Hi Fascat team, just a quick question regarding when to start the 7 weeks to CX plan. I’m in Australia, there is no published 2021 CX schedule yet, but with C19 pretty much eliminated at this point it’s likely the season will start in mid-April to early May (season runs to September including a state series, state championship, national series, and national championship).
My question is this, based on my current CTL/ATL should I take some time doing some easier workouts in the active recovery zones, then jump into the plan? Of if I feel OK should I just take the plunge now and be ready to go at the beginning of the season. Is it bad to overlap this plan with the series of races once they’re up and running?
EDIT: I should add that I’ve already purchased the plan, just haven’t applied a start date yet. Also, Cat 2 road/cx, masters 40-44.
Yeah looks like your fitness is really high! Racing till though September makes it a bit of challenge as you shouldn’t do intensity training for that long. The 6 weeks to CX plan really starts to build that intensity. However with already a 110 CTL it seems like you should be doing some interval training. Then once the season starts you can do the in season CX plan. You could try to ramp up CTL back up in the middle of the year with our summer sweet spot cx plan before doing CX interval plan again to finish out the year.
I’ve got similar fitness, still in week 2, day 1 of power phase of the resistance plan & I just out of curiosity asked in another thread why my projected CTL declines for SS1 & SS2. After reading your reply here I guess I should be content with that drop in CTL (94 after that last field test of SS2).
Thanks @Jake, I appreciate the response. CTL is derived from crits and bunch rides, lots of volume, but not as intense as CX racing so it looks like it’ll be good to jump into this plan, then just try to hang on through CX season. If just racing the state series there is two weeks between races, only if doing state and national would races be every weekend. Historically I had a massive drop in CTL during the CX season, but was race fit. I’m curious to see how the “in season” plan can help hold on to fitness through the long 4-5 month season.
