Peak fitness: timing is everything

Most of us train with a goal in mind - a big trip or event where we want to be at our best. In the hopes of feeling good at our goal event we train to achieve our best fitness of the year at the right moment. Timing is everything!

As we train we hopefully experience that sensation of improvement: the legs feel good, the efforts feel smoother, we can get up and over that local hill that is always a challenge. And this provides us with the motivation to push that little bit more and chase that extra wattage. All good stuff and part of the process. That boost in motivation from feeling the positive changes will fuel your early morning rides.

Timing

Timing is everything though! As a rider looking to be good at a specific time of the season you need to be aware that this positive sensation of being “en forme”, as the French would say, can’t keep building indefinitely. Nor can you stay on your peak fitness for too long, perhaps a few weeks at best for most of us.

There is no point in being the best rider at your club rides early in the year, when your goal is to try and do a good ride at Nationals in the middle of the season. This is a mistake that many of us make, because we unrealistically expect our positive training sensations to keep building if we keep up our training.

How do we keep a lid on our fitness so that it doesn’t build too quickly, too early?

Keep that motivation in check

In part, we need to manage our motivation and how hard we are training in particular. Is it time to chase the peak watts early in the season? Perhaps it is for some of us, based on the relationship of your VO2 and tempo abilities. But if you are already riding quite well do you need to be doing VO2 intervals when your goal is months away?

Rest weeks

Incorporating proper rest weeks are also part of the process of managing how your fitness develops. Rest weeks are not about lowering your fitness - the opposite in fact, as you need rest to get better. But they are a way of leveling off the build in your fitness.

Mental energy

Rest weeks also help manage your mental well-being. While it is great to be motivated to put in that solid training early in the year you need to manage how much mental energy you are using to do it. Peak fitness is more than just being in good shape. You also need your mental energies and motivation to be at their best. Having that mental energy available at your goal event will allow you to put that good fitness to use. Without the mental energy being available to you that peak fitness can actually go to waste as you lack the motivation to push yourself.

Rest weeks play a role in managing your overall fitness so that you are at your best when it matters - psychologically and physically.

As we train we want to feel those positive sensations that come with our fitness improving. You can’t be at your best all year though. The trick then is managing that build in your fitness to correspond with your goal events.