Planning a cyclocross season is a challenge.
When do you peak? How do you keep your fitness throughout the race season? How do you manage recovery?
All of my plans include endurance training, strength training, yoga, and full email support (paulw@SimpleEnduranceCoaching.com). Email me with questions any time!
This program will focus on "peaking" for a big race like state championships in November, then holding onto fitness for nationals in December.
So we're going to have a reasonable level of fitness throughout the season.
There will be at most one B race and one C race on a weekend.
I'm going to make some assumptions in this plan.
- You're going to race most of a full season.
- If you don't race on Saturday, but race on Sunday, do your pre-ride Saturday, an Endurance ride Thursday, and do yoga/strength on Friday.
- If you race Saturday, but not Sunday, do an Endurance ride on Sunday.
- If you have the weekend off, try to get some long endurance rides in both days, two to four hours.
- If you race both Saturday and Sunday, take Thursday off and do the pre-ride Friday.
- I'm also going to assume
- you're a masters rider (male or female) so you need additional recovery
- that you don't have a lot of time to train during the week
- that you will do one cross practice session a week.
There are a lot of variables in a cross season with race days and recovery.
In general, here are your priorities:
1. If you don't race on a weekend, do endurance on those days.
2. If you are racing a lot, do only one hard workout during the week. Do the cross practice sessions on Wednesdays.
3. Keep up with your strength training. This is not the kind of strength work you do during the winter. This is maintenance, a 5 of 10 difficulty. You'll do this twice a week.
4. Do yoga. Do a recovery yoga session on Mondays and as often as you want during the week. Replace a strength work with a yoga strength session once a week.
There's a lot of moving parts in this kind of program.
This is going to be my general program to "peak" for Wisonsin and Illinois state championships in November and then hold onto some fitness for nationals in Chicago.
Let's talk! Send me a message with questions or if you'd like to do the cross program with me as your coach.
Thanks,
Paul Warloski
paulw@SimpleEnduranceCoaching.com
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