Hi - have read some posts about 100 mile rides. If someone could provide advice please.
Have been using TR for most of the winter. Just finishing a general fitness plan by month end. FTP at 201 - am 60. Did 100m when i was half my age. Decided to do another on a random date in September. Don’t race - it’s all recreational for me. But would like to build to have a good ride through improved power and cardio.
Plan builder has me doing 4 hours per week progressively towards mid september. Looks fine but i’m thinking it’s not enough training as it keeps the saturday ride my longest at only 1:15. As the weather gets better will go out and do a long ride each weekend - typically 50 to 60km ish ( about 35miles).
How do I, should I, modify the plan for longer rides to get me to the goal/event. Feel like I’m not using plan builder the right way. I set up the event and then said build me a plan and this is what I got.
Just my .02 (and I’m no coach), but I would add one long outdoor ride a week to your existing plan. Ramp it up weekly until you get to around 75-80 miles in length. I know a lot of folks succeed on long race/ride days with only low volume and shorter training sesisons, but I’m not one of those people.
If I have a century ride coming up, I need to get in those 50, 60, 70, 80 mile rides in my legs. It builds a certain durability that I just don’t get on shorter rides. And it helps sort out fit, comfort, clothing choices, fueling strategies, etc.
Again, maybe it’s because I’m an old guy (57), but that’s how I trained when I was younger and it’s sort of burned into my brain at this point. But long days call for longer training sessions (in my mind anyway). I don’t think you need to actually ride 100 miles before your event day, but knowing you can ride 75 miles without being wrecked and in pain is a huge mental boost and will give you confidence that you can handle the 100 miler.
Looking at your training plan I see you set your availability to 40 mins on Sundays… Not sure if this is the only available time you have for Sundays but these would be a great day to add in those longer outside endurance rides for your sets days are looking as you have Mondays off.
On Saturdays right now you have interval sessions, so I would keep those.
All that in mind, we could, however, move things around to fit things better:
Monday: OFF Tuesday: Interval Day Wednesday: OFF Thursday: Interval Day Friday: OFF Saturday: Endurance (you can swap this for a Solo Ride and ride outside) Sunday: Endurance
I’d say consider supplementing your plan with an extra long ride each weekend. The plan builder gives you a great baseline, but if your goal is a 100-mile ride, gradually extending your longest ride from 1:15 to closer to 2 hours could really help
I don’t understand why TR doesn’t automatically set duration if I’ve listed the event as 11 hours. Wouldn’t it know to make one long ride a week? I don’t see how to add the mileage so the plan builder knows it’s 100 miles.
it’s presently trying to give me a 45 minute endurance ride on weekend.
As of right now, you will have to manually set your available ride duration for those Endurance rides. If it’s capped out at 45 it won’t recommend something longer than that because it assumes that’s all the available time you have to ride on that schedule day.
Goal-Aligned Duration