Traditional base or Cyclocross?

Friel says adding cyclocross increases skills and race intensity and but can lead to year long race burnout unless always C level. Others say hit the MTB season harder at peak by traditional base build cycles being employed.

?

Completely depends on how your season went. Do you need to improve your starts, sprints and combativeness? If so cx is good if not I’m not sure there is the benefit.

But more importantly, do you fancy racing cross? You aren’t a pro, if you’d rather race than train then do it.

I did find I didn’t have much of a base period last year after getting fully obsessed with cx till end January but if you just do some the next few moths I doubt it will be an issue. Many very good pros race cx in the off-season from road/xc

Edit. Fwiw cx scene much better here than the xc, bigger fields bigger buzz, making me start to prefer cx.

what is the MTB off season? Surely with autumn and winter approaching we are about to enter a new an interesting period that develops my skills and fitness?

Traditionally race season Spring till late summer.

Cx race, plus a decent half hour warm up and a post race 1hr recovery ride gets you some volume back.

I will enter some winter MTB series as “C” rather than competitve races for skills and training. Just wondered if Sunday’s are better spent on the road at z2 or racing CX. Opinion seems to vary.

I’ve started riding to the kebab house instead of taking the car?

My worry would be that racing CX in combination with trainerroad would give nothing but intensity = no base.
That said, nothing to stop you doing a split session – do your CX race, grab a recovery drink, and go ride 90mins of Z1 after.

Yep, I’m in agreement. I re-read some Friel stuff las night – training plans, Vets, periodisation and realised its about being patient and going through base/build/speciality until next March. I’m better off taken my MTB to some C races – or cross races actually – for the odd set of race intervals/skills.

As you were then…

Just ride your bike as much as you can/want to.

[Quote] I’m better off taken my MTB to some C races – or cross races actually[/quote]

What you on about, buy a cross bike