Stage Race Planning

Bailsibub said:

I've mentioned it on here before, but my 'A' race this season is a ten-day stage race at the beginning of June (Tour of Korea).

I've never done a ten-day stage race before (not many of us get a chance to do them this long...) but I'd appreciate your input on the training you've done leading up to a stage race of any length and WKO tapering strategy experiences leading up to stage races you have done in the past.

What I have in mind is to continue with SST/L4 with a weekly team ride until April. Then in mid-April, throw one weekly 5X5 VO2 workout into the mix. Do that for 5 weeks. This will overlap with a shortened 'stage race' (5-7 days race simulation) I want to finish up two weeks before the actual stage race.Then I'll taper for a week or whatever it takes to get TSB positive, or close to it and race.

I know you shouldn't taper as much for long events and I'm assuming stage races, too. And this is where I'm a little challenged with my planning.

Anyway, I haven't posted that much recently because I've just been either training, working, or resting. The training is going well. I've been a good boy and stuck to SST/L4 since November. CTL is 81 (all SST/L4...no junk) and is progressing at 5 pts per week. FTP is going up little by little, with no signs of going down any time soon. 😄

Wow! 10-day race! How many hours a week are you clocking? And are you a working man?

I can offer no advice but I can offer nuff respect. 3 days has been my limit for stage races.

Bailsibub said:

Anyway, I haven't posted that much recently because I've just been either training, working, or resting. The training is going well. I've been a good boy and stuck to SST/L4 since November. CTL is 81 (all SST/L4...no junk) and is progressing at 5 pts per week. FTP is going up little by little, with no signs of going down any time soon. 😄

I'm training for a few stage races and have currently been doing base work.
ie loooong tempo work. 3-5 hour rides with very solid chunks of low tempo with any climbs i hit done at threshold. It's been great to get away from such a rigid structure and at the moment ctl and ftp are going up so I'll keep buildingg away. Only problem is you'll get pretty anti social training like this as no one wants to ride for 5 hours with the power on the whole time....

Wow 😎 10 day stage race what a dream, l have no no advice but keeping on building ctl would be the best/all l can give you but sounds like your on the right track l have read 1 guys race report on this race and it it sounds like it was very well organised and loads of fun with competitors from all over the world at all sorts of fitness levels so needless to say we want a FULL race report reguardless of how well you do 😉

Good luck and have fun err... if that is possable for a 10 day race.

Bailsibub said:

I've never done a ten-day stage race before

Neither have I. Wow. If you recover from that well, you might be flying afterwards. Though I'm sure you're more concerned with the lead up to it and getting through it rather than afterwards.

You're going to need some CTL for sure. I would assume more CTL than you ever have had in your life. Going into it with positive TSB sounds like a good choice too.

I'm not a big fan of everything Joe Friel says but I remember reading in his 2nd edition "bible" about "crash cycles", where you do a succesive weeks of build-up of more and more TSS each day during the week. (He described it in hours, but we might as well talk about TSS here.) The composition is probably important and I don't remember what he wrote. I could look it up for you later this week, if you would like.

In the meantime, I found this. I quickly breezed through it because I'm short on time right now. Not sure how applicable it is. It might be kind of tangential to what we're discussing here.

Yeah, I work 45 to 50 hours a week. The way I do it is by training on the turbo all week and then getting out with my team on the weekend. I live in Seoul, and even though it's one of the most crowded cities in the world, I get to work pretty quickly (as opposed to when I was back in the states and I'd spend 2 or 3 hours a day commuting). That saves me time that I can spend riding my bike. And I'm one of those folks that can tolerate long, tough efforts on the trainer and don't get bored/burned out.

Steve, yep, a short-but-tough simulated stage race will definitely help me get specific fitness and also mentally ready for several days on end of hard work. And I need to be flying for the tour (results for team/sponsors). I'm hoping to get as many teammates as I can into doing this block, and we are also planning to get the team manager to do a lot of motorpacing with us then.

So my original question was mainly about the taper, and I do know how to taper, just never done one for a loooong stage race. Well, since I didn't hear any replies in regards to that question (no news is good news), I'll stick with my plan.

I'll definitely write about the race on here. It's gonna be good.

Bailsibub said:

...So my original question was mainly about the taper, and I do know how to taper, just never done one for a loooong stage race. ....

Well the general principle on tapering is to taper more for short intense events and taper less for long events. Gotta say your 10 day stage race falls in the latter category. The basic idea is that tapering trades fitness for freshness. The longer and steeper your taper the more fitness you give away but the fresher you are. That trade off can pay big dividends in a hard crit, track races or most time trials but can hurt you in a long road race or something like you're taking on. IOW, I'd back your training off a bit in the final week, but don't take a lot of complete rest days or get too far from your core training. Maybe back off the intervals and do some more SST style work to freshen up mentally and physically and probably avoid really long rides in the final week, but don't over taper for a really long event.

FWIW, I did a long stage race across Nevada many years ago. We raced pretty much border to border along highway 50 (aptly called the lonliest road in America) with TTs and crits in towns along the way and long road stages across the desert hooking it all together. It was something like 8 or 9 days long, can't remember anymore.

I finished, but sure didn't want to get on a bike again for a while. The good news is that everyone gets tired and the daily routine of getting up, racing a TT, crit or long road stage just becomes second nature. You basically, ride, rest, feed and hydrate and it almost starts feeling normal by the end. I didn't have any power data back then and can't say anything about CTL or TSB, but I wish I'd had more training base going into it and the issue really wasn't peak efforts, more about doing good solid work day in and day out.

Good luck and let us know how it goes,
-Dave

I've got less than a day before the start of the Tour of Korea. It's been a great season of prep. I'm excited but ready. Just thought I'd drop a line to thank everyone for their input and to give a couple details.

The build up was steady with CTL getting up to 105. Hit this high after a weekend of training at the olympic training center here in Korea (my team got invited...I took a bunch of pics...awesome experience I'll post about on here after I'm done with the tour).

I tapered this week, and I'm super fresh and champing at the bit to raise hell on the bike. Did an 'opener' workout this morning and felt great.

Not as much climbing in the race as I had expected. Bummer for me. Really, only three stages that have decent climbs...and they aren't very long climbs (like 250 to 300 m of gain). But we'll do our best.

By the way, my team was featured in a magazine here. Here's the link:
bikemagazine.co.krread.phpOpen ↗
(I think you all can guess which one is me. 😄 )

Bailsibub said:

...I tapered this week, and I'm super fresh and champing at the bit to raise hell on the bike. Did an 'opener' workout this morning and felt great....

Awesome, good luck and have a great ride. Let us know how it goes.

-Dave

Bailsibub said:

(I think you all can guess which one is me. 😄 )

Second from the right? 😉

Wait, hairy legs. Whatzup with that? :eek:😕

Steve_B said:

Second from the right? 😉

Wait, hairy legs. Whatzup with that? :eek:😕

Thanks guys.

Ha ha, yeah, I've already caught a lot of [censored] for the hairy legs. Actually, and this is a little embarrassing, I totally forgot about the date of the team launch (when they took that photo). I was actually on the trainer in a middle of a 20 when my phone started ringing for about 5 minutes straight that evening. Teammates weren't too happy! I only ended up being about 30 minutes late, but yeah, my now-shorn legs were looking pretty furry.