Building Your Race Season – The difference between A, B, and C Level Events with Sterling Sports Coach - Matt McNamara.

Spring is a grand time for cycling fans and racers alike. A new season brings new teams, new dreams, and new opportunities to revel in this most lovely of endeavors.  For every competitive cyclist it also brings one of the more satisfying tasks in the cycling ‘to do’ list – creating your annual race plan!

The Season Overview:

At first glance the schedule may seem intimidating and unruly with so many races to choose from. Road races, time trials, criteriums, and stage races dot the calendar in a seemingly haphazard way. Take heart though, the process of building your schedule is fairly straight forward and breaks down into a few key steps.

The first step to try and tame this monster is to create an arc for your season. By this I mean look at your season as having a natural ebb and flow on the path to your top priorities.  Often racers will do this by prioritizing their races as either an “A”, “B”, or “C” level event. More on the differences between each in a moment…

Before that you’re going to need to decide what type of racing you like to do.  Are you a quick recovering stage racer, a nerves of steel crit killer, or more of a hard-as-stone type amping for the classic one day road races?  Knowing what you like will help make the job of deciding which races to do a little bit easier.

On equal footing to what you ‘like’ to do is knowing what you are good at doing.  It serves you well to recognize, ideally through some on-the-bike testing sessions, what types of racing you are naturally good at. I like the idea of hilly road races, but can’t really climb so rather than making them a focal point I’m much better off choosing some fun climbing courses and entering them with an appropriate goal, usually to gain race endurance for later in the year.

Close on the heels of determining what you like and what you’re  good at comes the next step in our planning:  your fitness progression.  This may sound cliché, but building your season around a periodized fitness program, one that builds over time, is the best way to reach your goals and develop year to year into a more complete cyclist.

To that end, if you fancy yourself winning the local Paris-Roubaix next month but you haven’t been on your bike for six weeks you’re probably setting up an easy failure.  Instead it is advisable to allow yourself anywhere from 8-12 weeks to get your fitness up to the point that you’re ready to race. From there it’s probably another 6 weeks or so to top condition. Be realistic. The first path to failure to is to set goals that are unattainable from the start and based on a fantasy perception of yourself instead of a true assessment.

Prioritizing Your Schedule:

Now that you’ve created an arc for your season, figured out what you like to do and what you’re inclined to do well, and established where your current fitness is you’re ready to prioritize your schedule. This is the fun part.

When scheduling the season it is always a good idea to have a few introductory races that are primarily used for fitness and tactical improvement. These are considered “C” level races on most calendars and should represent a majority of your early season, but a modest part of the overall total of racing days for the year.  “C” races offer the chance to improve fitness by removing the sense of responsibility to conserve for the finish. The results don’t matter, so why not try and impact the race in a meaningful way. Be the gal who maintains a hard tempo when the pace slackens. Repeatedly attack the field in an effort to get away in a break or solo move. Push your fitness. Practice moving from the back to the front both thru the field and up the side. What are the differences in effort an attention demanded for each approach? Can you do it better? Learn.

At the other end of the spectrum “A” races are the top 3 or 4 events in your season. They are the backbone around which all else is built, but represent only a small percentage of your racing. Figuring out which races might be your top priority should be relatively easy. Most racers have a favorite event that captures their imagination. Another safe bet is anything with the word ‘championship’ attached to it. If you’ve been racing for awhile and find yourself picking the same races each year, try something different this time. 

The conventional wisdom says you should  block your “A” races within a couple of weeks because it’s difficult to hold top end fitness for very long. If you plan well you can create add another “A” event after a 6 – 8 week period to reset your top end.  Whatever path you choose, build your training so that you come into your “A” races fit and well rested. 

That leaves the crux of your season for the “B” races.  Your approach to these races should be a bit more focused than a “C” race.  Have a specific performance objective for the day. It doesn’t have to be results oriented, but should reflect a higher expectation than a training race.  One key difference between “B” and “C” events is the intention to arrive at the decisive portion of the race in a position to make a difference. You need to make good decisions that serve an end result, whereas in a “C” race you can be a bit impetuous.

Impetuousness is not the hallmark of a successful racing season. Instead aspiring racers should approach their annual plan in a slightly more methodical way.  Start with the calendar,  a true measure of your talents, and a realistic plan for building the fitness needed to reach your top events and you will be on your way to a successful season.

Matt McNamara is a U.S.A. Level one coach, and the latest addition to the cyclingnewsasia coaching team - he is also a Dad and husband. Even though he does all of that he still manages to race, and coach top international athletes. Want to contact Matt or ask him a question relating to coaching or fitness? Contact cyclingnewsasia here with your questions for Coach Matt.

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