How many B races before A race?

Training
1

Hi all,

New forum member here!

I’m new to structured training although I’m a well seasoned bike noodler. I am having a hard time deciding how frequently I should be scheduling B races to prepare for my A event.

My A race is a 143Km gran fondo with 2800m of elevation on June, 21. Luckily I live in central Italy where you can basically ride a gran fondo every week if you really want to :joy: but the question is: should I?? I’d be the happiest cyclist by racing every other week, but I don’t want to negatively impact my training having to skip build and specialty sessions to recover from the B race efforts.

By looking around in the forum I’ve found some information on how to prepare for a crit season, but that is not what I’m after.
When preparing for a century/gran fondo type race, at which phase of your training do you start adding similar races to your A event and how often do you do them?

P.S.

At the moment I’ve settled for SSBMV1&2 + General Build + Climbing Road Race specialty.

2

Id suggest doing a few shorter races a while before your main race. You don’t have to do the full distance or anything close to it before your event. However, if you are able to do some practice runs in a real race event environment it will be a fabulous way to test yourself and your kit etc. don’t race every week it will drain you.

I am currently doing one race a month leading into the national xc series here to keep sharp and to test a few feeling ideas, pacing ideas etc.

In the end its about having fun and pushing yourself so if you want to do a few more C and B races, just do them, have fun!

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