How to Plan a Race Season
October officially begins race registration season. Social media is exploding with race dates and registration instructions. With some of the big races filling up early in the year and the logistics of traveling to remote locations, it’s important to take some time to plan your season. If you’re eyeing one of the bigger events, now is the time to plan your calendar for 2023.
So how do you plan a fun and motivating season?
Start with your goals
This is an important step that you don’t want to skip. Knowing what you want out of the season will help you make a lot of choices.
The first step in this should be to define your why. Why is this important to you?
It can be as simple as a love of riding and a desire to ride in rad places or you may have a more complex why focused on self-growth. Your why keeps you focused when life goes off track. It also keeps things in perspective.
After finding your why, set your goal. Whether the goal is to make the cutoff time at a big event, get a personal best on a 100-miler, or even get a group of women to train and race together, write down your goals.
It's helpful to put your 'why' and goals in a place you can regularly see them.
Take an inventory of your life
The next step is to take a solid inventory of your life related to training and racing. This inventory should include things like:
Budget
Event registration costs vary but you also need to account for travel, housing, food, and other event-related expenses (swag!!). Often events are in rural locations so it’s not easy to get there and housing options are limited. The cost goes up for race weekend. Of course, there are likely plenty of smaller, drivable or overnight events in your area to choose from as well.
Training
The other thing to account for is the type of training you want to do. If you hate any type of indoor training but live in the middle of Wisconsin, an early season 100+ miler might not be the best choice for you. Look at a sample training plan and understand the type of mileage you’ll need to be putting in 3-4 months out.
Life Situations
Don’t forget to inventory your life. Big projects at work, life markers for kids like a graduation or starting college, and elderly parents, can all take up more time than we realized. Of course, there’s never a perfect time but take an inventory of what life will be like in the months leading up to your big events.
Research the events
I have not found a good central database of all gravel events so this can take some time. For some of the bigger events, you’ll want to look at the date registration opens and whether it’s a lottery or first come first serve. If it’s a lottery, when do you find out if you received a spot? Often, if you apply for the lottery, your card is charged if you’re accepted. So if you get into all of the big events, you’ll have paid for them all.
Don’t treat every event the same
When you look at your event calendar, think about the priority of races. If you have a performance goal for a race, that would be your ‘A’ race. Other races might just be for training, race experience, or just for fun. Most folks have 1-3 ‘A’ races per season. Even if you don’t have a performance goal, it’s nice to prioritize your events. It will help you make decisions about what to focus on when life happens.
Put together a training plan
There are lots of free and low-cost resources for training available.
UNBOUND offers free training plans that can be used for any event.
You can usually purchase low-cost plans from TrainerRoad
If you plan to do a lot of indoor training, both the Zwift and the Wahoo Systms have training plans as a part of their monthly subscription.
And of course, if you have the budget, a coach is always helpful. You’ll get workouts tailored to your goals and schedule as well as feedback and race prep sessions.
A note of caution, some training plans can feel overwhelming when you see them, especially static ones or the ones offered through subscription services. They aren’t taking your goals and lifestyle into account. If you see a training plan with 20 hours of weekly riding on it, and that’s not feasible, adapt it.
Read Things I wish I Knew about Training before My First Gravel Race
Be prepared to adapt
Things always happen. Sickness, last-minute work commitments, changes in your financial situation, injuries, etc. Be prepared to adapt. It’s good to find out if your event has a deferral or race registration transfer policy before you sign up. Put the last date to cancel hotel or Airbnb reservations in your calendar. All of this will give you more piece of mind when life happens.
Finally, remember that this is supposed to be fun. Sometimes training is not fun but if you’re hating more days than you’re loving, change your plan. The only person you have to answer to is you!
Further Reading
Going from Riding to Training - What you Need to Know