in correctly to do the 32 week plan, then 6 weeks of mtb intervals before my 1st mtb series race (A race). Then the date for the race got moved up, I chopped off a week of the lifting program awhile ago but I just dropped the 6 week mtb plan into TP to see how things were projecting and I’m not sure if I should adjust some things around to best maximize the 6 week plan.
I’m in a regeneration week of the 32 week plan and start Base 3 on Monday. The 32 week plan ends at the end of the week of 4/13 and I have the 6 weeks of “intervals for mtb” starting the following week 4/20. My 1st A race is 5/31. So the week of the race is my last week of the 6 week program. My form number going into the race is projected right now at 14 but that doesn’t include a potential pre-ride the day before the race.
Can you check what I have going on the weeks leading up to my 1st A race and see if there’s something I should organize better, or if I should have a rest week in there that I don’t currently have? If you think I should have maybe an additional regeneration week built in, if I could build that into the week of 4/27 because the first weekend in May my wife is doing a 50 mile trail race. I’ll have my 5 year old and offering trail support to my wife and potentially won’t have any chance to ride for 2 days."
So these first 4 weeks look good. You are lined up well and I also did put in planned TSS for the rides that did not have TSS in them. Your CTL will go from 72 to 87 when you finish your base building phase, so that is good! Then you are making that transition from base to race and hitting the intervals. So CTL will drop, but that is fine as you have that aerobic base in and you need to be race specific.
Its hard to schedule that rest week for the first weekend of May. Can you not ride any of that weekend? That week is actually a field test week. When we get towards that time frame lets look at your power to see if it warrants doing a field test. If not I I’d rather you maybe do the Vo2 max intervals on the weekend that you wouldn’t get to. Those would be more important. So come the end of April we can adjust that time frame.
You just did a 2 x 15 minute threshold interval where you averaged 253 watts around low 170’s heart rate average. Your field test in January was 266 watts at 178 bpm, so that basically that falls in line with still being pretty accurate. But things can change in the next several weeks, especially once you get outside more and doing another 8 weeks of training.
I shuffle around two rest weeks. I then also removed a workout the first race week. At this point lets have you go fresh into the race and ready to go! At this point you will be shifting from an interval plan to a race and recover plan. Currently your TSB is planned out to be a +16 before the first race. This is a great spot. We typically would like to see +5 to a +15 based on what type of event and the length. Maybe a longer event or stage race a little more, but for you this should be good.
Awesome thanks @Jake. That weekend in question I’m not positive if I’ll be able to ride at all on Saturday especially. What I’ve done in the past in similar situations is move one of my weekend rides to the weekday and move a rest day to one of the weekends, if there is zero chance I can ride. I’ve done this a few times and it hasn’t impacted my recovery for the weeks that follow. So I’ll make it work somehow. I’ll be getting home late Sunday, so as soon as I get home I’ll get on the bike and do what I can to make things work.
I’m happy with the progress and where I’ll be going into my first race. Thanks a lot!
@Jake - since I’ll have an 87 fitness number when I end base and in the 70’s going into my first race, where ideally would I want to be, to be competitive in Cat 1 xc mtb racing? I’m moving up to Cat 1 this year after winning a couple of Cat 2 series. I have no expectations this year, I know if I’m going to be competitive at Cat 1 at best it’ll be next season. But I’m curious overall what you typically would want an athletes range of their fitness number to be as they end base and start racing.
–> I also understand that there are a ton of other factors involved in this so just looking for a guide of what I should be aiming for in the future or later in this season.
Honestly there is no real right or wrong answer. If you got to a peak of 100 I’d say you would be doing really good. Racing around 85 - 90. Since you are doing shorter one day XC MTB races you don’t need a huge CTL number.
What you have to look at is where can you fit in more TSS to ramp your CTL up more. The thing is you do plenty of efforts and interval work. So it comes down to a couple of things.
Do you have time to train more? Can you recover from not only the extra workload but extra time on the bike and not doing other things? Is it a big enough increase to warrant riding another 2 - 3 hour a week?
One thing to look at is peak power performances. Look to see wha your CTL was during these points. What was it? Was higher better? Look to see where you were two weeks out. Some riders that do too much will hit peak power earlier in the year while carrying a lower workload.
One way to increase CTL or give a good boost up to over 90 maybe is looking to have a long weekend of training, sort of like a training camp. Those are the best ways. So its not a slow drag out to get up, but you do a camp to give a good boost of fitness. But you just need to make sure you plan some good rest afterwards. Doing this 3 - 4 weeks before racing season starts can be beneficial and something to look at.