Race Week Before a Sportive, What to Do Day by Day

James. Right, this is the WattPlan Podcast, and I'm James. Family, the day job, building WattPlan in the evenings, the odd podium when the quick lads stay at home, and a sports science habit I've stopped apologising for. This week, the seven days before a big sportive. The training's done, the legs feel strange, and every instinct says go out and test them. So what should race week actually look like? Lyra's our AI research voice, and every study she mentions is linked in the show notes.

Lyra. Shorter, and a bit sharp, and boring on purpose. Race week is for getting fresher, not fitter. Nothing you do in those seven days can add fitness for Sunday. All it can do is take freshness away, so the job is to ride less and not ruin it.

James. That feels wrong though. Surely one more proper session gives me something to carry into the weekend?

Lyra. It gives you something, just not what you want. Every ride adds to Fitness, the slow total of roughly your last six weeks, and to Fatigue, the fast total of the last week. Form is the gap between them. Cut the riding and Fatigue falls away in days, while Fitness only slips over weeks. So Form rises. One more hard session puts Fatigue straight back up, and Fitness barely notices it was there.

James. So the taper isn't adding anything. It's just letting the work show.

Lyra. Exactly that. And the research on how to do it is unusually consistent. We looked at two studies. The first is a 2003 review in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise by Iñigo Mujika and Sabino Padilla. Their recipe was to hold the intensity and cut the volume hard, and done that way, performance usually improved by about 3 percent. [1]

James. Three percent? I was hoping you'd say something with a bit more swagger.

Lyra. On a four hour sportive, 3 percent is several minutes, and you get it for riding less. I'd take that deal every time.

James. Fair. What was the second one?

Lyra. A 2007 meta-analysis in the same journal by Laurent Bosquet and colleagues, with Mujika among them. They pooled 27 studies in competitive sport. The best results came from about two weeks of taper, with volume cut by roughly half, and intensity and the number of sessions left alone. [2]

James. Two weeks. Is that what WattPlan does?

Lyra. No. In WattPlan the taper is race week itself, and the riding in it is short, roughly a third of the week before. That two weeks is an average across a lot of studies, not a prescription for one rider. Where both reviews agree is the shape. Less volume, keep a little intensity, keep riding.

James. Here's my problem, though. By Wednesday my legs always feel flat and heavy. Doesn't that mean I'm losing it?

Lyra. Not heavy. Unfamiliar. That's the first trap. Around midweek the legs feel odd, and riders read it as fitness leaving the building, so they go out for a hard hour to top up. Fitness hasn't gone anywhere in three days. What that hour does is put Fatigue back where it was, and the taper's gone. Whether you're new to this or on your tenth event, that one catches people.

James. And I'm guessing there's a second trap.

Lyra. The confidence ride. A hard climb or a long threshold block on Thursday, just to prove the legs are there. They were there. Now they're tired again, with three days to recover instead of seven. If you need reassurance, look at your Form, which should be climbing through the week. Don't go out and make new evidence.

James. So what's actually in the week, if I'm following the plan?

Lyra. Race Day sits on your event's date. Two days out is a full rest day. The day before is openers if you ride that day, an easy ride with a few thirty second surges a little above your FTP. Earlier in the week the rides are short, an hour and a half at most. Depending on how your days fall, three days out can be a short race pace session, and one shorter hard session can stay in early on.

James. Openers the day before. That's the bit I never trust. Wouldn't I be better resting?

Lyra. I'd disagree with you there. If you can ride the day before, ride it. Short surges at race pace keep the legs switched on, and they cost almost nothing. A week of nothing but rest and gentle spinning is how people end up with wooden legs on the start line. Do them in the morning, and the rest of the day is for eating, drinking and laying the kit out.

James. And if you train with power, presumably the temptation is to make those surges a bit bigger.

Lyra. It is, and you shouldn't. Thirty seconds means thirty seconds, at the power it gives you. And watch the easy spins too. A race week spin that drifts up into tempo is the Thursday test in disguise. If you train with power, the most useful number this week is the one telling you how little to do.

James. What about anyone racing properly, chasing a result? Do they need more intensity in there?

Lyra. If you race, both reviews are on your side about keeping some intensity while the volume falls. But it comes in short doses. In a WattPlan race week that's the openers, and sometimes a short race pace session three days out, two five minute blocks. What you don't want in the last few days is anything long and hard.

James. My race dates move all the time. So the Coach just shuffles it?

Lyra. It updates the event and lays race week again around the new date, with Race Day protected from later changes, and it keeps a record of what each day was before. One difference. When it re-lays, two days out is usually an easy spin with a few spin-ups rather than a full rest day, and if it knows how fresh you are, it sizes those last days to suit.

James. And outside the bike? I'm the sort who fits new tyres on the Saturday night.

Lyra. Then don't. Race week is a bad time for anything new. Eat what you normally eat, with a bit more carbohydrate in the last two days, sleep your normal hours, and leave the saddle height alone. If you're new to events, that matters as much as the riding. The plan has already changed, and nothing else needs to.

James. And then Sunday comes, I'm fresh, I'm buzzing, and I go off like a rocket for the first hour.

Lyra. Which is the third way to waste a good taper. Warm up if the start is fast, roll out if it isn't, and pace the first hour as if there were three more to come, because on a sportive there usually are. Fresh legs make hard efforts feel cheap early on. They aren't.

James. Really? Even on the first climb, when everyone's going?

Lyra. Especially then. The rider who's still steady in hour four passes a lot of the people who won that first climb. Let them go, and ride your own number.

James. What can't the studies tell us here?

Lyra. The exact week. Both reviews pool many studies, and neither tells a rider with a job and six hours a week which day to rest or where the openers go. Nobody has tested a sportive race week day by day, head to head. So the shape is evidence based, and the details are coaching judgement built on top of it.

James. Okay. What should someone do this week, if their event's coming up?

Lyra. Two things. One, open your plan and look at the last week now, so you know what each of the last few days holds and nothing surprises you on Friday. Two, if your event date has changed, tell the Coach in chat today, so race week sits on the right days.

James. So, look at the week before I'm in it, get the date right, and when the legs feel odd midweek, check Form instead of going out to prove something.

Lyra. And believe the odd feeling. Legs that feel restless and a bit strange on Wednesday are usually the taper working.

Lyra. The full article and every study we mentioned are on the WattPlan blog, linked in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this, follow the WattPlan Podcast wherever you're listening, so you don't miss the next one.

James. And if you want a plan built around the time you've actually got, get WattPlan on the App Store or Google Play. Thanks for listening.

Voices produced with ElevenLabs. James's voice is a clone of his own, Lyra is an AI voice, and James reviews every episode.