Here is South Africa we are nearing one of the most important races of the season - The Cape Argus. At the start of December I began a pretty intensive period of SST building up for the races in Feb/March.
My goal was to reach a CTL of around 120 for the Argus but have had a nightmare last 4 weeks. I am a Vet Cyclist (age 38). Training was on track to reach my goals, then first I had a cold, not too bad but caused CTL to level off for a week. I was due to begin L6 that week so that got delayed. The following week (3 weeks ago) I started L6 which was hard, but that was to be expected. That weekend I had a crash and left a fair bit of flesh on the tarmac. So, the following week I took it easy and missed the L6. Added to that my 5 year old son went into hospital for an emergency appendectomy and training got a bit blown out the water. The race that weekend turned out to be quite an easy race. Last week I tried L6 again but was really battling. Then my son was re-admitted to hospital with a leukemia scare (which very fortunately was not the case), so again training has been severely disrupted. Today's race was not good - I really struggled riding an overall NP that I am usually comfortable with.
So, 4 weeks ago I was at a CTL of 108, tomorrow I will be down to 94, with TSB at 12. The Argus is in 2 weeks time. My question is: What is the best preparation I can do now for the Argus?
My goal was to reach a CTL of around 120 for the Argus but have had a nightmare last 4 weeks. I am a Vet Cyclist (age 38). Training was on track to reach my goals, then first I had a cold, not too bad but caused CTL to level off for a week. I was due to begin L6 that week so that got delayed. The following week (3 weeks ago) I started L6 which was hard, but that was to be expected. That weekend I had a crash and left a fair bit of flesh on the tarmac. So, the following week I took it easy and missed the L6. Added to that my 5 year old son went into hospital for an emergency appendectomy and training got a bit blown out the water. The race that weekend turned out to be quite an easy race. Last week I tried L6 again but was really battling. Then my son was re-admitted to hospital with a leukemia scare (which very fortunately was not the case), so again training has been severely disrupted. Today's race was not good - I really struggled riding an overall NP that I am usually comfortable with.
So, 4 weeks ago I was at a CTL of 108, tomorrow I will be down to 94, with TSB at 12. The Argus is in 2 weeks time. My question is: What is the best preparation I can do now for the Argus?
- Should I do L6/L5 again this week, and early next week, and tapering for maybe 2 - 3 days for the race?
- Should I revert to L5/SST and try to build up pVO2Max for the race?
- Something else?