Morning everyone,
i’m kind of struggling with where i’m at base training wise right now and how to proceed. I finished off the season 2019 beginning of october and after a week of doing fun rides, i went back into training.
Last year i simply did the 18 weeks of SST over winter and it was awesome.
But 2020 my schedule will change quite a lot after being picked up by a team. Instead of doing crits like this year, i will do road races between 120-160km and also two 6-day stage races as a domestique.
First race will be 26th of april and 16th of may, the first stage race will start. As this means a lot of time to prepare, i didn’t want to start with sweetspot too early. Also i was able to invest quite a lot of time into cycling end of last year (like 20-25h per week).
Thats why i used november and december to simply rack up miles. I rode in zone 2 for hours.
In december i also flew to mallorca where i got to train with professional bike riders for 3 weeks and the volume increased even more. It was mainly zone 2 volume, with seldom tempo/SST efforts up some hills.
CTL is quite high therefore now.
So with this big block of base volume in my legs and the first race 17 weeks from today, i wanted to continue with the SST plan next week, when i’m recovered from the last big mallorca week.
I planned it backwards to end 3 weeks before the race week, so it won’t be 18 weeks actually.
I figured i could skip the first weeks of the SST plan because of all the work i did the past few weeks. Also i will use the 3 weeks leading up to first race for some race specific vo2max intervals. Race is on rolling terrain with a 10min climb and a shorter 5-6min effort.
Does it make sense to do it like this? In my head it does, although i’m having this irrational feeling of not doing enough. Probably because i won’t be increasing CTL any more.
Most important race will start in 18 weeks. Its the mentioned stage race. 500km and 7.500 meters of altitude in six days.
Currently CTL is at 125, after using this week to recover from trainin camp. If i simply follow the SST plan and its TSS targets, it will continually decrease to below 100 by end of february.
I tested the last time before starting the first base block in November. CP60 came out at 332W and thats what i set as FTP.
Ok, thanks - makes sense now. I have good news and bad news:
Good news first - your ‘base’ is good, really great - move onto interval training
Bad news: your base has been really good for a long long time - I don’t see a post season break or any significant periodization. BUT - you can’t do anything about that now bc your season is coming up. I mention that for when your season is over for next year.
I’d move onto race specific intervals and look for training races ‘switch from base to race’ and concentrate on your raw power outputs to do well in your events.
I love to ride my bike, so the hardest part of training for me, is to not train or to stop riding when i’m done with the prescribed session. Can’t hide that in the PMC.
Hi guys. I just want to confirm with the SST plans that throughout (particularly the first 2 plans) you do not work any of your high end power? As a previous runner some light top up speed work was done in the preparation phase aka base build to not lose your top end speed. Are you suggesting only work your raw power in the interval phase? That seems light on doesn’t it?
I’m currently watching TP webinars while on the rollers to get a better understanding and todays episode reminded me of your answer, Frank.
Maybe its not exactly the explanation for your suggestion, but i understand it that way, that i was overdoing/stuck in phase 1-2 and it is time to get into phase 3 to raise the roof.
Started with 6x3’ today, but it hurt. Those next few weeks will be tough before power comes back.
