Listen to your old coach. I'm sure you will do fine in your sprint if you do.

One of the biggest issues I see when reviewing athletes training over prior years is that by that Aug-Oct time frame many athletes have stopped improving and are struggling to prevent psychological fatigue/burn out.
Often the cause of that is an excessive amount of excessively high intensity intervals starting around the first of the year

hope that helps you think about things

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Does that mean you will be starting a race series in April and go through a few months of it?

That's what has happened to me when I was uncoached.

Yes, that is correct. I will pretty much be racing 1-2 times per month until October.

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Team Zoot

This has been my experience with series racing: I've been through this about 8 times. Some coached, some uncoached.

(June) First 2 races go well, second one normally better than first
(July-August) Next 3 races I'm just running through and hanging on for the run, bike is normally sub-par.
(September) The last 2 races of the series normally go either of two ways, really bad or so-so. Really bad if I have a big race in October and train specifically for it without regard for my health or race results. So-so if I rest after the August races.

The late season race normally goes two ways: either so-so or great. (Usually November)
So-so if I don't take two weeks down and train through, then rest before big race.
Great if I take two weeks down after the August races and use the last of the series races as tests, then rest for big race.

So you need to choose which races are more important, the series or the end of the year. Personally I need the rest 8 to 10 weeks out from the big race if I want to do well and have started training in January-February.

Here's a few more things to think about.

1. It takes way less training stimulus to maintain something, lets say all out 200 speed or ability to ride at 95% of FTP for 1h25min than it does to get there.

2. Building/increasing volume & intensity together works great, at first. In fact I'd say many/most people who find their late(r) season a disaster tend to continue to try to pile these on together.

3. There are really only 2-3 events each season where results should really matter. Place these carefully.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta