Road Race Training

[holliscx]

My spring / summer road race calendar looks like this:

March 3 - 120 km
April 14 - 172 km
May 12 - 175 km
June 22 - 205 km

Right now I have the fitness to race 120 km. I don't want to peak too early as the June race is my focus. My training consists of a long ride on weekends plus one ride during the week, either hill training or a 40-70 km ride. Next month with more light I'll be able to get out twice mid-week.

I'm wondering how to hit my long rides for 172 km by mid-April sounds early to race that far. What if I shoot for long rides of 120 (where I am now); 150 for April; 170 for May; and 190 for June? I usually ride 3 weeks and then step back a week but weather can cancel a ride so that tends to happen organically versus a set schedule. In early July I'm planning to use my residual training to ride trans-Pyrenees (Girona-San Sebastian) in four days. It will be 180 km a day average with two days of big climbs.

All of the races above are heavy climbing. Thanks for any tips, advice even for my mid-week rides. I have two kids < 3 so go easy on me. ;)

[EDS]

Personally, for longer road races I prefer to have a few training rides under my belt that are longer than the race itself. Granted, I have never done a race that was more than about 130km.

[holliscx]

A lot of the races will have significantly more downhill than my training plus myriad pelotons which is why if I can ride 190 km solo I know I can race 205 etc. It's also a lot about hours in the saddle but I don't disagree mentally it's an advantage regardless to have trained the distance you're planning to race. Still races will always be easier than training in that there's more drafting and often longer mountain descents.

[David Tollefson]

My experience from back when I was road racing was that time in the saddle was the easy part. Training the "racing" aspect was the more difficult part -- responding to attacks, being smooth in the pack, etc. Hopefully you're including a lot of very spirited group rides in those miles.

[holliscx]

Hopefully you're including a lot of very spirited group rides in those miles.

Thanks, yeah I am, both my mid-week ride and my long ride are with a group that I ride faster with than if I were training on my own. Still I try to do a few epic rides by myself too for it's good prep to be able to handle both the monotonous solo hours as well as the spirited attacks that usu come with a group of strong riders.

[sonny]

i'm a total rookie at this, but it seems to me that a ride of 200k isn't even close to approximating a race of similar distance

i've done a few 175k+ rides built into ~1400k/month of base this winter, but no way can i hang for much more than 125k. obviously, all of this depends on what kind of fitness you're coming from before training.

i think intensity and ability to recover over time is what you need to be talking about. power would nice for something like this as you could chase race day tss values or something of the sort


i'm sure tom officer can get you on the right track