I find that I loose fitness extremely fast. Fitness as in my highest fitness level.
I have a course I ride locally that is pretty hilly. Not rolling hills. I test my fitness by trying to get around the course three times and exceed 20.5 or better avg. It is really tough for me. The course is 13.5 miles and approximately 1400 feet of climbing.
I find that if I don’t do this workout for even a week it will take me a couple attempts to get it back. Sounds kind of crazy and maybe in my head.
I am fit but not really fit unless I workout really hard almost every day. I have pretty much the same situation on running.
Curious if any others experience this. Last race of the year is in a couple of weeks and going to be really difficult to stay motivated afterwards. Already having difficulty.
Not sure exactly what you’re looking for, but as to “keeping at highest fitness level” the answer is easy: you can’t.
Yes, you can keep fit, and maybe that’s what you’re looking for in a different answer, but maintaining a peak fitness can only last a few weeks at best–that’s why it’s called peaking. The rest of the season you will vary in your “fitness level”, if that is defined by how fast you can ride your loop, due to periodization. If these are new terms, look them up–they’ll make a world of difference.
You can be really fast a few times a year and sort fast year-round, but there is a good reason we call it “peaking” for your important races. From there, you can only go down.
Your TT course sounds tough and probably takes you 45 minutes at max effort. That is a very hard, probably too hard, workout to be conducting every week and the recovery probably make it hard to do all your other swim/bike/running and maintain frequency in all your events.
Some people like to peak for key events; others prefer to stay at 90 percent year round to be able race competitively more often. Achieving max fitness is a cycle, not really a destination.
It seems like I can maintain it. So I don’t really look at it as if I am peaking. Well can maintain it if I continue to kill myself.
I worked really hard over the last 9 months. Had a very good season of races But races are soon to be over until May next year. So now I have to figure out what do I do.
Group rides on the week-end really don’t seem to do that much for my fitness. What level of fitness am I going to try to maintain? This is just not clear to me.
I have always been a slow runner. With some hard work I have improved my running somewhat. But I have to push really hard to keep it. I have to run a lot. A lot more than I have in the past. But during the off season how am I going to run? Long slow? Short fast? Seldom? Often? Running is also my work. I hate it. Cycling I love.
Swimming is working on my form. I will also work on core a lot more during the off season. But running and cycling are really not clear.
You plan it as best you can and hope things work out. I like to pick one race in the spring and one race in the fall. Before these races is about the only time I do any sort of structured speedwork and reduce volume. Others who are more closely tied to training plans and have coaches plan out peaks to the gnat’s posterior. It just depends on what you want out of your season. Lots of good races or a few really good races.
Chad