Training during races

[Deleted]

Anyone have any good advice / tips for training during every week races. Im going to be starting Hillingdon this saturday and hope to compete most of the weeks its on. Any advice you guys have on training in between each race? How often and how intense?

Cheers

Malc

[Deleted]

Come to next racers' meeting. Brian will be giving us some more tips for pre-season training.

My advice: enjoy the winter series but don't take it too seriously. Use it as training for the season proper, particularly, if you are a 4th cat, for racecraft.

[daniel]

I have never done any of the winter series races so I’m not the best person to comment on them but I agree with Guy, you need to be building your general fitness, power, muscle endurance etc at this time of the year (for the start of the proper season) so the usual advice for training tips between races is not really applicable now.

Without building up your fitness, muscle endurance, power etc during the winter period you will not be able then to concentrate on fine tuning all the different components that will make you a successful racer.

I would use the winter series races as your weekly hard work out session, you could structure your weekly sessions around it so that you don’t do any hard/intense or long rides/sessions on Fridays (and maybe Thursdays) so your legs are fresh for the race.

Good luck

[andyw]

I always work backwards from race day.
If you're racing on Saturday, the day before - Friday - should be an easy ride (little ring, HR avg aprox 65%, concentrating on fast pedalling) with a couple of very intense but brief (<20sec) all out sprints to get your legs fired up. You can very easily squeeze this into a commute - say half hour each way.
Thursday is the best day for a complete rest - don't touch the bike, just chill.
Weds-Tues--Mon: this is your training block where you can get some hard workouts in without having to worry too much about it impacting on your weekend's racing. Maybe intervals on the turbo on monday (depending on how you've recovered from your last race - don't bother if you're still tired), chaingang on the Tuesday, then intervals or sprints on the Weds. Mon-Weds is where you should be doing specific training, but if you're not recovered and fresh enouh to do the session justice, don't bother. Either do an easy ride (commute?) or take the day off.
Sunday is an optional rest day. To not ride on your day off seems a waste, but if you do ride, don't pressurise yourself into doing 4hrs on the club run - training is cumulative and little and often beats doing loads in one go. Do a couple of hours steady on a Sunday and enjoy the rest of the day - if it's raining and you can't be arsed, stay home and save your motivation for Monday, when you're going to do some proper intensity.

The thing about winter racing is that - in my opinion - you're not really building yourself a base of endurance. You're building a base of speed. As the season (and longer races - but lets face it, if you're a 3rd or 4th, you're unlikely to be racing more than 3hrs - well within most of our abilities) approaches you'll need to get some longer rides in. That fits in fine with traditional reliability rides though.

Good luck!