Starting the Season at Strade Bianche: On Annual Periodization, and How Amateur Riders Can Plan a Full Year Around Wuling

Looking at Tadej Pogačar’s 2026 race calendar, one thing stands out for Taiwanese cyclists: his season doesn’t officially begin until March 7 at Strade Bianche.

Not January in Australia, not a February stage race in the Middle East—but the Tuscan gravel roads in early March. And from that day forward, he produced this string of results:

Within one year: spring classics, a summer Grand Tour, and an autumn Monument—three peaks. This isn’t about “staying at peak form all the time”—no one can do that. This is periodization at its finest: deliberately allowing yourself to not be at your strongest at certain times, so you can be at your strongest when it matters.

Why “Starting Late” Is a Strategy

Competitive performance has a brutal truth: peak form doesn’t last long. A well-constructed peak can sustain high-level performance for roughly 2–4 weeks; beyond that, accumulated fatigue gradually eats away at the fitness you worked so hard to build.

So the logic of “starting late” is:

1. Protect early base training from being interrupted by racing. Every serious race creates several days to a week of recovery demand. Schedule races too early or too densely, and your training gets chopped into fragments.
2. Save mental freshness for the races that matter. Competitive condition isn’t just physical—it also includes “the desire to race,” and that gets depleted too.

Annual Periodization: Four Phases

Here’s a simplified framework that works for Taiwanese amateur cyclists. The durations need to be adjusted to your individual situation—this isn’t a fixed formula.

1. Base Phase (8–12 weeks)

• Goal: Aerobic foundation, strength, bike handling skills, body weight back to a healthy range
• Content: Lots of low-intensity long rides (intensity low enough to hold a full conversation), 1–2 strength training sessions per week, a small amount of threshold work to maintain
• Mindset: This phase is the most boring and has the fewest shortcuts. If you slack off in the base phase, every intensity session later will deliver diminished returns.

2. Build Phase (6–10 weeks)

• Goal: Push sustainable power (FTP) and VO2max higher
• Content: 2 high-intensity sessions per week (threshold → VO2max), long rides maintained but can be slightly reduced
• Mindset: This is where you’ll see clear progress—and where it’s easiest to overtrain. After 3 consecutive weeks of increasing load, schedule 1 recovery week.

3. Specificity / Peak Phase (4–8 weeks)

• Goal: Simulate the actual demands of your target event. If the goal is Wuling, train “long climbs + sustained output under late-race fatigue”
• Key action: Tapering, typically starting 7–14 days before the event, reducing total volume by 40%–60% while keeping a small amount of high-intensity work to maintain neuromuscular sharpness

4. Transition / Off-Season (2–4 weeks)

• Goal: Full recovery, reset body and mind
• Content: No power meter, no training plan. You can ride zero, or switch to mountain biking, running, or swimming
• Mindset: This phase is necessary, not laziness. Those who skip it usually start the next year’s base phase carrying last year’s fatigue.

A Practical Schedule for Taiwanese Cyclists: Targeting Wuling

Most climbing events in Taiwan are concentrated in autumn and winter (for example, Wuling-related races in October–November), and summer heat is actually unfavorable for high-quality intensity training. With “autumn Wuling” as your single A-priority goal, here’s how to structure the year:

The A / B / C Race Classification

This is one of the most practical concepts in periodization:

• A-priority (1–2 per year): The goals you truly care about. The entire year’s training revolves around them, with a full taper beforehand.
• B-priority (3–5 races): Ride them seriously, but don’t taper for them—at most, ease off 2–3 days before. Treat them as testing and experience-building.
• C-priority (unlimited): Treat them as high-intensity training; you can enter them in a fatigued state. Winning or losing doesn’t matter.

The most common problem among amateur cyclists is treating every race as A-priority. Pogačar’s 2026 season has three clearly defined peaks, and every other race either serves those peaks or functions as a form check—this is exactly what “not going full gas in every race” looks like.

Three Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: “I’m afraid of losing power, so I don’t rest”

Tapering will make you feel like your legs are “a bit empty” when you ride—that’s normal. A proper taper will improve race performance, not reduce it—training adaptations happen during rest.

Mistake 2: “The base phase is too boring, so I’ll skip straight to intensity”

Skipping the base phase does produce faster short-term gains, but your ceiling arrives earlier, and the risk of injury and overtraining rises dramatically. Your aerobic foundation determines how much high-intensity training you can absorb.

Mistake 3: “I need three peaks a year”

Professional riders can do this with full team support, but for a typical working amateur, one high-quality peak per year is already a solid achievement. Set too many goals, and the usual outcome is that none of them are reached.

Dynamic Adjustment Matters More Than a Perfect Plan

One final point: plans will always get disrupted. Work, family, illness, weather, crashes—any of these can break your periodization schedule. When that happens, the right move isn’t to force the missed workouts back in; it’s to reassess how many weeks remain until your target event, then work backward from your current state. Missing one week of training costs you very little fitness; forcing make-up sessions while fatigued can cost you several weeks.

Individual differences are huge—all the phase durations above should be adjusted to your recovery capacity, age, and life stress. If you experience persistent fatigue, abnormal heart rhythm, chest tightness, or other warning signs during training, seek medical attention first.

Summary

Pogačar’s 2026 season starts at Strade Bianche, then sets one peak each in the spring classics, the Tour de France, and the autumn Il Lombardia. He isn’t the strongest every day—he’s strongest on the days when it matters most.

What amateur cyclists can take from him isn’t his training plan—it’s this structural concept: decide first which race matters most to you this year, then make every other arrangement serve that goal. Starting today, circle that date on your calendar, then count backward by weeks. Once you’ve done that, your training already has more direction than most people’s.

Related Reading

• Amateur Riders’ Annual Periodization: Borrowing from the Pro Season Structure to Design a Training Calendar Peaking at Wuling
• The Timing of Pogačar’s Attacks: The Same Logic Behind 78 km, 55 km, 24.2 km, and 7.2 km
• What Can Taiwanese Riders Learn from Pogačar? The Transferable Parts of an Attacking Riding Style and the Parts That Simply Cannot Be Copied
• Breaking Down Pogačar’s Five Wins at the 2026 Tour de France: Five Stages, Four Mountain Ranges, One Way of Winning?