Race fitness

[Dominic]

How long to get race fitness back? Ridden the bike once in the past 6 months. Have been doing some running in that time. Interested in doing a few races later in the year. So how long to get some reasonable race fitness back? 6 weeks?

[Toks]

er...how long is a piece of string? How long does it take you to get some basic fitness back/ - 4-6 weeks perhaps? Race fitness another 3-4 weeks?. There are lots of variables (how often you train? how intensively? how well you recover etc?), to consider of course and we all respond differently to training efforts? Also are we talking fit enough to just finish in the bunch or fit enough so that you can be truly competitive and really determine the race outcomes? Good luck with your training

[Andrew G]

I find the best way to get race fitness is racing. I'm sure you'll be fit from your running and it will be more getting used to being back in the saddle and topping back up. Get some miles in and a few intervals and enter some 10s and 25s. Don't worry about your times or compare them to your old ones, just treat them as training and yard markers.

Be good to see you back at the HQs early doors.

[Marek]

Go out and batter yourself to the degree that you are in a whimpering state by the time you get home. Preferably do this two days in a row. You want to be finding it difficult to turn a pedal, may I recommend riding with the training group for as long as you possibly can and then going and climbing a bunch of hills and the crawling home. Do this a couple of weeks in a row and you will be ready to race on week 3. Oh yes, and mid week do a couple of turbo sessions with hard intervals in. That should be enough to get you around. So 3 weeks and you will be ready.

Cheers

Marek....