Our club TT, Crit and Hill Climb season typically spans mid April to end of July. Once the season starts I try to maximize my recovery and sort of just start managing fatigue. Crits on Tuesday’s TT’s on Thursdays.
With the season cancelled this gives me a unique opportunity as I can spend potentially the rest of 2020 concentrating on building for next year. I have moved my target date to June which put the adaptive training program back into the base phase.
My question to everyone is how should I work this?
Put my target date to next year and just deal with what Xert says to do?
Keep changing my target date so that it continually runs me through the base and build phase, when I get to the end of build move the date so it puts me back to the beginning of base?
I know at some point I’m going to run out of hours per week that I can dedicate to riding. I’m currently set at Moderate-1 and I’m riding 7.5 hours a week which I’m managing.
There are two options if you will hit your maximum training load well before your goal event date, and I’m still not 100% sure which one is better…
Keep cycling (looping) through base and build, with a short “off season” after each build to bring the progression down again so training load can start ramping up again.
Do a much longer build phase (by manipulating goal date) accepting that eventually you won’t be able to keep ramping up training load and Xert improvement rate will need to go into maintenance mode.
I’m trying option 1 this year, with a Century Rider focus first then getting more event-specific.
I am in the same boat as you. I do TT’s there suppose to start Thursday but have been postponed till further notice. I wouldn’t be surprised if the season was canceled in one way that would help me. I had to stop riding right after Christmas because of a hernia and had surgery in the middle of February then recovery time after that now I am cleared to ride again have to take it easy so I am set back to base to build my endurance back up. I am set as GC Specialist for time being 35 miles is about my max at the moment probably switch to century rider at the end of the month. good luck with your training.
Just a thought, but if you are trying your option 1, why not choose the athlete type for your event now? Otherwise ‘build’ to century rider focus will still just give you endurance workouts, so it’s like staying in base the whole time…? Maybe, say, climber if you don’t want to go too intense? I personally wouldn’t completely avoid efforts above TP for nine months (unless injured of course), even for longer focus events
I have my athlete type set as climber which when I look back most of my TT’s that’s where the focus landed. Set at climber you are still doing endurance type workouts right near the end. I was just getting into the peak phase, I will reset back to the beginning of base phase and do another round of base to build and then reassess where the world is at. Our season is officially cancelled already.
Hey @LeeZ, what’s the results so far? Still looping around Base/Build? As the situation is almost the same as for 2021 races, I was wondering what was the best approach to take.
I was looping Base/Build for most of 2020. Leading up to the Zwift ZRL Season 3. I let the system take me into Peak. I think this worked as I have in the last two races broken my average power in a race according to Zwift Power. I was also racing Season 1 and 2 which doesn’t follow the rules of Base/Build but when I wasn’t racing I was following it pretty much exactly as far as focus and XSS.