Sorry if this has been posted before (I checked most of the forum, found some threads related to this, but no real answer).

So, I've started a career.
Playing Barloworld in the continetnal tour.

My question regards the season strategy.
I'll divide my q int two sections; Team leaders/main sprinters and helpers.

Leaders/Main sprinters
I've made race scheduels for my main riders. Roughly they'll race 50 days spread over the whole season, focusing on my sponsors goals. This will surely be manageble fitness wise, but it'll lead to not focusing at all on a large number of races. What effects will that bring?
Starting to question the possibility to rack up enough points for promotion.
Would it be better to split the season into parts and have some riders close to peak at all times and then max peak them for the main rides?


Helpers
I added the total number of race days that my team is registerd for (~240). That number times the no of riders per race (7-8) divided by total number of riders (22) gives the average race days of a rider (240*7,5/22=~80).

So, eighty days for my riders on average. How do I manage that? Do I just leave the 'helpers' on auto-fitness and let them alternate throughout the season or do I let a block of riders race a couple of months and then let htem have the rest of the season off?

How do you set up your seasons?

And yes, I've read the season guide, but it's more of a team building guide in my opinion.

The way i used to do it with a team going for promotion was just to let it be on auto fitness, and get enough points early on in the season to not have to worry so much later on in the season. However, after promotion i started to just do the fitness individually just for team leaders. I'd advise probably doing the same for Soler, whereas for your sprinters i'd leave it on auto until 70-80 days had been raced, when i'd just shove up the training to 100%, and leave it there.

Seperating your team is kind of a good idea, but only in the sense of team leaders, the helpers don't matter that much as they can race as many days as they like and it won't matter much. Though i think you've already said that.
Maybe look through the calender and plan a time when Soler or another lead rider has lots of stage races to do over a month so he can race on high fitness level for quite some time before you have to lower his fitness.

Also it's good to keep in mind that a leader who targets the first part of the season can be used well as a protector/whatever later on in the season for someone else.

I'd also advise your team leaders to do upto 65 races as team leaders, and use them later on as domestiques. 50 race days is when their race fitness decreases, but they can still race quite effectively later on with less race fitness.

First of all racking up enough points won't be that big of a deal with Barloworld.
Your team leaders will have to get into shape for the races you want them to preform. So before such a race he will have to race lets say a least 8 days to come close to top fitness. These race days can also give you a lot of points. And Barloworld has some riders that can even earn a lot of points (in continental races) when they are at only 75-80 fitness (60-65 training + 10-15 race).

For your helpers I would say get them up to 60 training fitness manually (I guess you have read the fitness guide?). You can keep them there for the whole season by putting the training on 50% (I keep them between 62 and 64, but for that you have to change their training between 50% and 60% a few times a week).
Then when an important race approaches you can decide who you want to help your team leader(s) and get them up above 70 training fitness in 2 weeks.
If there is another race soon after the important one you can keep training one of the more talented helpers, so he is above 95 fitness, and try to get a good result with him.

With protour teams I find it fun to let the helpers peak for their favorite races, but that requires even more planning.

My strategy is very easy, but it works everytime.
If I want to get promoted, I put all my riders on 59 fitness manually by putting the training on 50% when they have around 60 training points. I let them like this for the whole season (yes, I never let a conti rider have a fitness peak).
Then I look in the calendar for one-day-races , which suit my team leaders, and register for most of them. I only play stage races with conti squads if they are sponsor targets.
Now you may ask why. It's very easy. One-day-races give equal points as stage races (in GC), but you can let your riders ride much more one-day-races than stage races. So you can achieve more points with your riders by participating in many one-day-races.
For contintal races, you don't need 70 overall fitness points to win them with a good rider on normal difficulty. So I'm able to win many races and to get clearly enough points to get promoted.
This tactic worked for me with every good conti team (Barloworld, Tinkoff, CSF, LPR, Wiesenhof, Acqua&Sapone...).

Depends if your a pussy and play on normal or hard.

On normal i could get the worst conti squad promoted in half the season. On hard, its a different matter.

He didn't say on which level he plays.
I only gave an advice. I play on hard now and I know it's difficult with this strategy. But as I said it's a good strategy for playing on normal, that's all.

I'm playing on normal right now. May start a new career on hard later on.
Anyway, thanks for the advice. Especially regarding the helpers. I'll make an extensive excel sheet covering all races, objectives for that race, suitable riders and then fiddle with it until I get something that looks promising.

If anyone's interested I'll post the sheet here for comments, advice or even if someone would like to use it.

I don't know the best way.

I normally look at the team goals and my personal goals and look at the riders I'm going to need to use to get them, then make sure they peak accordingly.

Usually that's more than just leaders... sometimes as many as 10-15 riders... but it usually isnt' the whole team either. The rest of the guys I keep between 60-70 fitness form all season.

For example, with my High Road career I considered the 3 grand tours, the 3 major cobbled classics, and the tour of California as my important races.

Michael Rogers and Kanstein Siutsou were to peak for the tour of california and the Giro.
George Hincappie was to peak for the cobbled season.
Kim Kirchen and Thomas Lovkvist were to peak for the Tour.
Linus Gerdeman was to peak for the Vuelta.
I needed stage wins in the Giro and Tour, so I had Boassen Hagen, Greipel and a couple of time trialists peaking for the Giro (team TT and sprint stage win possibles) and planned on Wiggins, Cavendish and Ciolek to peak for the tour.

So I had training peaks planned for about half my team. Now some had to change a bit (Wiggins broke his collar bone so I had to put another TT guy in his place), but in general it's worked for me.

I do the training 100% manual. That way i have the most control over each riders. I always make an extensive schedule at the beginning of the season like this:



Kinda says it all how i schedule my season. As for racedays, that''s usually the only thing i cheat at as it is so not realistic imho that a guy like Menchov can only do 50 racedays which for the most part makes it useless to target two GTs. Altough im carefull with the younger riders, not too much racedays for them (in this case 50 is a good limit to abid)

For the talented young riders i try not to keep their fitness high all season. Cause high training percentages will make their progression/stats training slower.

How can Peter Weening have Paris-nice as season goal when he's going to race the Tirreno Adriatico

Is than an excel sheet, Jape? Would you be willing/interested in posting that template for download?

Lol Zimao, very sharp. I think i got confused with wether or not there was a TT and/or mountain stage in the TA. But it should have been PN since he participated there I'm sure there are a couple more minor mistakes in there, but it's a nice overview to help you in a career with training etc.

@7seconsed: It's a simple table made in word, so no fancy things or options, ill upload it in a second so you can use it if you like.

get it here: https://www.vennik.speedxs.nl/RaboPlan...nning.docx

I like the look of the table Jape, but when I try and download the Word 2007 file it is coming as a zip made up of the xml files that make up the document. Can you try uploading the document again, if its not too much trouble

P.S Although I have the latest edition of Office, a lot of people don't - it might be better uploading it as a 97-2003 document

Try this link
It's saved as a word 97-2003 file and i've put it in a rar this time .