I Need to Reduce My Training Hours and Considering Using Coach Jack Plans

Hi, I’m a racer trying to get an idea of whether the Coach Jack plans would be a good fit.

I’m a cat 2 road/cat 1 mtb racer and have been coached, self-coached, and briefly tried Trainerroad. I’ve trained like 10-16 hours a week for the past 10ish years, but now with life stuff I’m bringing training down to like 8 hours/week avg.

I recognize it’ll be hard to be competitive in gravel and long road events, but I’d love to continue racing at a cat 1/2 level in crits and XCO, and get into CX. I’ve been researching self-coaching and the amount of information is overwhelming, so I’m looking at TrainerDay as a potential option to free up my time and energy to just train and not worry about the planning. Unfortunately personal coaching just isn’t in the budget right now.

I’m wondering if anyone has insight on if the Coach Jack plans are a good fit for my situation. Thanks for reading!

Hi again :slight_smile: Sorry to say, but I don’t think CJ is going to work any magic here.

I am going to ask Coach Andrea (30 year pro coach) and designer of CJ what thoughts he has.

One thing I would suggest is if you can dedicate 2-3 months a year to increased cycling and so average 8 hours a week for the year but change that to 4/week in the fall and early winter and then build up to say 14-16 for just 2-3 weeks of the year, you might get to your current performance levels and then having the right plan such as CJ could help make the difference to get you that final bit.

So this would be a 7.5 hour a week average

This assumes your first A race is is may 1st.

If this idea worked for you then during your shortest weeks of the year you might do some HIIT training or other creative ideas to try to hold on to some fitness.

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Thanks for the response! I think I might be able to do something like that, or at least so some long weekend rides for a couple weeks or like a training camp or something during the base season. I probably can’t realistically do over 12, but I can find ways to fit in longer rides occasionally for part of the year.

Yes, if pre-season you just do what you can build up about 10% each week for 8 weeks above your desired average weekly (so 2 months above 8 hours a week), getting to the maximum possible say 12 or maybe one planned week of 16 (take a day off from work once a year), with the a decent plan you might be able to keep to a similar level you have now. Again as I said find creative ways to find other zone 1/zone 2 efforts if that means “rucking” while on walks or biking to work, taking the stairs more often, everything you can to get more aerobic hours per week especially during a winter period that might be lower cycling hours you really could hold on to some of what you have. As you get down in hours even during a base phase you might want do do one day of HIIT for example. What we can base + or base++

Thanks, this is a helpful framework. I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes this next season!

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