After eight days of hard training and suffering, you might find yourself wondering what sort of fitness returns you can expect from our annual 8DC challenge. To shed some light on this matter we’ve formulated a brief breakdown of the workouts themselves, the overall structure of the entire painful affair, and the all-important description of why – outside of stubborn, obsessive masochism – you gutted it out, day after day, for eight straight days.
Workout Structure
Each workout intentionally bared similarities to the concurrent bike race taking place in The Golden State on that same day, but each day’s workout clearly had to be scaled down in terms of volume & stress. This is not to say that any of these workouts were anything short of their own, standalone challenges though.
Each workout pushed the Intensity Factor way up toward its highest extent while still keeping things achievable – on paper anyway – such that you could routinely bury yourself, but not too deeply to come back the next day.
This was achieved via variety in the efforts themselves and by offering appropriate, though seldom, generous levels of recovery based on the efforts preceding each bit of “rest”.
But bike racing is an unforgiving sport that relies of the ability to work hard, really hard at times, yet keep coming back for more & more…and more.
So through a combination of intense sprints, brutal ascents to mountaintop summits, extended endurance efforts and virtually no downtime, your fitness was addressed on virtually every level, every day.
Challenge Structure
Again, the order of each stage was based on parcours developed by race organizers outside of TrainerRoad, so the structure was less about addressing specific fitness elements as emulating the unpredictability and often unrelenting nature of mass-start bike racing and spectator-approved course design requirements.
With that said, simply surviving each day and rallying for the next can’t help but improve everything from your peak power production capabilities, i.e. sprinting, to your anaerobic capacity when the efforts went – and very often remained – well above FTP, all the way down to basic aerobic engine adaptations inherent in lower-intensity work.
This is all to say, if this challenge didn’t break you, it will almost indefinitely make you stronger (given proper recovery afterward). And if it did break you, you’re still likely to see improvements, again, following proper & adequate recovery.
Fitness Gains
If you actively addressed your limiters and forced yourself of take part in all of the aspects of each day’s workout, you’re amongst those riders who are likely to see the most measurable and impacting gains.
If, on the other hand, you opted for more of a… conservative approach and perhaps didn’t indulge every whim each course thrust upon you, there’s not much reason to expect improvement in those areas you chose to bypass.
But assuming you hung in there and conquered, or at least sincerely attempted, each surge, sprint, time trial, paceline, attack, too-short recovery and everything else we threw at you, it’s safe to say your overall fitness will grow as you benefit from numerous improvements in the weeks ahead.
Given adequate recovery ranging anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on your level of experience and fitness, it’s realistic to see measurable improvements in aerobic endurance (thanks to everything well below FTP), muscle endurance (thanks to efforts close to your FTP), peak aerobic power (thanks to efforts 10-20% above FTP), peak anaerobic power (thanks to those short brutes upwards of 120% FTP), and your neuromuscular power (thanks to the myriad sprints littered throughout).
What Now!?
Having endured the massive amount of work you just faced, it’s now time to take your recovery equally as seriously. And while this is a very subjective aspect of training – much like all of it – in the way that some athletes bounce back more quickly than others, it’s still safe to assume that all riders completing 8DC are due for a few easy days of riding and/or time off the bike.
Remember, training is all about chasing fitness adaptations and those adaptations happen during rest. So give your body a chance to adapt, to soak up the copious amounts of stress you just heaped on it, and to bathe in the eventual rewards of improved fitness.
Well done, Everyone. Rest up, get back to training in due time, and we’ll see you all next year.
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Almost 60 years old and overweight, been trying to start running again for years in order to maintain fitness but constant injury drove me towards cycling. Glad it did as lost 50 lbs or so over 2-3 year period starting off on a fitness bike doing 20-30 mins 3 time a week in zone 1. Now doing 8DC tried it last year but only got to Stage 6 and then totally exhausted, this year finished. Next year who knows but want to do better
Nicely done Ian!
only just completed stage 1 in the time limit, crammed stage 2 too close after stage 1, 24 hours lated smashed stage 3 then fell ill – very sad face
week later still not on the bike
oh well, bring on 2016
lesson, don’t over train – my lead in was too intensive
Bummer Ken! Glad you were able to learn something from it though!
You’re always welcome to do the workouts at any point. You won’t get a badge, but you’ll get the fitness. 🙂
Oh Yeah! I’m Faster! I went from 3rd place to 2nd place in a USA Cycling Event Time Trial here in Iowa! There are 5 races throughout the summer, one per month and last Thursday night during the 8DC was the second race. Thanks to all this Intense training, I’ve improved Big Time!!
Thanks Trainer Road!!
A time trial in the middle of 8DC!? You get extra credit 🙂
Being new to TR and getting my fitness back after a few years off the bike, this challenge was perfect, just what I needed. It has really kicked my butt back into shape and gave me that mental edge to keep fighting to hold the power up. After a few days rest I hit the trainer again last night and got some solid PR’s. I am really happy with the outcome, best form of secret training available ;).
Keep up the great work TR, and keep it interesting.
Awesome stuff Kev!
First of all thanks for setting up the 8DC.. Did my best to stay on target on each day.
However a couple of lessons learnt, first I did a 2:30hr Meteorite ride a day before the start which made it a 9 day stage. And second I rushed to do a 20-Minute FTP test on Tuesday as part of a specialty block “Climbing Mid-Volume” and did not gain much improvement on my previous http://FTP.. (Just 3 watts) Obviously needed some time to recover and one day was not enough.
It would have been nice to at least know how many riders completed the challenge. Given there is no fair way of ranking participants.
Thanks…
Hey Camilo,
476 riders completed out of 1453 that signed up. If you click on the little tab on the bottom left it should show up. There is also a link to the participants, but I must say it would be nice if it was easier to find………
When are these going to be available through the application? I had a major event scheduled on the Friday of this and would like to follow on a 10 week training plan and ride across CA after this is done.
Hey James,
If you search for “2015 8DC” in the list of workouts you’ll find each stage. You can complete them at any time.
This long winter here in Ontario Canada was my first time ever using Trainerroad (actually, first time getting back on the bike after a decade long absence). Slogged through, but finshed up 8DC, took almost a week off, and re-did my 8min FTP test today. Increased from 213-> 227 (approx +7%). Thanks TR & 8DC!!
Good job Ken!
8DC is the most intense challenge I’ve ever done. It was more a mental challenge than a physical one most of the time, but you can bet I was certainly physically worn out as well every day. I took a week of rest afterwards, and finally retested today. My FTP went up by 12% (218 > 245)!! Things have definitely felt too easy given the listed IF, but I didn’t expect a change like that. This is amazing; thanks TR!
Awesome work Pam! It’s funny how hard/effective training like this can feel like it stretches you more mentally than physically. So much of our performance comes down to mental fortitude.