I’m strugling at every race start , xc, xc marathon or road. In first 20min i’m always wrecked with my group and then i barely manage to hold zone2 for next 20-30 min. and fall well bellow ‘weaker’ riders, after 20-30 min. I recover enough and start to pass over those “weaker” riders but my stronger group is too far to catch them. Any advice on warm up or something, i have done all Ss plans following xc marathon and now i’m on first week of xc plan…
How hard do you start? Do you go out too hard? I know you need to start hard for XC races and road races to stay with the group but if you are are exceeding your best powers than you can quickly run out of gas in the tank or matches. In a marathon race you will want to look at maybe dialing back the start a bit.
Each event would really need a different warm up strategy based on duration. A XC race would be a much more intense warm up since the starts are so intense and the race is relatively short. Looking to do 25 minutes ramping up to threshold over the course of 6 minutes and including 2 x 30 second full gas efforts within in that 25 minutes. For longer events just rolling around to get your number, go to the bathroom, the start and etc should be plenty (10 - 15 minutes).
Another thing you may want to look at is how much you are doing leading into the event. Do you have an off day two days out? Just an hour with race openers the day before? Maybe you need an easy day as well three days out. You could be going into the races fatigued. You can look at your performance manager chart on TrainingPeaks. Ideally you want your TSB, also referred to Form in the TP app, to be in the positive for race days. This way you know you are fresh.
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Our XC In Season Plan includes a proper warm up protocol , here is an image of the 30 minute warm up:
thanks both, will try this
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