I’m in the end game for my crit season with about 5 weeks left in the season, and at a crossroads for how to train for the rest of the calendar. It seems like I’m losing a lot of pop towards the end of races, even if they are easy. My gut says I could use some SST, but I could also see needing some work on my short power!
My frame cracked in a non-riding accident in March, so 3000 of my 5400 miles this year have happened in the past 12 weeks and I’ve been averaging 12 hr/wk since then. I’ve had quite a few weeks of ‘nothing’ where I tried to stay fresh for races to make-up for my lack of fitness and base miles.
For a race I won in June, I averaged 239w and had a peak 1 min power of 585w. For a race I podiumed in July, I averaged 238w and had a peak 1 min power of 502w. Both of those peak powers were last lap efforts. Back at my first race of the year in March, I averaged 295w for 50 mins at a much harder crit and still got 485w out for the last minute of the race. FTP was much higher in March, but I got demolished on the last lap.
The crux of it is, am I missing base miles or do I need more power on the last lap of a race? I have the crit plan, in-season interval plan, and 18 weeks of Sweet Spot plans to draw from for the last month of racing. Any advice is appreciated.
I’d want to look at your training data to answer the best:
what is your training load
has it been going up or down
What are your strengths and weakness - is the sprint your known weakness or historically your strength?
have you been FtFP’ing? (What training have you been doing in the past 6>12>24 weeks? of those 12 hours/week?)
Short answer: do your crit in season plan - doubt you are missing miles from 12 hours a week
My CTL is +45 in the last 90 days and +11 in the past 28 days after a little crash. After I missed early April to mid-May, I really didn’t FTFP anything because I had a lot of races I wanted to feel good for. I was doing 1-2 sessions of 3x4-6 mins of 30/30s and riding a mix of tempo and zone 2 everywhere else for 4 weeks.
I won a race on a last lap flyer and felt good about my 1 minute power, so I focused on Sweet Spot and base for the next 4 weeks after that because my power numbers were really inconsistent. I assumed that racing was going to work my top end enough since I’m a naturally high FRC and sprinter type? I also got the upgrade I was gunning for and figured more base couldn’t hurt since my hot streak was probably over.
Last week I did a 4x8 min supra-threshold workout, but I haven’t touched 3-6 minute VO2s the entire year and haven’t done anything anaerobic outside of the 4 week block of 30/30s and 8 races. In those 4x8 minute intervals my dFRC was very negative so I think my FRC is much lower than my current WK05 model has (probably from FTP being set too low). It says it’s at 23.2 kJ, but I’m guessing it’s much lower.