The Race and Recover Balance

Racing season is quickly approaching, if not already arrived for many. One of the biggest challenges to get right, in my opinion as a coach, is to find the balance of how much, and what kind of training to do between races. Generally the longer the period of racing, such as 4 weeks with a race every weekend compared to 2 weeks with a race every weekend, the more challenging it becomes.

The challenge lies in finding the balance between recovering from races enough to keep racing hard, holding on to the specific fitness athletes have built for the races, but also being conscious not to actually get so focused on recovery that a “de-training” effect occurs. If those three elements are the big branches of the tree, each one has another few smaller branches coming off of it that is a specific direction to go. The biggest trap I have fallen into as a coach is to look at each week nearly in isolation and write training to “set up” for that weekends races. To be a bit more specific, what I am getting at as a “set up” week for a weekend race would be something like this:

• Monday - Recovery

• Tuesday - Moderate Endurance perhaps with some light load above endurance

• Wednesday - An intensity based workout specific to tuning up for the weekend

• Thursday - Recovery

• Friday - Openers

• Saturday / Sunday - Racing, or race one day and recovery the next

Of course the details of the rides can ebb and flow, but if the above is the general skeleton of a “set up” week, I think this is a very common way people approach weekend races. It’s not a bad way to approach weekend races, but above I’d said it is also a trap to fall into. Where I really think it is a trap to fall into is in the cumulative effect over a 4-5 week period. When stacking consecutive “set up” weeks, athletes will actually gradually lose fitness, but also not have the benefit of gaining the freshness that you would at least hope to gain in a period of losing fitness. In my experience athletes don’t gain freshness in this scenario because they are doing so much intensity. Racing hard on the weekend, then doing a high intensity workout mid week to tune up for the next weekends races. So they are always going to the well, and it is mentally exhausting. Essentially a long taper that is mentally exhausting. Over time, athletes lose fitness, they lose aerobic foundation which impairs their ability to respond well to the intensity, and they build mental fatigue that means the quality of intensity they can produce in race situations starts to dwindle.

On some level, this is just a natural process. But I also think, that in a period with a lot of racing, the type of training done between races can have a big impact on how long an athlete can repeatedly produce on a high level. If the goal is to maintain fitness, but also to be recovering from races and not mentally exhausting an athlete with intensity, then what I’ve found is that the answer is simplicity. Rides of relatively high volume, but low intensity, are an athlete’s best friend in this period. They keep ya fit, but also let you get a break from the big effort done on the weekend and re-set to go to the well again the next weekend. If athletes are short on time and can’t really afford to do a 4-5 hour easy endurance ride, that’s ok - supplement the pure volume with a higher volume of Tempo / Z3 work. This is still a break from the more polarized intensity of racing, and serves as a higher bang for buck way to keep the aerobic foundation built up.

In general in a period of 4-5 weeks of race / recover, the above scenario is my go to model. Of course there are many further layers in the sense of what context does a period of racing occur in. Maybe a period of racing is going to purposely overloaded with intensity to prepare for some stage races down the road. Maybe the athlete didn’t have time to do much specific intensity prior to the racing block, which means they can’t quite go into that model of race and maintain fitness with easier aerobic load and so they need to keep inserting specific intensity into the week.

No model is a catch all, but in general this is something I find I run into a lot that I see people get wrong (in my opinion!) and experientially I have gotten wrong with athletes and learned from. I hope you enjoyed the unsolicited advice, thanks for reading!