Road racing

Who is this for?

For people who want to perform in Road race, longer criterium or flat/punchy sportives

Suggested plan length

12 weeks

Benchmarks to focus on

• 1 min to 7 min efforts

What this plan will help you develop

Your road racing fitness. Road races or any tough length rides can be broken down into two elements. One, can you sustain the race pace itself with the goal of it feeling comfortable. Two, once you’re comfortable at race pace, can you push the power to cover that breakaway or up that climb to make the front group.

Tips and tricks to think about

• For the short efforts, it’s great to line them up with a few Strava segments to bring a competitive element to your training. Plus play around with over gearing and under gearing yourself, but when it comes to crunch time you need to push the tough gears to keep up.
• To maximise your road race results, also comes down a lot to your fuelling. Road races, go for about 90 mins up to 6 hours, where you’re uncomfortable for most of the time. This pace requires carbs, so you need to be comfortable at least consuming 60g per hour.
• It’s better to go into a race too fresh, than too fatigued. So when that little voices tells you to do more, ignore it.

Training plan breakdown

Foundation 1 +

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 1 to 7 hrs
• Intermediate: 4 to 8 hrs
• Expert: 6 to 11 hrs

Difficulty

• 4/10

Notes

• Building a base fitness without stretching it too much
• Riding a few varied efforts from zone 3 to zone 6 to keep the training mixed up
• Getting comfortable with structured training

Foundation 2

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 1 to 8 hrs
• Intermediate: 5 to 10 hrs
• Expert: 7 to 13 hrs

Difficulty

• 5/10

Notes

• It’s good time to slowly increase weekly volume
• The introduction of longer zone 3 efforts into your training plan will help you maintain race pace
• Start to become comfortable from moving from a hard pace into tempo, that replicates the movement of the bunch. Overall, these types of efforts are quite short but will help you start to become comfortable recovering under pressure

Foundation 3

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 2 to 12 hrs
• Intermediate: 7 to 13 hrs
• Expert: 10 to 18 hrs

Difficulty

• 6/10

Notes

• The efforts where you go from hard to medium pace are becoming longer
• The introduction of some punchy zone 5 efforts to similar going across to the breakaway or punching it up a climb
• Look to work on your sprint by lowering your cadence, ride at walking pace and then go bang for the short zone 6

Build 1

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 1 to 8 hrs
• Intermediate: 5 to 9 hrs
• Expert: 7 to 13 hrs

Difficulty

• 7/10

Notes

• The intensity is starting to lift, as a result it’s good to dial down your volume slightly so you can adjust to the new workload
• New longer race paced efforts are introduced. Make sure you don’t start too hard with these.
• It’s ok if fatigue is higher than normal, build phases are tough

Build 2

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 1 to 9 hrs
• Intermediate: 5 to 11 hrs
• Expert: 8 to 15 hrs

Difficulty

• 8/10

Notes

• There are now longer zone 5 efforts that will challenge and push you
• Step change efforts have become tougher, where you’ll kick hard and then move into race pace where you need to recover under-pressure
• The number of short and snappy sprints have increased

Build 3

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 2 to 11 hrs
• Intermediate: 6 to 12 hrs
• Expert: 9 to 17 hrs

Difficulty

• 8-9/10

Notes

• This is the most challenging block of training, so it’s ok to have higher amounts of fatigue than normal. Lean on the Spoked readiness score to ensure you’re not over doing it too much
• The length of race pace efforts have increased
• Nutrition is key for this phase. If you’re to become ill, this is the phase. Continue to do the little things right

Recovery

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 1 to 5 hrs
• Intermediate: 3 to 6 hrs
• Expert: 4 to 8 hrs

Difficulty

• 3-4/10

Notes

• Recover
• The hard work is done in the other phases, if you’ve trained smart. It’s the recovery week where your fitness gains are made.

Peak

Suggested weekly volume (will vary on ambition for goal)

• Beginner: 1 to 6 hrs
• Intermediate: 4 to 7 hrs
• Expert: 5 to 10 hrs

Difficulty

• 6/10

Notes

• Testing your power range, that is aligned to the key demands of the goal
• Freshening up, by cutting down your volume but keeping a few cheeky efforts in there
• Thinking back to all those tough sessions. It’s time to shine.