3/week training

[b]"my question is this...if i can ride 3/week (with a possible 4th some weeks), how should i split up my rides? keep in mind that i'm not planning on racing until next year, and i also participate in grappling/submission fighting"[/b]

Well, sounds like your muscular-system should be in order, so we don't need to work on that too much. We'll keep the intervals out of your training-regimen for now. A fully-optimized periodization training system with micro- and macro-cycles would be a book unto itself, so I'll just make quick summaries on the macro-cycles:

#1 - first 2 months - base miles
- do two of your three days like you've been going
- one day a week, add more miles for endurance, make it 35 miles and work up to 50-miles by the end of the 2nd month @ 65-75%, Sunday would be a good day, Monday rest

#2 - next 3 months - aerobic development
- do one of your three days like you've been doing
- Sunday is still endurance, work up to 50-75miles, this builds your energy-delivery system
- one day a week is aerobic, do 25-35miles with some hills thrown in, do one steady-state hill-climb of at least 25-minutes at anaerobic-threshold (75-85% max-HR). Work up to 2-3 of these 25-minute efforts by the end of the 3rd month of this macrocycle

#3 - next 3 months - strength & speed development
- one day a week is sprints, cut back mileage to 20-25miles max, take 20-25minutes to warm up, do 3 full-effort 100% sprints of 45-60sec duration, then go home. Work on spinning smoothly and FAST, 120-150rpm (on the track we practice at 200-240rpm). Work up to 5-6 sprints on this day by the end of this next 3-months. Tuesdays are usually sprint-days.
- one day a week is still aerobic intervals & hill-climes
- one day a week is still endurance (Sat. or Sun), work up to 60-80 miles.

Of course, it's not really as simple as this with every week being the same. There are so many different kinds of workouts, that if you do the same ride twice in one week, you left out something that you could've done on that 2nd identical day that would've been more beneficial to your training, but you get the general idea. Integrating this with your grappling workouts would be good as well. Try to do those early in the week around the time you do your sprints. Then intensity tapers off during the week and mileage and endurance picks up on the week-ends.

That's it, by the end of this 8-month period, you'll be good enough to upgrade to cat-3 no problem. You'll most likely win outright your first two cat-5 races and upgrade on experience. Then you might have to work a little in cat-4 to get the strategy down, but you'll win the next two races easily too and upgrade to cat-3. That's when the real fun starts and the prize-money isn't bad either.

thanx, that helps a lot. it's encouraging to think that i might be able to actually compete to win a couple of races next summer.