Power decline during cross season

Our local cross scene ended today and after 2 1/2 months of it, it was a dissaster for me. My FTP is down as well as all power areas. (10 to 20%) I thought the tough weekends and a few double race weekends, with many rest days in between would have had the opposite effect. I do the A races which are an hour and have been carefull not to train hard until Wednesdays some weeks. My training duration is down to 6 hours a week, but with the hard weekends I thought I'd actually kind of peak. Kind of a quality vs. quantity thing. Is the hours just too low to support that?

 

This doesn't sound like an uncommon experience. What does your Permormance Manager Chart look like?

 

It looks terrible, I replaced my wired PT with a poor functioning 2.4, so I've been able to see data, just not good data. I returned it yesterday. Again, my training has been low, but thought the rest from very hard efforts to be a positive.

 

Quantity of training drops to 6 hours per week, you probably peaked 1.5 months ago. Depends on the goals over a long series, crucial to manage training and racing.

Too much racing (especially short races like CX) lead to a bottomless taper. Try training through low-priority races, don't forget 1 long ride per week, and use active recovery so you don't lose 2 days of training after racing.

 

Yep, that about sums it up. Here's a quote from my blog about my 2005/06 season:

I was constantly staying fresh for racing and intense efforts and that left me with little in the tank by the time the Championships rolled around. Don't get me wrong, I had a great season but there sure was room for improvement. The Performance Manager Charts really made that stick out for me. Here's what I mean (click/right click to see larger image):

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Basically I ended up never really having a proper CTL build phase to start with. There was a short one around this time last year (Christmas '05) but I tried to ramp up too quickly and got sick. After that, regular racing and a change of focus to efforts of increasing intensity meant CTL was flatlining or heading south.

You see I was chasing a club championship all through that period of decline and trying to stay fresh for as many races as I could - as well as have enough in the tank for the championships at season end. Couldn't do it on the "base" I had. I had a few other training interruptions as well, so not an ideal season plan.

 

So I should have kept up the base and time in between? Would double weekends be not such a good thing?

 

Build a quality periodized program, keeping in mind that race-shape happens only 2-3 weeks at a time. Unless you're Sven Nys.

Over 2.5 months, you'll have to break and go to a base week or two to re-charge, heal, re-build endurance. It is possible to perform while racing every weekend.

 

Follow up Quote from Cyclingnews.com:

 

If your goals are to race every weekend, twice, there's nothing wrong with that.
If all you are doing is racing cross (and nothing afterwards) on each weekend day, your CTL is bound to drop, making it harder to do more training on the weekdays as well. I'm riding every day and a bit after races and still my CTL dropped from 125-130 during the road season to 105 during cross season, but I've been careful to maintain FTP ( will back off training ride intensity after cross season)

 

During 'cross season I focused almost exclusively on L3/L4 because I get enough high intensity L5+ work while racing. I ramped TSS over the entire season and posted a PB for both 5 min and 20 min power the week before the last race (start of taper). Unfortunately my knee started acting up and I skipped the last series race . Bummer because my results consistently improved week to week.

My week schedule looked something like this:
Sun: Race
Mon: L4 2x20
Tues: SST 3x20
Wed: L3 60 min
Thurs: Rest
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 30 min opener/skills ride

This worked well for me this season and I plan to follow the same type of plan next year. The L4 session after race day can be tough, but I would rather be tired going into a workout than tired going into a race.