My team is working with a coaching service, which is great and all, but it's just a teaser. We get a once-a-month class, which is helpful in a wishy-washy sense, but it is neither here nor there (my favorite expression). It's neither the type of coaching that I received on the highschool swimteam, nor is it one on one. It's more of a seminar which does little more than introduce the student to the terminology and a peak at the training strategies involved in bike racing.
So, I'm off in the wilderness. After the last class, I had two options: 1) I could hire a coach for $2000 for the next 10 months, or 2) I could strike out on my own and create my own training program using my brain and taking into account my schedule. After some hemming and hawing, I chose the latter. I figured that, being that this sport is pure hobby for me, part of the fun is the journey. I will be participating in this sport for many years in the future, and , under no circumstance, will cycling expand into a primary activity (like a job) in my life. So, I decided that part of the fun is creating a training plan at the beginning of each season, tracking my progress in some low tech and inexpensive way, train and race on inexpensive equipment, and see where it takes me. Rinse and repeat next year, taking the previous year's experience into account.
I have a feeling that many good cyclists do exactly this. The best cyclists are probably the ones that have had success on their own before looking to "purchase" success with coaches and fancy carbon wheels and such. Part of the fun of cycling for me is discovering what works and what doesn't and setting my bike up to be the optimum I can have it without spending a ton of money on things. The side effect is I always have a ready tongue-firmly-in-cheek excuse for why I did badly in a race.
So, anyway, my training plan for this year will encompass a tighter focus on interval training and macrocycles throughout the entire season. Last year, I had a good off-season and got very strong. After the Willamette Stage Race (which was the setting of my very best race of the season), my training fell apart. I was fatigued from Willamette at King's Valley, then started racing PIR and promptly crashed hard and lost 10 days of training. Instead of building back into my training for Elkhorn, I stomped back into it, mad at myself for missing time and being weak. I rode too many "junk" miles and did almost no interval training or, in fact, any structured training at all. That was okay for my first season racing. A rookie mistake. I closed out the season with a good race at Elkhorn (I didn't do well personally, but played a role in the last stage that helped my teammate win the GC) and a crash during my first race on the track which basically put me out of commission until 'cross season started. I think I did just one, small crit between my track crash and Kruger's Farm Crit, which marked the start of 'cross season.
This season, I will focus on three races. My early race will be the Willamette Stage Race. Mid race will be the OBRA road race. The late season road race will be the Cascade Classic. I am not doing the Elkhorn stage race this year; it's incredibly difficult to do both of these long stage races well as they are scheduled only about 3 weeks apart. So, odd years gets Cascade and even years gets Elkhorn.
The spring classics (Cherry Pie, the Banana Belts, and Piece of Cake) are "C" races, with the exception of the last Banana Belt, which will be a "B" race. These races come in late Feb through March and I'll use these to test my off-season training. The last Banana Belt I'll race to win and actually taper the week before hand. I'll have a good peek at my competition by then and I like to think that the course favors my style of racing.
King's Valley comes right on the heels of Willamette, so it's a B race by definition. I will get a good week of rest between these races and I'll still be in good form from the buildup toward Willamette.
Silverton is a great race, but not one I can win. So I'll do it; great course, but it's a "C" race I'll train right on through for. Then the OBRA RR is another peak. After that it's about two months to Cascade, with basically no racing in-between.
PIR is a playground, and I'll race there, but never to win. It gets a bit crazy in the pack and I'll use these races to practice attacking and bridging. Nobody will see me in a bunch sprint at the end. My finishes will either be in a sprint where the pack is extremely strung out (say, due to a Portland Velo leadout train... fuck yea!) or off the front or off the back. Last years injury was bad and the race itself is such a little thing that it's not worth risking life and limb to win.
As for training, it's going to be simple. I'm going off of time on the bike rather than mileage. I'm going to incorporate commutes and the mad hills around my house in my training, and I'm going to train through most of my races, rather than get paralyzed by my racing schedule. My basic interval will be a 5 minutes, with the number of sets increasing as I get stronger through a build cycle. Intervals are two times a week, with a recovery and tempo rides in between. I'll test my ftp monthly using average power on my trainer for a 2x20 minute test on my trainer, correlating average speed to arrive at average power.
Over the next few days I will sketch out the macrocycles to hit the peaks I want, and I'll sketch out weekly microcycles on a monthly basis, firming them up on the Monday of each week. My overall goal is to be a competitive cat3 by the end of the season. This means I am strong enough to be more than pack fodder at every race. No weight goals; my weight right now is where it's going to be and I'll slim down naturally through my training over the next few years.
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