Forum menu
Afternoon guys,
I'm pretty sure there's more than one answer to this question so just looking for advice really.
So I raced a lot of XC this year. I started well but began to fade towards the end of the season. My training going into this years racing started with a pretty average base fitness followed by quite some hammering from Jan - March to increase my fitness / FTP.
Looking ahead to next year. I'm planning on building as much base fitness / endurance as possible between now and end of the year before moving onto some race specific training / high intensity interval training. The thinking behind this being that the better my base fitness is the greater the gains will be when I move into the second phase of training and hoping that I can sustain peak fitness for longer throughout next years race season.
Does that make sense? I've never really followed a plan before. Is it the norm to work on base fitness followed by race specific high intensity stuff or am I missing something else?
It'll look something like 12 weeks endurance / base training followed by 8 weeks race specific training which will bring me into the race season (assuming I start traning from October). I'll probably have a crack at a couple of CX races over the next couple of months.
Generally it's not working one part of your fitness to the exclusion of all others then switching, it's a change in the overall mix. So early in the training phase you'd concentrate on base fitness with a little endurance and a small amount of speed work, say 70/20/10 in terms of percentages. Then as your training progresses you cut down the base stuff and increase the endurance and speed - 50/30/20. As you approach the race season the mix would be more 20/30/50.
The actual figures may not be correct and really depend on you and where your weaknesses are but the principle is what matters.
I'd do something similar but it would be gradual change in emphasis not a complete switch as whitestone says.
Other things to think about are periodisation so incorporating hard blocks and easy blocks to allow recovery.
There are some good examples of training programs on the BC site. If you are really serious then employing a coach to help you might be a good place to start. I've seen some guys go from 3rd Cat to 1st Cat with a bit of help from a structured plan.
I found by accident this year that having 10 days rest 1/3rd and 2/3rds through my plan gave me a boost.
My plan is similar to yours : base/SS to Christmas, build/race to my first race in March, rest after the race then maintain/taper/race to July rest, maintain/taper to Sept.
If it wasn't clear, I did mean a gradual transition rather than jumping from one ratio to another.
just bookmarking this thread. I had exactly the same issue last cx season with starting off strong for the first 6 races then fading, although a fluey type virus was a contributing factor. Mainting a level (or improiving) fitness through a long season seems a real art.
You want your fitness track to look like a line graph drawn as a zig zag in an upward trend. Work (up)/rest(down) et voila:
[img] 
[/img]
"Rest" of course is anything from recovery rides, illness, holidays etc. But bear in mind the "quality of rest" is equivalent to the quality of your workouts - resting whilst recovering from illness for a week is not the same quality as resting OTB for a week in full health.
There's an off season? 😆