When do you stop training before a race?

[UnfitnessFreak]

What's the common consensus? A week before? Or are you still training the week of the event?

[IdeJongh]

No pro, but will stop serious riding week before, take easy cycle on the Tuesday and more easy on Thursday just to keep active.  My 0.5c 

[dirtrider]

About 4 months before the race . You need to rest a lot !!

[Kansas]

I do not really stop just take it slower then on Friday I do a hard one for about 30min.

[scotty]

Almost same intensity but shorter duration.

[The Saint]

Will have my last hard training ride about 1 week before race day. the days leading up to that I will just do some light spinning and keep the legs turning over, real low intensity stuff.

[NotSoBigBen]

About 4 months before the race . You need to rest a lot !!

 

Just be careful of overtraining and not arriving at the race at your peak sir

[Giant]

Depends on the race,

 

But the question you need to find an answer for is how long do you take to fully recover from a training session.

 

Hardest hill session will probably take you four days to recover, so don't do one within 5 days.

Easy spinn only takes a day to recover from so have one the day before.

 

All you want, is to not arrive at the line feeling tired.

 

Any more than that, and you are wasting valuable training time.

[Trubie]

About 4 months before the race . You need to rest a lot !!

 

Just be careful of overtraining and not arriving at the race at your peak sir

 

dont stop at all

3 weeks before reduce the ave weekly mileage and intensity to 75% of, 2 weeks before to 50% and race week to 25% or less.

during race week, very gentle easy riding, maybe 2-3/4 1min intervals to get the HR up to race pace

 

[Bos]

If you dont ride at all for a week before the race your legs will feel like lead on race day.

 

I normally do a few intensity rides monday, tuesday before the race, and then say wednesday do a easy ride, rest thursday and do a easy ride the day before and do one or two sprints, but make sure to recover from them and dont go to hard to long, you dont want to leave Lactic acid in the legs.

[Tubehunter]

It would depend on the details of your training plan and aspirations. Someone who trains all year round and has a proper structure of base training and specific periods of strength vs interval based training will do things differently to someone who started training 4 weeks before the event. Obviously if you're simply looking to enjoy the event instead of doing a PB your training will be structured differently too. The biggest factor should be your own recovery time in relation to how much training you have done. You're not going to fit in any 'magic' training session that will shave time of your result in the last week. You can only impede your performance on the day of the event by getting things wrong. Do proper warm ups and cool downs after rides, don't ride at heavy intensity for periods that require days to recover, but stay on the bike in that week. If you've been doing this for a while you will know what it takes to have 'fresh' legs on the day. If not, you need to experiment a little til you get what works for you, considering the variables already mentioned. This is the reason why the serious crew have specific programs designed by trainers. Good luck. Tubehunter2009-11-10 04:46:12

[UnfitnessFreak]

Thanks for all the input guys.

 

[Slipstream Sean]

The week before a important race, I like to do 60% of race distance at about 120% race pace. Then early in the week, I'll get a power session in, which I would have done at the begining of each week from 3-4 weeks before. Then another 1 or 2 easy spins with high cadence sprint intervals e.g. 120rpm for 2min etc, 1 of which would be the day before for 45mins.