What objective do you choose as the first for your Giro captain?
If I choose Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico I find it hard to reach the peak in time for it to wear out before building up fitness to peak at the right time (a week in) in the Giro..
I had some succes having Down Under as the first objective, but it would be nice to have other options.
What schedule and objectives do you give your Giro captain?
The first objetive isn't really important if you plan the fitness curve perfectly to peak in Giro. For example, i have a career where Landa leads both Giro and Vuelta, and set the first objetive in Cataluña. But despite that, i changed the fitness curve so he wouldn't be peaking in Cataluña (around 85 in that race), so he would slowly improve his form towards Giro (where he started around 95).
And about the rest of the schedule, it just depend on your leader's abilities, so you may want to send him to the Ardennes, or just Tirreno/Nice and Cataluña plus another stage race in February, and how well rested you want him to be
To go into slightly more detail: a rider can only hit a fitness peak if his fitness is at least 87%. Any value below will keep his "fitness peak value" capped at 90. It's absolutely irrelevant how many race days the rider had before, so the only limitation on that will be rest periods for fatigue reasons.
Staying below that for the entirety of the season before the Giro (you can exceed 87% fitness before the value hits 100, it'll reset to 90 if you go below 87% again) will keep his fitness peak value at 90 no matter what you selected as first objective, meaning that from the day of crossing that 87% line, it'll take about a week to hit the fitness peak without racing, about 4 days while in a race.
In conclusion, you want to cross 87% only a few days before the objective.
But keep in mind that this will mean only hitting peak fitness far into the GT.
There are ways of adjusting training to achieve >98% fitness throughout an entire GT, meaning extra bonus points on stats compared to the method just described.
This will however require a very early first objective (I just tried Laigueglia on February 12th and it barely worked) with sufficient race days before it to get the first peak out of the way entirely by mid-March and do an entire build-up towards the Giro again. It will also require very specific combinations of hard training and off-weeks to not get your riders tired before the end of the GT.
