The Leadville 100 is a long, hard day in the saddle. On race day, you should have complete confidence in all the hard work you put in to get there. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about a Leadville 100 training plan.
Chad Bakken, a full-time CFO, busy family man, and TrainerRoad athlete, had finally achieved his goal—finishing the Leadville 100 MTB in under nine hours. As Bakken crossed the finish line, tears streamed down his face. For any rider who has signed up to race Leadville, that’s the feeling you want as you finish. Yes, you may feel thoroughly beaten up and exhausted, but disappointment is the last thing you want to feel. Leading up to his second Leadville race, Bakken trained harder and smarter to make sure of that.
Training Plans for Mountain Bikers
Proven training designed for the high-intensity demands of off-road racing.
Try Free for 7 Days“I wanted to quit. Every part of me hurt, but I knew how hard I could go and that I didn’t have to quit. I could do it,” is how he described the final minutes of the Leadville 100. His previous year’s time was 9:34. After training for five months with a properly structured TrainerRoad training plan, he more than accomplished his goal. His final time for his second Leadville attempt was 8:46. “People were commenting in the race, ‘holy cow, you’re really strong,’” Bakken recalled. This didn’t surprise him much.
“I’ve trained for 21 weeks with structure, and I’ve suffered every single time. I can do this,” are the thoughts that kept his confidence high. Through every difficult climb and moment, his mind wanted to quit, but his body wouldn’t let him; Bakken reminded himself of the training.
If there’s one thing Bakken learned during his most recent preparation for Leadville, it’s that trusting and sticking to your training plan is key. In his lead-up to his first Leadville race, he didn’t set aside the time he needed to train. What’s more, the expert he paid to help him train was inconsistent at delivering his workouts. It was not a surprise when disappointing race results followed.
For his second year of training for Leadville, Bakken took a different approach. With his sub 9 goal in mind, he decided to take things into his own hands and use TrainerRoad. Here’s the exact training plan he followed to prepare for his Leadville PR.
Chad Bakken’s Leadville 100 MTB Training Plan
Base Phase: Sweet Spot Base (12 weeks)
When preparing for ultra-endurance events like Leadville, establishing a solid base of fitness is paramount — that’s exactly what the Sweet Spot Base plan will help you do. Taking such a disciplined and long-term approach to your training can be tough to stick to, but taking the time to develop your aerobic fitness will pay dividends when it matters most, on race day.
Build Phase: Sustained Power Build (8 weeks)
Leadville is unique in the sense that it is completed on mountain bikes but it more closely resembles a road race in many ways. Unlike a traditional cross-country mountain bike race, the sustained flats and climbs of the course require you to put out high amounts of power for long durations.
Since this is a build phase, your training will focus specifically on raising your FTP. The intervals in this training phase will have you putting out efforts at or around threshold for extended periods of time, effectively raising your FTP and strength endurance.
Specialty Phase: Cross-Country Marathon (8 weeks)
While Leadville may be an unorthodox mountain bike race, it is still very much a mountain bike race. The Cross-Country Marathon specialty plan is a great choice for this event. It will give you the intensity you need for mountain bike racing without sacrificing the aerobic endurance required by such a long race.
Recommended Leadville 100 MTB Training Plan
The best Leadville 100 training plan is one that is custom built for you by Plan Builder. Plan Builder is an automated training plan creator that builds custom training plans. Using your current training load, experience with interval training, the date of your priority event, and race discipline, Plan Builder creates a training plan designed to bring you to peak fitness for your goal event. You can further customize your training by choosing which days you’d like to take outdoors, and when you’d like to integrate additional races into your training plan.
How Will Plan Builder Prepare me for the Leadville 100?
To establish and reinforce the endurance needed for The Leadville 100, your plan will be composed of workouts that train the energy systems used in long-distance events. Your training plan will maximize the efficiency of your hard work with workouts that target specific energy systems. By completing targeted and time-efficient workouts, you can strengthen the appropriate energy systems while avoiding the massive fatigue that comes with extremely long rides.
To expand on your preparation for Leadville, you can take any TrainerRoad workouts outside using your Garmin or Wahoo head unit. While it’s not necessary to replicate any 10-hour rides, you can learn a lot by spending 2-3 hours in similar race day circumstances outside.
Leadville 100 Training Plan Examples
So what might a Leadville 100 training plan look like? Every athlete has unique needs and experience. Plan Builder takes care of the details and creates a plan just for you. Depending on your circumstances, your training plan could look several different ways. Here are a few examples of what a training plan for Leadville 100 might look like.
Shane is new to interval training and is just about to start a structured training plan. He’s going into structured training riding an average of six hours per week.
Blake has some experience with interval training and began structured training two months ago. On average he’s been training seven hours each week. Because he started training two months ago, he can backdate his plan to the start of his training progression. Doing this includes all of his completed workouts.
Kortney is a seasoned athlete with years of experience doing structured intervals. On average, she’s been training ten hours per week. She won’t be starting a structured training plan until the beginning of April. Because she is starting in April, her plan is 20 weeks long.
After Plan Builder outlines your progression, you can further customize your training plan before you add it to your TrainerRoad Calendar.
You can choose which days you’d like to do your workouts. Also, you can choose any day to mark workouts as outdoor workouts. As you progress through your training plan, you can make adjustments along the way to your training volume and schedule, so that your preparation for Leadville is based on your changing needs.
When Should I Start Training for Leadville 100 MTB?
The good news is that you can start training for Leadville at any time with Plan Builder. However, for the best results start your Leadville 100 training plan at least 28 weeks early or even sooner for extra recovery weeks. Since the event is usually held at the beginning of August, that means you can start towards the end of January.
Leadville 100 MTB Training Tips
Can I train for The Leadville 100 with a low volume training plan?
Absolutely! If Plan Builder recommends a low volume training plan, this is probably the best option for you. Plan Builder recommends the training volume that will be most effective for you and your time based on your current training load. You can effectively train for an ultra-distance event with a low volume training plan as long as the weekly TSS is challenging enough to promote adaptation.
If you reach a point in your training plan where you feel like you can successfully handle higher weekly training stress, you can increase the volume of your plan. Alternatively, you can train with a low-volume training plan and tack on additional riding outdoors. In this scenario, the training plan serves as the high-quality structured portion of your overall time on the bike.
How can I integrate outdoor riding into my training plan?
You can learn a lot from spending a couple of hours each week on the mountain bike. Spending time on the MTB to sharpen your technical skills and experiment with nutrition can be super helpful. With that said, you can integrate as much or as little outdoor riding as you’d like with TrainerRoad Outside Workouts.
If you’d like to integrate MTB rides into your weekly training schedule you can check out MTB Outside Workouts: How to Nail Your Planning and Training.
Do I need to complete any ultra-distance workouts before Leadville?
You don’t need to complete a ton of super long training rides to successfully prepare for the Leadville 100. By spending shorter durations of time training the energy systems used in an ultra-distance event, you train more effectively without breaking your body down in extra long training rides.
With that said, it’s definitely beneficial to spend time on the mountain bike working on your bike handling, and testing out different nutrition strategies. If you have time to integrate a couple of hours of mountain biking into your schedule when it’s convenient, try and do so.
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Excellent work Chad. I’ll be doing a road 28 week plan in 2016 for my goal event in November. I agree about adding a couple of contingency weeks. As usual during winter I’ll more than likely get a bad cold that will put me out of action for up to 2 weeks. I’ll just take some time off then carry on where I left off once I’m recovered.
Thanks for the comment, Nigel! Good luck on your event this year. It sounds like you’ve got your training plan figured out so you’re already off to a great start.
Would be interested in knowing which volume he was doing. I’m on medium at the moment, which is quite a bit of time in the saddle, I wonder if a CFO / family man could space the sort of time required to do the high volume plan.
Hi Richard, like you’re on now, Chad also used the mid-volume plans throughout his training. Over the course of the plan, he missed two workouts and ended one early. But it’s safe to say he built in a couple contingency weeks, as both times he prepared for Leadville he had to travel out of the country for work for 10 days. We asked how he felt after these 10 days of travel and he said, “The second time I trained for the event, my fitness was so elevated that I wasn’t affected.” We love hearing that kind of stuff. Hope this info helped.
Thanks Chelsea, good to hear. Hopefully I’ll be in the same place when I do the event next year.
Thanks for sharing! I’m planning to start on this plan this week. My one concern is that the longest ride is only 3 hours. Where would be the best place to put in a longer endurance ride or race in the 4-6 hour range?
Hi Alex, you can grow that ride in duration as you see fit or simply do a longer one outdoors (as your weekly long ride, no need to do more than one/week) if the weather permits. It’s recommended that some skills work makes its way into every week (when weather allows it) for MTB’ers and the easier, less structured rides are better suited for this than interval workouts are.
As far as your concern over duration, you don’t necessarily have to have ridden 10 hours in training to ride 10 hours on race day. But working the weekly long ride up to longer durations each week, e.g. 15-30 minutes each time, is a good idea. So maybe it starts at 3 hours, but after 8 weeks it’s grown closer to 5 hours. Then…
Keep in mind that riding indoors/on your trainer is akin to climbing in its unrelenting nature, so the ratio of productivity of indoors: outdoors is anywhere from 1.3:1.0 up to 1.8:1.0 so we settle on *1.5x as productive as an outdoor ride on average*. In the case of a 5-hour ride, done indoors with minimal or even no breaks, it could potentially be as stressful as a 7- or 8-hour ride.
Thanks for sharing the program used by Chad… I had a few questions.
1. Did you train on your road or mountain bike? Which bike did you use – Hard Tail or Suspension.
2. I have a holiday scheduled for the second half of June and will not have access to a bike for a couple of weeks. Any recommendations on how I could cross train… Based on the propposed plan this will be towards the end of the Build phase.
3. Any other recommendations more than welcomed, for example is there a Core training program I should be doing during the base phase?
Thanks,
Camilo
Hi Camilo, here’s the info we have for you:
1. We reached out the Chad and he let us know that he used his road bike 100% for his TrainerRoad sessions and then mountain biked on the weekends.
2. Anything under 10 days won’t have a dramatic impact on deeper, aerobic conditioning. But beyond that things start to decline unfairly rapidly so some form of steady-state aerobic exercise (e.g. treadmill, stairstepper, lifecycle, recumbent, jogging, hiking briskly, etc) can mitigate or even stall this decline.
Upper-end conditioning like strength and anaerobic power output takes even longer to slip, so no real worries there and the time away from intensity is often what a lot of overreached athletes actually need, whether they recognize it or not.
We recommend mixing things up, keeping active in a way that emulates the missed training to some extent, i.e. similar training schedule, similar stress if possible but not requisite, and nothing that could sidetrack progress like taking up running in the interim and returning with a knee injury. See it more as maintenance/damage control and less about building fitness over vacay.
3: If core training isn’t already a part of your program, it ought to be, year-round, so don’t wait for vacation to get this in place. Check out recently-outed-doper Tom Danielson’s book, “Core Advantage”. Doping or not, it’s a solid resource. Hope all this helps!
Hi, this is Chad. A couple things, most of which were covered by Chelsea below. First, the Trainerroad coaches are second to none. Extremely helpful through the process in helping me plan my taper along with the time I was out of the country and some ideas on keeping fitness without even having a bike (several tabatas – squats, sprinting and a few times on a spinner at the hotel). I did mid-volume and never did a ride over 2.5 hours, even on my weekend mountain bike rides. Someone pointed out that doing a 2.5 hour trainer ride was like a 4-5 hour road ride as there’s no downhills and no stoplights. The workouts in these plans are so tough once you’re past the base plan, that the strength will be there assuming you have some history of endurance events (IMHO). I’m still impressed at the value and how well this worked for me. The big belt buckle was an even better reward than I expected…so worth the time and effort. Good luck to everyone and great to see the interest 7 months prior to race day (I know the drawing was very recent though)!
Thanks so much for the kind words, Chad, and for letting us interview you for this post. Here’s to you and your big belt buckle! 🙂
Hi Chelsea and Chad,
Thanks for sharing this it does give me more confidence in my plan. I too am training for Leadville in 2016 and am hoping to do well. I have been studying all I can get my hands on in preparation for this race. I am excited to use Trainerroad and with the help of their patient support team late last year they recommended that I follow a similar plan (Base: Traditional Base, Build: Sustained Power Build, Specialty: Cross-Country Marathon) following the High Volume if possible. I have started it, but still have had a few nagging questions that I think Chad might have solved. Here are my questions (and sorry for the long post):
1. Mountain Biking: You mentioned Chad went mountain biking on the weekends, did he replace the riding the weekend rides on the trainer with riding out on the trail or did he change up the suggested weekly plan? If so, did he manage his power/intensity so that he followed the suggested workout or did he replace it entirely? Maybe posting a typical week would help show how he balanced it.
2. The Big Ride: Maybe I lack the faith, but I am concerned that the whole plan never rides longer than 2.5 hours, especially during the late build phase. Did Chad double up and do any double days to make some longer weekend rides on the Mountain bike? Pre-riding sections of the course could take longer than 2.5 hours.
3. Traditional vs Sweet Spot Base: It was recommended I follow the Traditional Base instead of the Sweet Spot Base, but the only two blog posts I have found that relate to the Leadvillle 100 both mention using the Sweet Sport Base. Am I missing anything by going for the traditional base?
4. Tapering: Did Chad just ride the last week of the Cross-Country Marathon Plan or did he change it to better taper for the race?
Thanks,
Dave
Hi Dave, Chad here again. I’m going to try to answer your first question as best I can understanding that life presents unique challenges to each of us. I’m really busy as we all are but after over stressing for my first LT100, this allowed me to plan out my workouts very far in advance which reduce my stress. Anyway, here goes…Up until the summer, my weekends followed the TrainerRoad plan. In talking to the TrainerRoad coaches, I planned my workouts out 2-3 months in advance (I printed a calendar from outlook and wrote the workout time and TSS #’s out by day from the plan I was on) by preloading the full week of workouts on weekdays as I traveled fairly frequently on weekends (my kids race BMX). Once I hit the summer, my weekends mimicked the time requirement of the TrainerRoad workouts but at least on mid volume, they were longer at a lower intensity. So I got my high intensity workouts in during the week and at least one of the weekend rides in. To me, those high intensity workouts were the key (if you look at mid vs high volume, the weekly TSS total isn’t much different). As for the other weekend ride, we were generally in the mountains (I live in Colorado) so on the weekends, I would do a 2-3 hour road or mountain ride early in the day and then I’d downhill with my kids at Winter Park’s Trestle bike park in the afternoon. I understand that’s unique but the road/mountain rides were helpful in the summer to stay fresh by riding outside and keep my skills current too. I would do as much of the training plan during the week though. I was a bit skeptical of the 2.5 hour max ride time but I felt like I had enough endurance events in my past that I could do it and it was 100% sufficient. Hope this helps and isn’t too confusing. I’m going to post this so I don’t lose the content and then answer the other questions in a separate reply.
Thanks Chad this does help me understand how you balanced them!
Dave
For #2, I answered a bit in my last reply. I really never doubled up. The Silver Rush and Leadville take their toll on the arms that some arm work is necessary or regular mountain biking. Pre-riding the course is key though as you want to get out quick and getting a good group. I went relatively hard at the outset and pushed up sugarloaf to get in a good group. The net result? I rode down powerline only seeing one other rider (a rarity) and then found a group on the road after that (by the fish hatchery) and we rode to pipeline at ~26mph putting me ~20 minutes ahead of my 2013 pace. I guess you could say I doubled up a bit by downhilling with my kids and although that’s more work than it looks or sounds like, it’s definitely not a reliable training regimen :). If I were to preride anything it would be the start to the bottom of powerline and definitely columbine. Don’t do columbine fresh either. Do it with some miles in you when you get there as race day is significantly different with ~43 miles under your belt at that point. My rule/goal on columbine this year was no stopping except at the aid station which I hit at 4:31 and obviously negative splitted to the finish.
I’ll leave #3 to the TrainerRoad folks. For #4, the TrainerRoad coaches were super helpful. Tapers are so athlete specific but in my case, I went pretty hard but for less time the last week through Tuesday within the XC marathon plan. I’m better a little tired or with a decent ride the day before a race so I went pretty hard but <1 hour on Tuesday, rested Wednesday and Thursday and then did 16 miles Friday to the top of St Kevins. By that Tuesday I knew I was ready. I did every workout (especially the high intensity ones) and just felt good and confident. Course knowledge was also key as I knew where I was at each stage and what was coming next. I took it in 10 mile increments and gave effort to stay with people where I hadn't in 2013. That's where the power from these workouts came in so critically if that makes sense. Every time I called on my legs, they responded. Also, on those hard days on the trainer, the rest days or Lower intensity days are necessary as I was so tired from the tough days. I also figured out I had over-eaten in the previous try going for 100g of carbs per hour (1/2 gram per lb at 200 lbs) and reduced that to ~80 per hour eliminating the feel good for 30 minutes, halfway bonked for 30 minutes and ready to throw up for 30 minutes that cycled through the race in 2013. I figured that out at the silver rush as it was the first time I felt much more stable the whole race nutrition wise (I love to eat). I had great luck with enduro bites (lots of calories and carbs in a small package) and honey stinger products, especially their waffles. I also used Skratch labs (1/hour) as my electrolyte drink as I've had great luck with it and it's easy on the stomach. Again, hope that helps. Btw, my FTP was 289 watts in late March and 319 5 weeks before the race. I'm proud of that improvement as it was hard work but obviously worth it. I was ~190 lbs on race day.
Wow, this helps me a ton! Thanks for the additional info especially the nutrition and power points. I too live in Colorado and plan to ride various parts of the course this summer to get better acquainted with it and will take your advise when planning out some of my rides. I still need to work out my nutrition plan for this race. It’s such a big race with so many variables, but all of this guidance and information will help me simplify things and better trust in my training.
Thanks again,
Dave
Thank you for your insight. I have been on the sweet spot mid base 1 and 2 for the last 7 weeks. Following the complete plan, how much were you able to increase your FTP? I am planning on the same series and was looking for a goal. And with that, going into Leadville, if you do not mind sharing, what was your FTP/kg?
Thank you,
Chad, Chelsea, Dave et al,
Many thanks for all the comments and suggestions.
I had the same concern as Dave with regards to the total hours spent on the trainer, so I’ve replaced all Saturday rides for outdoor rides exceeding the scheduled TSS shown on the plan for that particular day.
I feel this has given me a good balance between TrainerRoad and outdoor riding (once a week or 40 to 50% of the weekly TSS is done outdoors.).
I am still concerned about the two week holiday (June 15th – July 1st), which will mean I have to decide on whether to cut the Sustained Power Build program short by 3 weeks or miss 3 weeks from the Cross Country Marathon. In terms of TSS it would seem that the Cross Country is more demanding so I might elect to cut short the Sustained Power Build, Chad made it very clear that doing the high intensity intervals really helps for race day.
For now race the GFNY next weekend…. And hopefully continue to slowly increase the FTP, for race day. Currently at 283 @ 175 pounds.
Regards,
Camilo
Hello Chad,
I read this blog back in January and decided to follow the proposed training plan for my first attempt at Leadville 100. The only adjustments I made to the plan was to ride outdoors on Saturdays to ensure other body muscles were also prepared for a long day in the saddle, specially lower back, arms and shoulders. I did miss part of the Specialty Phase due to a saddle sore and had a two week vacation during the build phase.
The race took place this past weekend (August 13th) and it was amazing.
My 3 Lessons Learnt are as follows:
1. The suggested program definitely works and builds enough endurance for the race, however make sure to include some altitude training, you will be short of breath and your power will be significantly lower.
2. Suggest you do a qualifying race if you get the chance. I entered the race through the lottery and had to start on the last corral (White), which means you will be stuck in traffic, and will have to hike your bike in many places that you could easily ride up. Expect the traffic to slow you down for the first 50 miles, it might be a good thing for some as it will stop you from going out too fast but for others it might be the difference between a sub 10 or sub 9.
3. Don’t worry about support crews. The course has plenty of aid stations with food, drinks and mechanical support you don’t need the extra weight on hydration systems and heavy bags attached to the bike.
My time was 9:30 and for sure feel with a similar training program and a better corral placement I can do Sub 9 next year.
All the best,
Camilo
Thanks for story Chelsea!
Thanks for writing this story, it’s truly inspiring to try and follow chads footsteps and training to all accomplish our goal. I appreciate the advice from Chad, I have done the Leadville 100 5 years ago and looking to pursue a better regime and better time for it. This story has gave me more motivation and relief that there is a training plan so I can act accordingly. Aside from the training, the only thing I am worried about is acclimating before the race. I understand that people arrive 3 weeks before the event but that’s impractical for myself. I live in New York so the sea level doesn’t do any help haha. Any recommendations? Does the training mask (the one that limits air flow) work in regards for training? Trying to figure that out since it only limits air flow and not the oxygen content. I am definitely going to follow up with the same plan for the 2017 Leadville but any recommendations will be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much,
Timmy
thanks,
Tim
Timothy,
We’re so very glad you’ve found this so useful and inspiring. Your attitude inspires us to continue to work towards our goal: making cyclists faster. 🙂
Don’t be overly concerned with the altitude difference as there are other areas of your performance you can focus on to be as successful as possible in Leadville. Don’t let it distract you from the other areas you can continue to improve on. As for the training masks, we don’t have too much experience with them so we can’t say. :/
When there are no other options to expose yourself to some higher altitudes before the event, you’ll have to do what you can with what you have to work with. When you do arrive at the event, get out on the trail to expose yourself to the the altitude conditions. Then you won’t be surprised and will have more confidence going into the event.
Hope this helps Timothy! Happy Training and ride hard out there!
I’ve been riding for a while with no particular direction. However, I just started focused training about three weeks ago and following this particular plan (BasePhase, BuildPhase, Specialty). I won’t have enough time to complete the entire plan before Leadville and so I have to cut some weeks out. So my question is–of these phases-which phase(s) would you recommend that I shorten? Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.
Hey Chris,
Great question! If you’re fairly new to indoor training, your best bet is to progress through as much of the plans as possible leading up to the event. So, say you will only make it to Week 3 of the Specialty plan before your event; you would want to schedule Week 8 of the Specialty plan in as your last week of training before the event. This is because Week 8 is what’s known as a taper week—a reduction in training stress leading up to your event such that your fatigue from previous training fades faster than the hard earned fitness you’ve established will. The end result is that you’re fresh for your event.
So in that example you would’ve moved through all of Base, Build, and Weeks 1-2 + Week 8 of Specialty. That’s just an example of course. 🙂
Some athletes who are very confident in the base training they have established for the season can forgo some of the Base phase, but for 99% of athletes this is not what we recommend.
Hope this helps Chris! Please let us know at support@trainerroad.com if you run into any questions or concerns.
Cheers!
So, I’ve joined the TrainerRoad trained Leadville finishers group and I figured I’d post here (not that anyone will see it after two years!).
I followed the plan listed here, and aside from some setbacks caused by unrelated injuries I’d have to say that it worked out pretty well. I headed out to Leadville (a week in advance of the race) having completed the medium version of all the above, as well as some massive Sunday rides in the run up to the event (all 100 miles plus with over 10,000 feet of climbing). On arrival I was ~61kg with a a one hour FTP of around 290w.
The first rides at elevation were eye opening (I live at sea level), and quite scary as I found myself unable to catch my breath on occasions. By the end of the week I was feeling a lot better though, and I’d ridden all of the hardest climbs so I knew what I was up against.
Long story short, my target was sub 10 hours, and I got around in 9hrs 19mins. Annoyingly I hadn’t realised quite how close I was to 9 hours and had backed off quite a lot at the end. Still not sure if I could have done it had I pushed to 100%, especially as everyone had warned me that I needed to stay away from the red line as it’s extremely difficult to recover at altitude.
Biggest issues for me on the day were…
1: Getting past people (I live in Europe, so a qualifier was off the cards, which meant I started right from the back)… which cost me a TON of times on the climbs. I was no-where near my bests, which I’d done fasted so I knew I was capable of more. There were some really slow descenders too, and annoyingly I lost a good bit of time there as well. I ended up having to walk parts of the climbs simply because there was no way to overtake, at least not safely.
2: The flats… who knew? So there are probably four quite long flat sections and I had no idea they were coming. With the headwind on the day I found myself desperately trying to hang on to the back of a group and then blowing up to see if I could bridge to the next group (I failed a couple of times). I just don’t weigh enough to deal with headwinds, so I actually found these bits harder than the climbs.
3: The heat. I was doing really well in the cold, but by the time I got back to powerline on the way back in, the heat had ramped up significantly and I’d not been drinking enough to stay ahead of it. By the time we’d got to the top of the climb I was worried that I was starting to get seriously overheated, and found myself having to stop to cool off a bit. Had I drunk more I don’t think I’d have burned up so quickly.
I’m pretty pleased with my performance, but I consider it unfinished business. If I went back tomorrow and started from a corral further forward I know I could go sub 9… so when I go back in 2019 to try again, I’m going to either have to do a qualifier or beg them to take my 2017 finish into consideration!
Richard:
Thank you for your post. It’s very informative. Wondering if you would be so kind as to help me out with some questions.
Did you follow this plan exactly as it is? For example you noted you did longer weekend rides so did those rides replace the prescribed weekend plan workouts?
Did you build up hours on the long weekend rides? How much percentage, if any, was done on a road bike compared to a mountain bike?
I also followed the plan but not for the full 23 weeks (I think). Unfortunately I came in over 12 hours. So now I’m everything to focus on next year.
Sorry, apparently I didn’t have comment notifications on so I missed this…
Firstly, virtually no riding was done on a road bike. I don’t enjoy mixing with cars, so at most I tend to do a two or three road rides a year.
As for the weekend rides. Saturday was TrainerRoad as normal, but Sunday generally ended up being significantly more challenging. Initially I was just doing my normal Sunday rides with friends. 3-5 hours, lots of hills, technical descents. In the last couple of months of training I changed these rides to anywhere from 6-12 hours, with an extreme amount of hills, but not really worrying so much about the technicality.
My final training rides were all a lot like Leadville, but without the altitude. So generally around 100 miles, 10,000 feet of climbing. Ironically some I’d say ended up being harder than Leaville as the surface was significantly slower… but there’s really no replicating the agony of hills at altitude.
Thank you Chelsea! Great content!
I know this is a bit of an unfair question, but generally speaking, at what w/Kg can one assume they have a reasonable shot at a < 9hr finish in this race? At what duration should that FTP be estimated; 1hr, 2hr, something longer? I saw one lighter rider in the comments section with a 4.75 w/Kg who finished in just over 9 hours….
Awesome information! Thank you TrainerRoad and Chad for this very helpful information. I’m one of the lucky lottery winners for this years (2018) Leadville 2018. My plan is to follow the medium plan as laid here (Sweet Spot Base 1, Sweet Spot Base 2, Sustained Built and XC Marathon). Unfortunately I’m not able to work-out for two+ separate weeks until the event due to a medical procedure (mid February) and a vacation (mid/end April). It is my understanding that riders should take off any weeks from the last phase (speciality phase) and definitely complete all weeks of the base phase.
My preference would be to finish a phase before each mandatory break or at least have the mandatory break during the taper week of the phase of the plan. I worked on a schedule, which would accomplish that goal. However I’m concerning about the workload of the Sweet Spot Base 1 phase. The last week (week 6) would be the week for my recovery from from the medical procedure. That means I would complete five active weeks of Sweet Spot Base 1 during the next weeks until mid February. Basically, I would tackle a workout each day. Would you recommend this approach or should I take a break in the middle of Sweet Spot Base 1 for about a week and cut another week from the specialty phase? TIA
Hey Chris,
This will very much depend on the nature of your medical procedure and is more of a question for your doctor. It is likely that your body will not recover much from your cycling stress while recovering from a new surgical stress. As such, you should not “count” your time off as recovery. This may work in your benefit because you would do 5 weeks of training, get the medical procedure, off the bike for a week, and then jump into the recovery week to give yourself the ability to ease into it. This will of course result in taking a week off of your Specialty Plan, but that is not going to have a huge effect on your race-day fitness.
I would recommend checking out this brief article that discusses what to do when you miss days or weeks of training, and how to properly adjust. There are also links to podcast discussions that will allow you to learn more straight from the mouths of our coaches 🙂
https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005927443-Missed-Workouts-What-Do-I-Do-
Cheers!