Advanced Cyclocross (CX) Early Season 8 Week Prep Plan (Smart Enabled)
Author
Threshold Endurance Sports
All plans by this CoachLength
8 Weeks
Typical Week
1 Day Off, 4 Bike, 2 MTB
Longest Workout
4:00 hrs
Plan Specs
cycling cyclocross intermediate advanced power based hr based pace based tss based
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Summary
Includes Structured Workouts
Structured Workouts automatically sync with compatible devices and guide you through workouts in real time.
Learn More about Structured Workouts.
This plan is geared at the cyclocross racer with 10-15 hours a week to train and wanting to sharpen your ability to handle the intensity of cyclocross racing across repeated hard efforts and improving lactate threshold. This plan assumes you've already established a good solid aerobic base. This plan builds upon the foundation you built during your base period by strengthening your anaerobic capacity so you can handle repeated difficult efforts, maintain the threshold work you've already done so you can have the endurance to be competitive late in the race, and continue in building some consistent top end strength so you can handle the off and on power demands of cross racing. Much of the intervals are built into the weekdays to allow for flexibility to replace some of the endurance weekend rides with races if so desired.
**All workouts in this plan are smart capable and can be dowloaded for use on your cycling computer or smart trainer.
If you have any questions regarding this plan, please contact a TES Coach at info@thresholdendurance.com
Stats
Sample Day 1
2 hrs w/ 3x20 second tabata intervals w/ 10 seconds rest between intervals Each 20 second interval should be full gas with 10 seconds zn.1 rest between each 20 second interval. These intervals are designed to teach you to go hard repeatedly whether you're ready or not. These are pretty tough, but will make race day that much less difficult.
Sample Day 2
1 hr easy ride on the cross bike w/ 3x uphill dismount sprints w/ 3 minutes rest between sprints. Make sure you get a good warm-up prior to starting the sprints. When you're ready to start your sprint efforts, find a 50-100 meter long hill that's grass or dirt. Roll into the hill for your first effort, dismount from your bike (focus on doing this smoothly and without scrubbing off as much speed as possible), shoulder your bike and sprint for the duration of the 50-100 meter hill, once at the top focus on a smooth remount of the bike take a few hard strokes once on the bike to get up to speed then easily roll back down the hill. Spin around for about 3 minutes then start the next sprint.
Sample Day 3
2 hrs @ zn.2 w/ 2x10min @ Zn.3 w/ 4x15 second micro bursts and 10 minutes rest (zn.1) between intervals. Shoot to do 2 micro bursts during each interval, one at the end of every 5 minutes during your interval. Shoot to be in the mid to low zn.3 area for the duration of the interval (aside from the micro bursts which should be zn.4-5).
Sample Day 4
1 hr easy spin (active recovery). This ride is geared at promoting blood flow and speeding up recovery. Try not to do anything that you will really have to recover from on these types of rides.
Sample Day 5
2 hrs zn.2 w/ 4 run ups. One run up would consist of riding at race pace into the bottom of a set of stairs or hill that you can run up. As you approach the stairs or hill, dismount and shoulder your bike and run up the stairs or hill unshouldering and remounting your bike over the top. Loop back around for 30 seconds to 1 minute and do it again until you complete the specified number of run ups.
If racing today, forego prescribed workout and just race. Get a good warm up by getting to the race early and getting in a 20-30 min spin with 2-3 15 second sprints w/ 5 min recovery prior to your race.
If racing tomorrow, go for a shorter 1-1.5hr spin w/ 3-5 15 second warm up sprints w/ 5 minutes recovery between sprints.
Sample Day 6
Feel free to go race if you'd like, but if not go ahead and do the following:
2 hrs zn.2. Try to avoid going beyond or below zn.2 when possible. This ride is designed to help you build aerobic efficency. If you are using a heart rate monitor, you may see your heart rate increase a bit into the zn.3 area after an hour or two for the same perceived effort. This is ok, continue riding at the same perceived effort.
Sample Day 8
2 hrs w/ 2 sets of 3x20 second tabata intervals w/ 10 seconds rest between interval and 10 minutes rest between each set. Each 20 second interval should be full gas with 10 seconds zn.1 rest between each 20 second interval. These intervals are designed to teach you to go hard repeatedly whether you're ready or not. These are pretty tough, but will make race day that much less difficult.