Ready-to-run plans

Less than a year of riding with any regularity, or coming back after years away. No known FTP, or an FTP you don't trust.

The rider who already rides but never built a real base. Also the one who builds it every year and wants to do it right.

For the rider who already knows how to train and needs a base that holds up a whole season, not a plan that teaches them how to pedal.

For the rider who's coming back. From an injury, from surgery, from a long break, from a lost winter, from a year when life got in the way.

For the rider who has 3–4 hours a week and won't get more. Not out of laziness: because of work, kids, life.

Same rider as always: 3–4 hours and no more. Eight weeks of threshold are done, and now it's time to raise the ceiling.

Same rider as always: 3–4 hours and no more. Threshold and VO2 are up; now what's missing is the strength to hold them when the road tilts up.

Same rider as always: 3–4 hours and no more. The engine is there; what's missing is the short punch: the attack, the steep ramp, the acceleration that decides it.

Same rider as always: 3–4 hours and no more. But with a long event on the horizon, or a specific problem: falling apart in hour 3.

Same rider as always. But no longer trying to build: trying not to lose fitness, and to improve a bit if possible.

Your first structured VO2 Max block. You know what suffering feels like, but you've never done eight weeks of intervals with a stated goal.

For the rider who has already done eight weeks of long intervals and knows how to pace an effort above threshold.

For the rider with two VO2 blocks already in the legs, who knows how to pace both long and short intervals, and needs a stimulus the body isn't used to yet.

For the rider who has done twenty-four weeks of VO2 work in three different formats and needs to change the structure, not the session.

For the rider who climbs poorly, or climbs well but never trained it on purpose. The first structured climbing block.

For the rider who can hold a steady pace up a climb but gets dropped as soon as someone changes the pace.

For the rider who can hold a climb, survives the pace changes, and gets dropped when someone really attacks. Or when the climb comes in hour 4.

For the rider heading to real high mountains: a sportive with four climbs, a stage, a week in the Alps. The one who already knows how to climb one mountain and needs to know how to climb the fourth.

For the rider heading to a gran fondo, a sportive, a long gravel event or anything between 4 and 8 hours where the goal is to finish strong, not to win a sprint.

For the rider who races criteriums, or any short-circuit race with corners, accelerations and a knock-down, drag-out finish.

For the rider who races XCO, short XCM, mountain marathons or MTB rallies. The first cross-country-specific block.

For the rider who can already produce the XC effort but dies at the start, or gets dropped on lap 2 and never sees anyone again.

For the rider who already starts well and survives lap 2, and needs lap 5. The one racing a season, not a single race.

For the rider who has never trained the sprint deliberately. The one who "sprints" by just pushing harder.

For the rider who already has the technique and wants it to work at minute 55 of a race, not just on a Tuesday morning.

For the rider who has the technique, can hold it under fatigue, and needs the sprint that comes after the sprint.