I’m currently halfway through sustained power build midvol, planning on doing rolling road race speciality, but want to start racing local one hour crits, at least once a week should I lower my volume to low volume specialty to fit in the racing? I also go on social century rides every other week in high altitude terrain.
Thanks!
I just finished a local crit series in the midst of General Build Mid Vol. Instead of lowering volume, I replaced suitable workouts with the crits. In two cases, VO2max work, in the third, Junction (“race winners”).
So you have two options here:
Replace workouts in the MV plan with your races. Do this depending on how you race the crits: if you do sustained breakaways off the front (or off the back!), you can replace one of the long, sustained threshold or SS interval sessions. If you race them “surgey” with lots of high power and lots of coasting/recovery, you can replace the VO2max/anaerobic session for the week. Then, the weeks you do the long social century ride, that can replace your 2-hour sweet-spot weekend session.
Lower to LV, do all the workouts in addition to your other rides, and add an easy hour/90 min session during the week to maintain the same volume. The downside of this is you’ll have four intense sessions every week, and this could jeopardize your recovery for your key trainer sessions.
I would recommend the first plan. Most people aren’t going to respond well to four days of intensity per week that reducing to LV and adding races would have you do.
I have just finished my first summer of trying crit racing, and had a blast. I did it while completing SSBI / II mid volume.
I replaced an easy workout with the crit race, but it took some juggling around to get my recovery correct. I ended up doing workouts Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, with the crit on a Wednesday.
My training was the priority as the racing was just to get a taste for it , practice tactics and handling at speed.