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. Trust your training plan and all the workouts that lead up to the start line by making a custom training plan with Plan Builder.
What is 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 days 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.
FAQ’s
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 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 you bike handling and testing out different nutrition strategies. If you have time to integrate a couple hours of mountain biking into your schedule when it’s convenient, try and do so.
Coaching Tips and Resources
Equipment Tips for The Leadville 100
If you are wondering what gear you might need for the Leadville 100, check out this clip from the Ask A Cycling Podcast Episode 210.
Nutrition and Pacing Strategies for the Leadville 100
For some insight into nutrition and pacing strategies, you can watch this clip from the Ask A Cycling Podcast Episode 210.
Build Your Pacing Plan for the Leadville 100
You can learn more about building a pacing plan for ultra-distance events in How to Build a Pacing Plan For Long Events.
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For more cycling training knowledge, listen to the Ask a Cycling Coach — the only podcast dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. New episodes are released weekly.
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In this example, you have someone new to structured training going to 400 tss per week in one month with only 4 hours of training per week. That’s 100 tss per hour. Is that really realistic? I admit I’m fat and old, but it seems quite aggressive.
Hi Kevin! Thanks for spotting my typo, that should be a six instead of a four. That example shows a mid volume training plan for an athlete training six hours per week. If an athlete was training/riding four hours per week going into a structured training plan they would be using a low volume plan instead. Sorry for the confusion and thanks again for spotting my typo!
Meghan,
Great article I’ve now read through it 3 times. I listen to the podcast all the time as well and have listened to past seasons episodes dealing with LT100 training, but one thing surprises or escapes me. I am not currently following a Trainerroad plan.. BUT might be making the switch from a coach to TR. What surprises me is:
Not a single ride in the Sweet Spot Base, Sustained Power Build, or XC Mountian Bike specialty have a ride of more than 2 hours. I understand how energy systems work and training doesn’t need to be 1:1 but it surprises me that for a 9-10 hour event there is nothing greater than 2 hours in a workout. Your feedback is appreciated. Can Coach Jonathan and Nate say they followed these plans in the lead up to the race and didn’t do a single ride greater than 2 hours? Thank you for all the work that goes into TR it is an amazing product with a great community.
Hey Rusty!
Thanks for listening to the podcast! This is a good question, and I personally think the direct answer is to not worry about incorporating long rides. You’ll be prepared. More explanation below.
You’re welcome to fit in longer rides as you see fit, but the intent should not be to replicate your expected race time. We recommend this with regularity on the podcast with the caveat that if you add unstructured training to your plan, it can make it difficult to complete subsequent workouts. For this reason, a lower volume plan is usually favored if you are caught by indecision – they give you the structure you need with more wiggle room.
But the reason you’d want to fit in those longer rides has less to do with duration and more to do with vetting your equipment, pacing and nutrition strategies for race day.
On the note of energy systems, remember, the energy system demands for 2 hours are very similar to those for 10 hours, and even when it comes to pacing, the difference in what power you can maintain from 2 hours to 10 hours is likely within 5-10%.
I am a bad example in this case because I just trained for XCO National Champs and did no specific training for Leadville. As I recall, almost all of Nate’s training was composed of 60-120 minute TrainerRoad workouts. He may have done some longer TrainerRoad workouts up to 3 hours, but I’m not sure. A further note on this, we are constantly testing different training approaches here in the office to collect data and continuously improve TrainerRoad, so, many times our own training calendars aren’t the best examples, hehe.
Another thing to point out: The longest sustained effort at Leadville is Columbine, and will likely take somewhere between 75-100 minutes. Most people not following a TrainerRoad plan likely haven’t even pedaled nonstop for that long, and that’s the muscular endurance that really makes a difference on race day.
If you follow a TrainerRoad plan with Plan Builder, fuel adequately throughout the whole race and pace within your limits, I’m confident you will have a fantastic performance on race day.