ENSURING YOU REACH PEAK FITNESS FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT
The first step is making sure your training is as relevant as possible to your chosen event. There’s little point in focusing on sprint training if you’re targeting an epic hilly sportive! Make sure your training includes plenty of sessions that mirror challenges you’re likely to come across during your event.
If you know your event includes a difficult 10 minute climb towards the end of the route try tagging on some hill repeats to the end of your weekend rides. If you prefer to train indoors try completing a long session of riding in your endurance zone followed by some threshold intervals.
MASTER THE TAPER
The next thing to think about is how to taper your training in the run up to the big day. It goes without saying that you want to turn up to your event with fresh, strong legs. While it may seem tempting to train right up to the last minute. With a week or so to go your fitness levels are not going to improve and further training will actually be counterproductive. That being said, you don’t want to stay off the bike completely in the aim of having fresh legs and lose those hard earned fitness improvements you’ve gained over the previous months.
The aim is to strike a balance between how fit you are and how fatigued you are. This can be a bit of an art and reaching peak fitness requires some practice. Luckily there are multiple ways to help you decide what works best for you.
NUTRITION & HYDRATION
Finally, it’s worth briefly mentioning nutrition. We really can’t overstate how important nutrition and hydration are when it comes to unlocking peak performance at endurance events. This applies to both the days leading up to the event and the duration of the sportive itself. We advise our athletes to gently increase their carbohydrate intake in the run up to an event. Advising they peak at eating 8-10g of carbs per kg of body weight per day. Don’t feel like you need to shovel in mounds of pasta to do so. Fresh and dried fruits, cereals and smoothies amongst other things can all help you reach this target.