Hi. I'm kind of new to these forums (and to the game, really), so please bear with me if this has been brought up before. Did a search, but couldn't find anything.
I'm playing with Team Saxo Bank first season, and is trying to plan my season. I've taken a look on their website to see which races they competed in in real life, and which riders they used:
I was kind of amazed to see how many non-PT/GC races they participated in, taken into account that the max race fitness in the game decreases when a rider has more than 60 race days - plus it's hinted, that young riders should have no more than 40 days.
So my question is this: How do you plan your season, and how do you set up the training?
So far my plan is this: I have a captain for each GC-race whos formtraining is set to peak at that race. I have chosen Larsson/F.Schleck for the Giro, A.Schleck for the Tour and A.Schleck/Fuglsang for the Vuelta (Fuglsang peaks, but Schleck shouldn't be in too shabby condition either).
The top riders in the team will compete in two GC's, which should leave them with only 18 race days for the rest of the season.
F.Schleck and Chris Anker Sørensen is set to peak in the first half of March, and will be our contenders for Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. Our cobblestone specialists (Cancellara, Breschel, O'Grady, Kroon) will peak in April at the three cobblestone classics - especially Paris-Robaix which is one of our sponsors season goals.
Anybody not participating in a GC-race or considered for captainage in any other race is not set to peak, but to be on formlevel five in March, April, June and August (the months between the GC's).
So basically two questions:
1. Is this a good plan?
2. How many non-PT races should I participate in in order to keep my riders fit for the PT races, but not wear them out?
The fitness of the riders is a sum of training fitness and race fitness.
The training fitness is related to the training schedules (train level 6 for 1 or 2 weeks to get the max. of 80). You could set the peak in the middle of a GT as the training level will improve no matter if in a race or not.
To gain race fitness, they need to participate in races. At the beginning of the season, the max. race fitness is at 10 and a rider needs more race days to get to the ultimate max. of 20. Because the race fitness raises during a race, your riders don't have to start the GT with max. race fitness.
So this means: To be in good shape for the GT you have to set the peak right. (Normally sprint stages are in the first week, so the sprinters should peak earlier than your captains) Also you have to make sure that the race fitness reaches 20 as soon as the mountains start.
I would say that you need the remaining 18 days to get the perfect race fitness. For example: Tour de Romandie is a good preparation for the Giro but it might not be enough if they did not race any races before.
About the wearing out:
Even with 75 race days the max. race fitness is about 10. Therefore a good rider can still compete if he has high training fitness. You should care more about the training fitness. The higher the training fitness, the faster will the fatigue rise. And if the fatigue is too high, the max. training fitness will be reduced. It can be restored by resting but it takes very long time, in most of the cases the season is over. Your A. Schleck could encounter this because I think you cannot reduce the training enough after the Tour to recover.
I cannot say much about the plan itself because I normally play with smaller conti teams. But I programmed a tool which could help you plan the season: https://www.pcmdai...ad_id=8619
I would definitely recommend using Lachi's tool for season planning as it is very good!
If I have 2 GT leaders then 1 will ride Giro and Vuelta, and the other will ride the Tour only. If I have 3 GT leaders, then they can take 1 GT each as leader, and tailor their training and race programs to give them max fitness...
As an example of the way I plan seasons I have a game going at the moment with Gesink going in the Giro and Vuelta. His season plan is.....
Ardennes classics as helper (3 days)
Tour of Romandie as helper (6 days)
Giro as leader (21 days)
Dauphine Libere as Leader (8 days)
Then a break....
Vattenfall Cyclassics - Plouay as helper (6 one day races in total)
Vuelta as Leader (21 days)
total race days - 65 (plus 1 or 2 for Worlds and Nat champs)
I find that if you give a rider 10 days racing prior to their first GT, then they can improve their race fitness enough by the time of the first long TT or mountain stage to be at or around 95 total fitness.
For their 2nd GT of the year they need fewer days to improve race fitness and 5 or 6 normally suffices.
Lachi: Your tool looks perfect! But when I try to load my game it says: "Invalid file name. Remove all spaces from the file name". The file name is Spil_002.cdb. Any idea what to do?
About my tool: Just move the file to another location without spaces.
About renaming the pcm folder: You can be happy that it didn't allow you to rename it. How do you think the game would have found a renamed folder?
diabolicpanda wrote:
facmanpob: What about your Tour-leader? At what point in the season does his training start, and which races does he compete in pre-Tour?
My Tour Leader normally does the following races:
Tour of California (9)
Giro di Sardegna or Tour of Murcia (5)
Paris Nice or Tirreno Adriatico (8/7) whichever is more important to the team
then a break.....
Tour of Luxembourg (5)
Tour de Suisse (9)
Tour de France (21)
This gives 56/57 days, leaving enough to ride the Tour of Britain or Tour of Missouri/GP Extremadura combination, to prepare for the Worlds!
I'll usually have a Hilly Classics leader as well, who will lead the team in the Vualta al Pais Vasco, Ardennes Classics and Autumn Classics, and ride the Vuelta as a Lieutenant.
I've added a spreadsheet with my usual Leader's season profiles....
