What Is An Annual Training Plan?

As I write this, I’m at “Market” in Dallas with my wife. She has a boutique, and Market is where most of her ordering for the store happens. It’s a seasonal thing. For example, we’re here in late August, but this is for delivery in Spring ’24, with the earliest delivery being March, and some of these orders are to be delivered in May and June. Christmas and holiday orders were made in April.

What does this have to do with bike racing?

It’s the planning.

There are two seasons and 6+ months until delivery of these orders. It isn’t just planning; it’s a commitment that doesn’t even have the opportunity to pay off for at least six months. In terms of an Annual Training Plan, for an athlete new to us right now, we’re in the planning to plan stage. For the store, this is akin to when the season for racing starts for most people, so the preparation for the busiest time of year for a beach boutique is happening now, while it is in the latter part of summer of the year preceding. We still have Autumn and Winter to go!

In planning for the athlete, we look at what the athlete has done recently. We look at patterns, strengths, weaknesses, assets, liabilities…anything that we can use that will help the athlete have a plan that has a greater likelihood of being executed and helping them reach their goals is what we’re working with in terms of putting together a plan. 

It is then that we can actually plan a sequence of development that has the athlete physically capable of reaching their goals. The training plan itself is often seen as the cornerstone of everything as it regards getting ready for bike racing, but it’s often made overly complicated, because it is easier for a coach to default to, “Do the workouts,” than it is to sort out motivations, habits, flow, limitations, and the like, that actually affect training more than what the workout looks like on Trainingpeaks before it is even attempted.

Workouts with 20 steps to them aren’t better than a workout that is a simple duration and heart rate range as a target if the workout doesn’t actually get done. An annual training plan takes into account phases or cycles of training. Base miles, strength work, intensity and type of intensity, and skills (you do have skills as part of your plan, right?) are all components of a plan. How long you spend on cycles and areas of focus depends upon how much work you need on an area, how much time you have to give to it, your strengths and weaknesses, your training age (how long you’ve been training), your goals, the volume you’ve done recently, and even the volume you’ve done in the past, even if it was years ago.

Does your annual plan have you doing base miles? If so, it’s probably a good start. But does it include more hours than you can actually give? Perhaps it requires more hours than you can give it during November, for example. If your plan asks for you to put in two hours on a Wednesday, does that make sense if you don’t have two hours to give? Do you simply ride harder, because you have less time? Has that worked for you in the past?  Does that mean it was what was best for you?

There are lots of questions!

Most of these questions are easier to sort out with an experienced cycling coach. A proper cycling coach includes how to mesh your workouts with your life.  A proper cycling coach isn’t forcing you to a workout that they wrote or use, just like a bike fit isn’t about changing your body to fit the bike.

Planning is for YOU. The training plan is for YOU. It should be unique to you, because even if you are similar to another rider, you are still unique, and the things in your orbit that affect cycling are unique to you, and those should be considered.

-Christian Williams