Alright this is going to be a quick video on how to target a race, what training you need to do, what fitness and freshness you want to turn up to the race at, and just generally how to figure out if you want to have an A priority race, you want to win it, what you are going to do. So my A priority race is Bristol South Road Race, which is this one here from 2018. You can see 8 kilometers at 1,300 meters of climbing. It's a cat 3-4 so it's pretty chill, not too hard, not a map B with a lot of hairs, so it should be good. So first of all it's just like figure out what type of race it is. So for me the ones I'm going to target are going to be climbing races because I'm good at that. But yeah, so you look straight away and figure out what are the features of this course, very rolling, couple big climbs or what sort of one of the climbs like. So you can see straight away the main climb here is about 3 minutes long, 2-3 minutes long, but it's quite draggy afterwards. You then sort of have a rest, another little kick up, descend and then sort of rolling again. So generally you're thinking, well where's the decisive part of this race going to happen? And that will be on the climb. So realistically you've got to think what type of rider are you? So let's say if you were a sprinter, then realistically in this race you've got to think I really need to improve my climbing. I need to be able to hang on for that 3 minutes. So let's say if you are better on the climbs you might be more like, well I know I'm going to get round the climbs, actually I need to work on my sprint or I need to work on like the surges not necessarily climbing at whatever what's it will be. So again you can see here, it's a pretty savage race. So 460 watts for 1 minute 12. And the normalised, well start of the way it is, it's 277. So I recognise normalised will be close to 300 watts, maybe not quite that for 3 hours. I've been so turned off hours and he weighs about 62 kilos or so. So a little less than 5 watts per kilo. I would recommend which would be the normalised. But anyway so you can look here, you can see where it's hard where it's not the heart rate and stuff. So you can see from here onwards the race definitely picked up or not. I'm not actually sure how the race did, I'm angry when the race, but I will ask him to try and figure it out. But generally what you can see is there's a consistent sort of climbing this segment called Hiller Up. So 300 watts and pretty chill. 375 so you know it's only got a bit harder, 330 chill, 376, 330. But again if you look at this what's really more important and I would say that anything else is that the surges, so you can see it's pretty easy to be getting and there's just this bit here where it's sort of like 470 watts per minute. And that's really where you're going to make it up. This steep part goes round the corner. It's 9% gradient so the drafting's not really going to be much. And then sort of over the top, I think this is the other thing, over the top it's not as easy as people think. You're still doing okay maybe 233 is quite chill but you know that it's, oh sorry, 300 watts for this one minute 38 over the top of the hill and that's where you've got to think well I'm going to get dropped. So for me I'm thinking I need to get better at VLT max intervals and I need to get better at sort of 30, 15's, really surges efforts so I'm used to that. And obviously just race condition. So first I'm just going to talk like general conditioning and then we'll talk about more race specific conditioning which you know is harder to get. So anyway we'll go from December, sorry January but generally this is more just like general base. So I'm at uni normally but I finished, well sorry I didn't have any exams or anything over January. So I came back from Holland and just basically banged out fat and I'm out hours. So 12 hour week, 19 hour week and as you can see this is all just threshold sort of threshold a bit of tempo but yeah pretty much just threshold the whole time or endurance ride. So again here, started to do a bit of race intensity here just to see you know how the legs are going whatever. Some people don't like to do that but you can see this is a classic like 4 hours 20, 233 TSS and you know there's solid 48 minutes at threshold which is what we want. So that was good and then here again you can see sort of close to 5 hours, 252 TSS this is some tempo efforts. So you can see what I'm doing. I'm just trying to increase my FTP, increase my endurance because I have the time and this is a fact sweet 25 hour week and that really debris me but yeah anyway next week was good just in recovery ride. I decided to fight this up to be honest like I wasn't ideal and in this one I just didn't really sleep enough and just wasn't really feeling it. Maybe I did good bit hard considering I wasn't really sleeping much. It's like I started going out a lot which was an ideal. Anyway, so my fitness went up to 90 and I went down to 75 but then after that it was a bit better so this week again you can see I started to do more 20 minute efforts for my TT bike because I am racing TT so you know that's the threshold is still going to be there but what I decided to do is you can see here's these 6 minute intervals and this was really trying to on here you see the sort of effort from like the bottom of the hill to the very top it's like a 6 minute effort more or less. So I was thinking you know that's what I want to start off and then I'll get even more specific so there's only 283 watts but if we round off a little bit you can see like 340 for 4 minutes so that's basically what I did so you can see the water I was doing here so 6 minutes 343 30 seconds at 3902 watts and like that was that last little kick really hot. So I started getting some VO2 max and then racing. I'm not going to talk about racing but I will go back so reason why it's really important to do race is before your main priority race is just that surges that it's about I reckon a 10 to 15 seconds surging a criterion which really like is hard to replicate it's those like really short punchy surges out and you'll see what I mean here like what the water which is just it just really like sort of comes up is that ability to turn on the gas and off the gas which in training is impossible to replicate and your C-PRO cyclist talk about the whole time that would just say like you know I don't have that race, rec top top and sort of race for but you'll see it's a minute 520 watts normalized or like 470 like you're not going to do that in training sorry 4105 normal just normal and also trying to get 293 wasted average power sorry 293 normal it's up 40 minutes again that is hard to replicate in training so it's really important to do race intervals and then TT is just help you generally for suffering and they also get training. The next week again I was ill this week which is really annoying I did a couple of efforts on my TT bike that day and then I just couldn't I really couldn't like I was just it goes to the point where I was like well there's no point in making my worse myself worse that I did a TT here and it was okay but again this is the whole 6 minute intervals start so if my week had been perfect I would have done 6 minute intervals and I would have really tried to boost that VO2 max which is what I was trying to do and then this week I started to do some 30 seconds on 30 seconds off I actually turned these into 30 15s and these were incredibly horrible I did these at an average power about 340 watts for just a little under 8 minutes and each 30 second interval was more 390 to 400 watts and that was really got good threshold and good VO2 max but it also practiced my surging and then I also did a TT there I had a race here and I did another TT so it was a solid weekend so you can see here another 311 watts normal like 310 watts normalized so again you're not really going to get that in training and definitely my leg speed and sort of race conditioning was getting better and then I just started this week doing onto some 3 minute intervals and these were really really horrible generally I was really struggling to complete them all I didn't complete them all how they were set out to be because I just need more rest but the yeah I was doing through these 3 minute intervals at sort of 390 watts which was yeah you know not very nice so 388 for the first one then 388 then this one I just couldn't do which is a bit annoying but you know it was yeah it was it was a tough day out but this is what I'm trying to say is that you've got to figure out what is what is your race the race going to be through my intervals got to do that and then I had some VO2 max efforts today again 535dens did the trick and then this weekend I would want to race I wanted to do a 3 hour road race but I didn't get in unfortunately actually I don't think I even applied because I was being an idiot but anyway these will just be really big TSS days to just really try and get the fitness and then we'll freshen up this week or doing an FTP test but you'll see I go to the gym normally on Monday so basically down by then doing our FTP test Wednesday but I reckon I might move that on to Thursday I'm not sure I'm going to decide and I'll do some VO2 max efforts but these will be like probably I'll do 3 3 minute intervals there'll be further apart and there'll be real high intensity just so you know make sure you don't lose any fitness and then we'll come in with formal about minus 2 which will be ideal for the Bristol South Road race and hopefully it will get a good result so that's sort of to recap all that I know I've spoken for quite a long time now the main thing is race intensity build from threshold figure out what you need is it a sprint is it 10 minute effort 30 second effort whatever that is and it cheers watching how you did enjoy and I'll see you in the next one.