Summer Plateau and CX

[jellysidedown]

This post is more of an observation and discussion point rather than a question or suggestion. I don't want to see Oxygen Depraved die off!

My training volume tends to track the available daylight hours. This year I didn't race road hardly at all, but for the first time I religiously used a PM and uploaded all my training workouts into a performance manager. The CTS line looks exactly like the profile of a plateau, right out of the Road Runner cartoon. Nice gradual ramp up from January to May, then a flat, slightly descending line around 76-82 all the way until now. For me that's about 10-11 hours/week in season and a little more than half that in the winter.

I've been dabbling in CX off and on since I started racing in 1986, but pretty consistently for the past 7 seasons as a New England master. The racing in this group is relatively serious these days, with a lot of riders focusing on cross, really training for it as opposed to treating it as an autumn diversion from the road like we did in the old days. The result of all this is I pretty much get my ass kicked. While I'm hardly a world-beater on the road, in general when I'm training I can rise a bit above the level of pack filler and contend for placings on courses that suit me. In 45+ CX though, I struggle to make the 50th percentile (which happens to be round 50th place!). While always recognizing that this was due to my not approaching CX as seriously as some of my peers, from training, practice, nor preparation standpoints, it kind of hit me over the head whilst staring at my performance manager chart. I know that CTS line is going to start heading south at the end of August, and I know what that will mean in high intensity CX competitions.

This season will be the first time ever that I attempt to race a season of CX after skipping out on the road. That in itself will be an adventure. Been doing this long enough to know that all the skills drills and fancy rubber in the world are, as the car guys say, no substitute for cubic inches. But given the constraint of daytime employment (not to mention buying and moving into a new home this month), bumping up race fitness during the darkening days of September and October presents a challenge. Once racing starts, the opportunity for big volume days on the weekends diminishes too. It all means a need for quality workouts when time allows, trying to take advantage of the fall holidays, squeezing in rides during the week whenever possible, trying to get in high intensity cross training etc. I'd really prefer to avoid the trainer, thus saving my limited reserves of indoor fortitude for the dead of winter, but pounding out workouts in the basement might be the best option. How do you plan to bump up your fitness for a raceworthy peak during the fall CX season?

[Chance Legstrong]

pukevals
motorpacing

[Too Tall]

Say hello to my little friend 20 mins. of pain and overgeared intervals. I think you are spot on, your total training time will go in the crapper. Stop looking at CTL and create a bar chart+graph in the PM that shows all your best 1,3,5,10,20 mins. performances. I'll roll the dice and add that (cough) at our age you need recovery rides during the week.

[ldamelio]

I find myself in the exact same situation as the as the OP. Although I may get shot for recommending something so pedestrian and mass-marketed, I found Chris Carmichael's 'Time Crunched Cyclist Training Program' to be enormously helpful. The book has a lot of basic info already known to most of us, but the actual training plans are very solid, well-thought out to situations like ours, and seem to work atme (according to my experience).A variety of different types of intervals that evolve over the course of the program to get to race fitness. The programs (there are 4 in the book depending on experience and goals - you would do the 'experienced competitor' plan) assume or require just the type of base you have built over the summer.

[Chance Legstrong]

I find myself in the exact same situation as the as the OP. Although I may get shot for recommending something so pedestrian and mass-marketed, I found Chris Carmichael's 'Time Crunched Cyclist Training Program' to be enormously helpful. The book has a lot of basic info already known to most of us, but the actual training plans are very solid, well-thought out to situations like ours, and seem to work atme (according to my experience).A variety of different types of intervals that evolve over the course of the program to get to race fitness. The programs (there are 4 in the book depending on experience and goals - you would do the 'experienced competitor' plan) assume or require just the type of base you have built over the summer.

Time crunched isn't going to get you through CX races.
You will complete, but you won't compete.
You must be willing to die a 1000 deaths
oh
and Monday recovery rides

[ldamelio]

Respectfully disagree with you on this one. The 'experienced competitor' programs in there do have you doing intervals 'dying a thousand deaths" and have recovery rides built in.

[Chance Legstrong]

Respectfully disagree with you on this one. The 'experienced competitor' programs in there do have you doing intervals 'dying a thousand deaths" and have recovery rides built in.

have you used it for CX racing?

[ldamelio]

Yes. To the extent that I could stick to it, I had some of my best races for a few weeks. I train with HRM and not powermeter, so a relative paucity of objective data, but it seemed to work.