Nail a 1-hour circuit race

2 weeks to prepare

The best way you can prepare for the short maximal efforts and minimal recovery time between them is with some High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT (see sidebar below).

And providing you have at least been following some sort of training over the past few months, a couple of sessions of HIIT each week prior to the race will certainly help.

If you haven't, then it's neither safe nor desirable to attempt HIIT, so accept that you are likely to get ‘dropped' in the early part of the race and end up riding on your own or with small groups of others in a similar predicament.

There is nothing wrong with this - in fact it's almost a rite of passage for beginner racers and even many experienced, early-season racers who prefer the ‘race yourself fit' approach by simply racing as often as possible until they are able to stay with the bunch. This is hardly the brightest approach as long-term you won't see much improvement year on year and if you get dropped you might as well be riding a 25-mile individual time trial (see page 38).

Key goals:

• Get some short, sharp efforts done to remind legs and lungs of how to hurt.
• Practise your bunch riding skills; using your head and sitting in the right place can help you get away with a lack of fitness.

4 weeks to prepare

Focus your energies on HIIT training, allowing for recovery days and a one to two-hour steady ride a week. Join a local chaingang or organised training group ride at least once a week in order to develop bunch handling skills and take advice from the more experienced racers in the group - ask them what they are doing and learn from their advice.

If there is a coached session on a closed road circuit available, use it. You'll be getting maximum gains from minimal training time and have an expert adviser to offer advice on where you are and what you need to do in order to meet your event demands.

Key goals:

• Practise smooth fast cornering and work on your acceleration out of the turn.
• Keep up the hard intervals, aim for 2-3 sessions of 60 minutes or less a week.

6 weeks to prepare

Six weeks is long enough to complete a mini periodised training phase where you spend a week or so working on different elements of the key demands of road racing. So if you haven't done much training up to this point spend a couple of weeks working on your aerobic endurance with long steady-state rides, then, over the next four weeks factor in shorter, harder training sessions as you reduce the volume and up the intensity.

Include sessions that develop the components of fitness required for road racing - speed (high cadence work), strength (in the gym and big gear work on the bike), power and short term muscular endurance (short hard-gear intervals with fast accelerations).

Key goals:

• Break down the demands of your race and make sure you cover each area.
• With 6 weeks you have time to develop some aerobic fitness.

Target: 1-hour circuit race

Starting point: You're a regular club run rider doing long miles and can sustain a decent pace, but have done no racing or specific training.

This article was first published in the May 30 issue of Cycling Weekly. Read Cycling Weekly magazine on the day of release where ever you are in the world International digital edition, UK digital edition. And if you like us, rate us!