Creating Your Annual Training Plan

With your goals set and events selected, you’re ready to dial in your Annual Training Plan for your season ahead. In part 3 of our Planning Your Season series of posts, we’ll layout the process of your Annual Training Plan. This road map of your training program is often referred to as your Annual Training Plan. It sets the foundation of your training progression allowing you to know ‘when you should be where’ in your build up. It also helps you stay on track and progressing towards your end goals.

Building Fitness & Accumulating Fatigue: Managing Both

Training is a balancing act. As you train you gain both fitness and fatigue. Doing a big block of training takes a lot of energy. You’re expected to be tired (and slower) upon the conclusion of training blocks. With rest and recovery you absorb the load you just applied. Within time you recover, adapt, and bring freshness back to the body leading towards a stronger (faster) you than before the training load was applied.

Your Annual Training Plan should repeat this process in a gradual & appropriate manner for you. Then repeated over and over to apply stress and continue to accumulate fatigue followed by recovery. All of this allowing for the right amount of recovery and absorption of fitness you will see an upward trend of progression.

Do too much training (or do not allow enough absorption time) and you become rundown and progression slows. Or worse, you get sick, injured, or simply burnt out on the process and are forced to take a break. A proper training plan will have progressive training loads and include the right amount of recovery and absorption. Balancing these two elements can allow for a well timed peak of fitness and freshness for your “A” Race.

The Fitness / Fatigue Equation

The tricky part of this equation is that in order to gain fitness you must acquire fatigue; and to gain freshness means you must reduce fatigue, which means lose fitness.

Understanding these concepts can be a bit confusing, or at least require a bit of experience. The training application Training Peaks, along with the makers of power meters, HRMs, smart trainers, and cycling computers, such as Wahoo Fitness, have helped to create (relatively) easy to use & follow training metrics that can be extremely helpful when creating your Annual Training Plan. The metrics of Training Stress Score (TSS), Chronic Training Load (CTL), and Training Stress Balance (TSB) can all be utilized to create an effective plan (learn more here).

Of course one must know exactly how these metrics relate to one another. These metrics fall right in line with this fitness vs. freshness concept by measuring your training loads, fatigue models, adaptation rates and overall training progressions. Combined with frequent (and effective) testing to establish and maintain accurate training zones you have access to some helpful tools that allow for better precision in your structured planning.

All this said, to reach a high level of fitness without fatigue is the challenge for both the coach and athlete to figure out. This takes time and practice. Often over several years to figure it out just right for the individual athlete. However there are some basic concepts to help get your annual planning process started.

1.  Allow for the longest Base Builder (base period) you possibly can.

Don’t wait, start your training program early, right after a short break following your previous season! This allows for a gradual & steady progression of training, fatigue accumulation, and absorption of fitness to minimize overall stress application and minimize odds of illness or injury, while maximizing your fitness gains and year-to-year improvements.

2.  Race Preparation Phase (build period) is only as long as needed for your event.

You will be in very good shape upon conclusion of your Base Build. The Race Prep gets you towards your peak. Top-end fitness comes quickly following a well trained base. Don’t drag it out. Train the energy systems that are required within your target event (specialization). Shorter events require short Race Prep phases; longer events require a bit more.

3. Rest & Repeat.

Multiple “A” races in one season? Take a short break after the first. Then get back into next Race Prep that builds towards your next event. Longer seasons of racing may require longer builds through a second Base Builder & Race Prep phase to not overdo time spent in Race Prep (ie. Base Fitness can be maintained year-round, Race Prep Fitness can only be maintained for a couple months).

4. Use Metrics to track your progress.

Training with HR & Power not only allows you to train with more structure, but it allows you to set up your entire season with more structure. Set weekly training goals based on Training Stress Score (TSS), track fitness through Chronic Training Load (CTL), and you can create your whole Annual Training Plan up based off fitness & freshness to maximize your progression and time your peak.

5. Your Plan is NOT set in stone.

Spend time to create your annual plan, but realize that plans often (almost always) change. That is okay. Use your plan to provide with direction. Have Point A (start of the new training season) and a Point B (your “A” race), and a reasonable plan to get from A to B. If something comes up as a disruption in your training, you can always edit your plan to make the most of what have to work with. Use it as a map of your season, and know that there are different roads that can get you to the same location.

Annual Training Plan Example

The example below is provided to give you a visual of what a (very simplistic “text book”) annual plan might look like for a two-peak season; with the first peak being a shorter power based event, and the second event being a longer endurance based event.

• The grey bars represent weekly TSS (training load) goals.
• The blue “mountain” in the back ground is your fitness… the more you train the bigger the mountain.
• The yellow “peaks & valleys” represent your freshness… as you train your freshness dips into the valleys; coming off recovery weeks freshness shoots up to a peak.
• Base Builder is October through March, gradually building fitness in 4 week blocks (3 build, 1 recover).
• Race Prep 1 is April through mid-May (6 weeks), descending TSS in two week blocks allowing fitness (blue) to remain high, and freshness (yellow) to gradually rise.
• During Taper (mid/late May) fitness declines gradually while freshness rises to allow for a peak performance (ie. highest fitness & freshness you can simultaneously achieve at “A” race.
• Following the week off at end of May freshness rises to it annual high points to allow for complete “refreshness”.
• Race Prep 2 begins June, starts with high intensity (Anaerobic Power), descends through each energy system while building volume, TSS, and fitness (blue) to a high point of the season.
• A sharp drop in volume for the recovery & taper allows freshness to rise rapidly while minimizing loss in fitness, ideal for a peak performance over a long course event.
• Following the second peak, in the end of season Transition period freshness is restored to highest levels (while fitness descends to low levels) and you’re ready to get back to structured training for the next year.

When life get complicated…

Of course this is a very simple and easy example of an annual plan. Throw in family and work commitments, holidays, additional “B” & “C” races, and other complications and the annual plan layout becomes a bit more tricky. This is where a coach can come in handy; although if you think through it all and lay it out on the calendar you can plan around the tricky spots in order to make the most of what you have to work with.

With your annual plan in place you have a better grasp of where you’d like your fitness to be a different points throughout your base and race prep build, and now you’re ready to really dig into your training and begin working towards your goals.

Let Us Help You With Your Annual Training Plan

We have 12, 18 and 24 week Base Builder Plans to fit your annual training plan programming needs, as well as Race Prep Plans for mountain bike, road, gravel, and triathlon. You can easily create your Annual Training Plan on Training Peaks (Premium account required), count out the weeks you have to work with, and then drop in the Base Builder & Race Prep plans that fit your timing needs. These plans will populate your weekly training schedule and follow the fitness building schemes referenced in the above examples.

Need more help? Or want to get your complicated schedule just right? Send us an email and we can get you dialed in. Happy to answer questions for free or do the planning for you as part of a low-cost Custom Plan option.

Written by Cody Waite, professional endurance athlete, endurance sport coach, and founder of Sessions:6 Sport Performance. Looking for help with your endurance sport training? Check out his Stock Training Plans, Custom Training Plans, and  Personal Coaching options created to fit your needs and budget.