ChiCrossCup – Setting Up Your Week
Cyclocross is upon us! The ChiCrossCup is a demanding series. Save 1 break over Thanksgiving (not including week #2), you’re on it every week. Most of us know how to get on a bike and ride hard. The key though is in retaining mental and physical strength throughout the entire season.
Back in the day we all pretty much over-trained on a regular basis. You just came to grips with the fact that the end of the year was a fairly horrible slog of races. Now we know better, and the goal is not to make it through but rather excel in the last few races of the season.
Doing tough, anaerobic intervals takes discipline and recovery is the same. When your buddy asks you to do an awesome bandit race on the wrong day for your schedule it’s important that you say no and stick with your overall plan. Since we almost always race on Sunday a typical “on” week should look like this:
Monday – off
Tuesday – strength training with a 30 minute recovery spin afterward, or just a 1 to 1.5 hour recovery ride
Wednesday – skills ride with 30 minutes of tempo
Thursday – hard ride. Bandit race, anaerobic intervals, Vo2max intervals or lactate threshold intervals are a good idea. You want to finish feeling not as spent as after a race, but close.
Friday – off
Saturday – opener ride. 1 hour 15 minutes long with 2 intervals 30 seconds in length at max effort, a couple of starts and 3 to 5 minutes of ftp pace followed by a good warm down (at least 15 minute’s worth).
Sunday – race
It’s OK to flip the Wednesday and Thursday rides around if a hard day on Wednesday works better for you. The main thing is to not have too many tough days. The above schedule represents 2 very hard days per week if you include race day and that’s about all a person can handle without eventually hindering their performance. More on month to month recovery later…..
See you Sunday.
Rob Kelley
Director of Coaching