I'm now two weeks away from the national road race championship. The race will be 200 kms mostly flat. The sunday before there will be a 'practice' race similar in length and course.
This weekend I will be racing both sat and sun. The races will be 150 kms. After a peak in mid may I took a small break and started building again. Today CTL is 125 and TSB +1.
The championship is held on the 30th. Most guys in the peloton would continue with their normal training up until the practice race and then have two very long and hard rides - tempo end threshold - tue and wed and then three days of recovery before the championship. This is very different from the tapering advise I've been reading around on the internet.
How would you approach training in the last two weeks?
You didn't actually say this is one of your target events for the year, but I'll assume it is. You can find some good threads on this forum on tapering, but I'll share my approach to target events. I simply retain my training structure (i.e., mix of SST/L4/L5/L6/L7), but cut my volumes in half in the week preceding the event. Most riders ride the day before the event, but I take the day off to have fresh legs. I can't really say I have compared riding a short ride the day before versus taking the day off, I just got into my habit when I started riding and was training with a former National road champion and 3-time Olympic road team member. He didn't ride the day before, so I didn't either. Just got into the practice and never changed. But, there are those with strong arguments for what they call a "leg-opener" ride the day before. Not sure there's much evidence either way. I would say just look at your rides after a day off. Did your legs feel tight or did you feel fresh and strong?
I'm now two weeks away from the national road race championship. The race will be 200 kms mostly flat. The sunday before there will be a 'practice' race similar in length and course.
This weekend I will be racing both sat and sun. The races will be 150 kms. After a peak in mid may I took a small break and started building again. Today CTL is 125 and TSB +1.
The championship is held on the 30th. Most guys in the peloton would continue with their normal training up until the practice race and then have two very long and hard rides - tempo end threshold - tue and wed and then three days of recovery before the championship. This is very different from the tapering advise I've been reading around on the internet.
How would you approach training in the last two weeks?
My reply is very late. Apologies.
The week before an important one day race, I used to training hard up to 4 days before race day. On d-3, I would probably do a relatively hard spin at 80% capacity of a normal training spin. On d-2, I would still go for a spin of probably an hour or two pedalling gently just to keep my legs supple and to minimise any effect of food loading.
The day before the race was complete rest. I'd concentrate on fuelling my system with plenty of carbs and protein.
