My 'cross season is winding down after injury and life thwarted plans for Tacoma nats, and I’m starting to plan for next season. I’m looking for a little advice about which plans to put together. My focus is cross with a sprinkling of mountain bike races in early summer and gravel races for training in late spring. Planning on CX nats outside of Chicago for 2020 (40+).
After my break, the plan is to start Resistance Training + Sweet Spot in mid- january. That’s 16 weeks.
Then… CX 6 week sweet spot plan > 6 weeks til cross > cyclocross intervals > cx race and recover > 6 weeks til’ nats
Is that enough for January - December? Am I missing something between the end of Resistance training + sweet spot and the CX 6 week sweet spot plan?
Thanks in advance. The off-season resistance training program I did last winter was transformative!
Travel to Tacoma won’t work out this year, but I’ve raced at Nats several times since 2005 and gone just to hang out a bunch as well. I agree, it’s important to know what that scene is like since it’s vastly different from local races or even bigger UCI races in the US.
Hello Coaches,
I’m working through a similar exercise - prepping the calendar for next year’s cross season. One question on the Cross training plans - the races days are set to Saturday with a long ride on Sunday. Here in the PNW - I’m in Seattle - most of our races are on Sunday. What would that mean for adjusting the plan? Figure moving the Race day to Sunday means Openers on Saturday. I wouldn’t be able to do a long ride on Friday and that seems like a bad option with a race todays after. So what should Friday’s workout be focused on?
That would just mean that you move your off recovery on Thursday to Friday. On Thursday you could do an aerobic workout such as endurance ride or even sweet spot / tempo burst workout that might be in on a Sunday.
Or another option is just riding some zone 2 after the race on Sunday. I know sometimes this can be hard to do as you need to travel an d get back. But just an option.
It also depends on the time of the season you are at. If you are very early in your cyclocross season you will want to find time to get more aerobic work to keep your fitness up, whether it be on Thursday or after the race on Sunday. But as you are coming into the final fe weeks, just doing an easier Thursday skills and zone 2 ride and no ride after the race is fine. You just want to more or less race and recover.
