I came off the back of the All road plan (18th April) and have had a few events then I restarted the AR plan at the start of May. I did a test crit at the end of may and decided my AC was lacking so have been on an AC building block until now (rest week).
I am entering some weekly evening criteriums starting next week, and I’m looking at the crit plan as that should fit the bill, however, I am a bit spooked by the fairly big workouts on the day before the race, I am used to the week before an event being essentiall the 4DP prep week. For example (day before race days on crit plan):
Cash register + Who Dares
Cobbler
Team Scream
I know the 12wk crit plan seems to culminate on a 4DP or Target Race, I do not have a ‘target race’ per se, but want to try and do maybe 3 x weekly crits, week off, then 3 more.
@Jim, I came across your question as I had a similar query. I’m looking for something that will work as an ‘in season CX plan’ and figure that the Crit plan probably is closest but also noted the tough sessions right before the weekly events (at least that’s the case in weeks 1-5).
I guess SUF coaches reason that some events are worth sacrificing for overall longer term fitness gains. Maybe if it was a key event you might taper but you can’t do that each week and optimise progression.
I do think some extra commentary in the ‘show details’ tab for each plan might help with some of these questions though. It does look counterintuitive.
Hi @WillD, I kind of bastardised the crit plan over the summer, I basically reshuffled the workouts so I didn’t give myself a lashing the day before a race, but would shift the workout or do a double/2-a-day or swap it for a Z2 ride. I guess it worked OK, it didn’t leave me burned out. And the end of the day it’s a maintenance plan that keeps the fragile fitness sharp (e.g. anaerobic and NM stuff) and the threshold and below ticking over rather than improving, it should be fine for a cross season but I decided to move to a more traditional base with sweet spot over winter.
Think I’ll be making similar modification where obvious swap is possible but will try and stick to it as much as I am able. It’s a pretty tough regime though. Tool Shed was this morning (huge fail) on top of Violator and Revolver is Easy in last 6 days!
This will be my first foray into CX so trying to treat this season as training/learning experience (coming into it below fitness levels 6months ago) so ideally just aiming to get myself fitter through the season and have some fun in the races. Realise that might mean turning up with tired legs sometimes but don’t think that’s the end of the world!
I had midweek MTB races this summer. For the most part I would still follow the SUF plan and then just treat the race as a C race - getting acclimated to racing and working on skills that I could use in my more important races. Seems like the same could apply to your 1st CX season.