guadzilla

Are there any rules-of-thumb re how long you can maintain your peak? Or the minimum amount of time needed to peak and then reach a secondary peak?

I have 3 events coming up:
- a 7-day/1000km stage ride in India in mid-Dec (mix of competitive and non-competitive sections each day, although de facto all of it is going to be competitive)
- a triathlon in Abu Dhabi in early March
- a stage race in Thailand, sometime in April

I'm trying to figure out what would be a good way to approach these rides.

Right now, my thinking is to do tempo/FTP work till till mid-Nov and then spend 2-3 weeks working on VO2 max; then use the stage ride to work on tempo riding. Jan and Feb, go back to tempo/FTP work, which would be good for the tri, and then after the tri - by which time I should have 4-5 months of Z3/Z4/Z5 work, do a month of VO2/anaerobic intervals.

Sound workable?

kensuf

I'd probably skip the November vo2max work personally, but start that up about 5-6 weeks before the Abu Dhabi tri.

Quel

I was just reading this last night as I planned out 2012 a bit. Friel's advice is to have A-races be either 2-3 weeks apart or 8 weeks apart. Depending on when your April race is, that's more like 4-6 weeks, so you are in between. That would force you to pick whether you want to peak for the March tri or April stage race.

Personally, I don't feel I've ever experienced a real true peak (i.e. build->peak->slight decline->build->new peak) since I don't do enough in the offseason and start from a position of real strength. I generally build all season and plateau in between (i.e. build->plateau->build->new plateau). So if I peaked for a March race I feel like I'd do as well or better by the April one, even though it's not what Friel would suggest.

mollusk

Work for one peak in December.

Take some time off.

Then build a HUGE base in the rest of December-January-beginning of February so that you can build to a peak and keep it over the March-April time frame.

mollusk

The bigger the base the bigger the mountain.

carpediemracing 

+1 on all above.

India?

If you're equatorial-ish, you probably won't be riding much in the actual summer (June/July/Aug)?

guadzilla

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

@Ken - replace the VO2max in Nov with tempo/FTP, you reckon?

@Mollusk - That makes sense - the March ride is going to be essentially 100k at tempo; I am shooting for a 3:00 - 3:10 time for it, which should leave me enough in my legs to then run a decent 10k. Then I can do VO2/anaerobic stuff for a month to get ready for the Thailand race, which should be flatter and so better for me.

@CDR - Yeah, very equatorialish, although the sea helps ensure that the summers here arent too bad. May is a clusterf**k but once the rains start, it is quite nice. So I tend to ride year-long, although atleast 2 months a year is very light (3-4 hrs/week). As an aside, I used your blog to swap tubulars last week. Was amazingly simple - thanks for that write-up. Dont know why people make such a big deal out of changing tubulars

The more I think about it, it makes sense to use the Dec event as training for March and April, especially as the hilly nature of the Dec event means that it isnt the best for me. So plan is - focus on endurance/tempo until Dec, use the Dec event as advanced base/early build, then add ramp up intensity to FTP/VO2/anaerobic stuff building up to the tri in March and continuing till end of the month.

Then take April/May off training and go on a tour somewhere

kensuf

Yeah, I'd say tempo / ftp work instead of vo2max. I find I can do a large volume of "SST" and a decent volume of FTP and still be solid to keep working. Vo2max drains me quickly...

guadzilla

^^ Same here. VO2 max really helps my performance in every area, but man I am a wreck afterwards. Cool, so now I have a training plan.