Hello Frank, first a little feedback - I have been following your CX plans all summer. Some ups and downs of course, but this is the first time I’ve had a structured plan for this long. Last year I discovered the 6 weeks till nats and that was the start of it. Well anyway, seems like all that hard work is starting to pay off as the racing gets going. I’m getting all kinds of comments about “looking really strong” but more importantly, I’m feeling really strong, and that makes the racing SOOOO much for fun. I think its going to be my best season yet.
Meanwhile, I’m hoping you can help me with a few adjustments for the upcoming month. I’m travelling for work for the next few days and won’t have a bike. Because I have been working a ton and training or doing CX-related stuff most of the remaining waking hours, I’m planning to take it as some recovery time - yoga, foam rolling, walking, and one strength workout, and a mental break from biking. My question is what do I do when I get back? I have a few A races coming up - Boulder US Open of CX and Canadian Nats the first weekend of Nov followed by Pan Ams the second weekend of Nov. I have filled out my calendar pretty accurately I think. Also, I’m not positive I will be able to race both Saturday and Sunday this upcoming weekend. Would you suggest an alternate workout for Sunday? Also, I’m training one day per week with a personal trainer - no heavy lifting, but a lot of PT-related stuff for injury recovery, balance and core. I’ve mostly been doing this on the Revo days - does that sound like the right scheduling option to you (I mark it as Proactive on my calendar)?
Let me help you out and make some adjustments for you.
Lets go week by week.
This week -
Since you are traveling and not riding this week, it will be a recovery week. You mentioned maybe not racing twice this weekend if it is better for training. Racing once this weekend, most likely Saturday maybe the best option. Then on Sunday a sweet spot workout with endurance would be great. So you could do the sweet spot burst workout that is panned as option if no race and extend that to a 3 hour ride. You have lot of big races and A targets following down the road so this is a chance to keep the fitness up, plus without riding much during the week it will be more beneficial.
Next week -
This week was planned for a regeneration week and since you are doing that now we should add a workout early to the week. So on Tuesday you can do the skills ride with 2 sets of 30 second Full Gas efforts. You are racing twice on the weekend with a goal event of Boulder CX so just sticking with the short 4 x 1 minute efforts on Wednesday is plenty. This shouldn’t be too taxing of a workout. Then you can rest on Thursday and just openers on Friday.
Week of October 14th
Coming off a hard double weekend of racing Boulder and travel having that easy ride with your daughter on Tuesday is more than enough. Thursday instead of off you can do a CX skills ride with some sweet spot efforts. Friday is off before your Natz practice on the weekend.
From there really only made one change. Tuesday October 22nd was just a skills ride. But I moved up the hard CX start workout from November 5th and placed it on October 22nd. This way you are doing a bit more of a race and recovery plan between the two goal races of Canada Nationals and Pan Am Championships. You’ll just have the one hard weekday workout on Wednesday.