Solid plan…keep doing that and building up that long ride. I don’t really think there is such a thing as “junk” miles in this scenario either. It is all building your endurance and there will be times when you are just riding that slowly at Unbound due to heat, exhaustion, feed errors, etc.
yeah, it is a great group…I usually do the B’s. If you know BK from BMTR, he and I ride IRL all the time during the season.
In many shorter gravel races (100k-ish), it’s getting to that point (at least around here). Your race isn’t over if you get dropped from a group, but there is a strong incentive to hang on for dear life in the fastest group you can manage. Chasing solo early is usually an exercise in futility, you are usually better off waiting for a group to come up from behind and then trying to catch folks ahead by working together. So, I guess it’s different than a road race that has a single pack, more like a classics race that has smaller groups all over the road. If you aren’t in one of the first 2 or 3 groups on the road, nobody is working too hard to catch in my experience. At that point, the bike race becomes more like a bike ride (which can be just as fun, so better than a road race in that respect).
Interesting. I find Vo2 work critical for gravel races. Closing gaps, those small pinch dips and having to muscle over obstacles. I have BWR coming up and in preparation I’ve been extending the warm up to an hour of Z2 and then ending it with 20-45 min of Z2.
Same deal with threshold.
This really depends on your goals and relative ability. If you want to go faster at Unbound, you have to be in a group. The unfortunate reality is that you won’t find a fast moving group doing steady power up and down the hills. It took Dylan Johnson and his huge presence to try to organize something different last year. It’s just not how people are wired. I was in the lead group of the 100 last year and it was non-stop repeated 30-90s efforts just to stay in contention with endurance/rest in between.
If racing is not your goal, you may end up holding endurance pace if you are solo for much of the race, but even in that case, anaerobic & V02 training will go a long way to raising that endurance level. And there are plenty of steep hills where you will not want to ride 4mph.
John on the podcast talks about how to do well in these gravel races, you go easy in the beginning, and then slowly pass people as they drop off. IMO, this doesn’t work as well at Unbound. I am highly confident that if he were racing for placing at Unbound, he would be in a fast group doing high power repeats with everyone else.
Either way, anaerobic & V02 training as prep for Unbound will NOT go to waste.
can we not conflate anaerobic work capacity with endurance level? it’s one thing to have a matchbook for over threshold efforts, but that doesn’t mean one’s overall endurance is that good.
Yeah, I’m definitely not planning to ride it steady and recognize the value is going hard early to stay with fast groups. I find this particularly true when it’s going to be a hot day (make hay early and get as far up the course as possible before the heat sets in). Figuring out just hard long to hang onto a group is always the tricky part. I try to keep an eye on normalized power to make sure I’m not digging too deep early. In a 3 hour race, I am trying to keep it under 300w NP for the first hour (around threshold for me when fit). In a 9 hour race, that’s more like 250- NP target for the first hour, but just depends on the course and group dynamics. 200 miles is uncharted territory for me, but I rode ~100miles of last year’s unbound course solo and I was trying to predict what kind of wattage folks would be doing in the faster groups going up those rolling hills. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stay with a decent group pushing threshold (or lower v02max), but that might be wishful thinking until things spread out. I probably need to get on strava and do some power number stalking to see what folks were doing last year early in the race.
In the gravel racing I do (of any length), going easy at the start is a guaranteed poor finish. Maybe good advice is you are just looking to finish and not blow up, but there is just to much to be gained by getting into a fast group early if you shooting for a finishing position. I made that mistake once at BWR cedar city back in 2020. I was super fit, but was apprehensive about the altitude and distance, so went really conservative at the start. What a waste of fitness that was, I was basically riding a solo TT with minimal help all day as I was just riding through folks falling off the fast groups that were way up the road.
As you note, knowing where to drop off is the tricky part. Last year at Dust Bowl, I probably stayed with the front group too long….it was VO2 max into every gravel section and out of every turn. Finally got chopped at mile 35 and I paid the price for it from mile 40-60. In a world of hurt riding solo….but a coke from my daughter at mile 44 eventually got me right.
But don’t underestimate how many people overcook themselves trying to hang too long and that you can pass via the “tortoise vs the hare” strategy. I made up a lot of places in the last 40 miles of that race.
But to your earlier point, gravel racing has changed. When I did Unbound in 2019, it was a pretty gentle pace rolling out of town and there was a very large group for quite awhile,….easily still 200 riders after 90 minutes. No way that happens in today’s gravel races.
Wow. That sounds sick. Kudos for doing that much work on a trainer 
Expanding on my opinion from earlier. I don’t think Anaerobic intervals are bad in any sense, I just think time is better spent than dedicating workouts to them every week when looking at the event profiles.
For me, focus would be VO2 and Threshold, maybe sub some Threshold for Sweet Spot to manage fatigue and then as much Endurance as I could take on top of those.
I like this approach for adding in Z2 - thanks for sharing the screenshots! Z2 options when you hit the extend warm up/ cool down would actually be a nice feature.
Thanks! I agree with you, which is why I didn’t change my training plan discipline. I’m just adding Z2 to my low volume plan.
I did a bad job explaining the issue I meant I wished TR would fix… I wish they would make more clear in the app what kind of training plan would be appropriate for your A event. Sometimes that’s straight forward like a cyclocross or a TT plan. Despite course variability, those races have a consistent structure. However, a gravel race that’s 40% on the road and 9 hours of fast hardpack vs a bit more technical gravel race that’s 100% gravel and three hours… those are different efforts…
Confusion about this comes up fairly frequently in the forum. And they get regular questions about it on the podcast. I think that’s evidence that they could provide some extra info in the plan creation process.
It’s easy to hold down the “+” button at the start of the workout but by the end the lag is so bad I have to hold it down for about 40 seconds before I can get the power % up from Z1 into Z2.
You’ll note that I started my comments with “They’ve addressed this repeatedly on the podcast and on the forum”. My background is in research design and data analysis, and I’m not advocating for “following blindly”. However, there are lots of training systems and forums, and all of them make some set of assumptions. If you’re going to use any given training system, it makes sense to work within the parameters defined by that system. Horses for courses and all that. Question all you want, but if you pick and choose from the TR training (or any other system) program, you probably aren’t going to see the same results as someone who is using the system as designed.
The trainerroad system is based on the assumption that there are overlapping energy systems and that by training each of these systems, you will improve performance in all of them. They’ve tested this over the course of years and data from millions of training ride miles and continue to tweak the system. It seems to be a very well supported assumption, and one shared by lots of satisfied customers.
From my own experience, I trained using a “match training to race conditions as closely as possible” model for years and got fair results, but plateaued at the “slightly better than average” level. Using trainerroad, I’ve improved my performance substantially, extended my ability to hold power, and have even improved my ability to climb from “can’t” to “can attack on punchy climbs and hold my own on longer climbs.”
I do see benefits from Vo2 and anaerobic intervals on longer rides. They extend my ability to hold higher levels of threshhold. But ultimately, if you don’t think they do, c’est la velo. See you at the races.
Yep. I’ve been thinking about this for Unbound - how much to keep up with faster groups early, vs ride at a more measured pace.
The problem with Unbound is if you get it wrong in the first 2-3 hours, you have another 12-13 hours (for me) remaining to suffer through.
At Steamboat last year, I lined up at 6:25am for the 6:30 start on the Black course, and got stuck in the starting chute behind a bunch of Blue riders who wanted a good starting spot for the Blue race and lined up across the road, blocking it. This meant I did not get in a good group to ride with for the first 2 hrs of the race.
At Unbound, I’ll probably line up with the 13 or 14 hr group, and hang “sag ride”back through the field until I’m on a 15 hr pace.
On the OP’s question, I think anaerobic intervals (in moderation) are a good part of any plan. I don’t have evidence for this, but I think it helps prevent cramps, as you’ve trained your body for those occasional spurts of power that happen any time you’re riding a bike.
What time does the BMTR start on a Saturday? Sounds like just what I need thanks.
7:10 central time. It’s the best virtual group ride for quality training on the internet in my opinion. Zero coasting, requires constant effort and attention. Which makes it go by pretty fast. Even when the weather is nice, I’ll opt for this ride over outdoors when I’m tight on time. Great way to also test nutrition as well, I’ll typically have a table full of sugar, skratch, and caffeine (and sometimes a little pickle juice to fight off cramps at the end). B group is good and they have a B “freebird” group that is basically a break-away group. The A group is pretty manageable if it’s a flat course, actually smoother than the B freebirds from what I’ve experienced (but higher average power). I don’t think they are running an A group right now. No stopping in A or B rides, so hit the bathroom before you start. C and D groups make stops. Good site for finding details on zwift events -
Hey there! Sounds like there’s already plenty of good advice for you to mull over here! 
From the TR perspective, our “normal” Gravel plan offers anaerobic workouts that athletes will also see in our Rolling Road Race plan. Both of these plans are intended for events that will be anywhere from about 1-5 hours in duration. Races that fit into that time frame, while long, will still see higher intensities and attacks that athletes will need to prepare for.
Unbound, meanwhile, is a totally different beast. While you’ll still encounter scenarios out on the course that will push you into your anaerobic zone, those moments will be far less frequent.
Because of how long Unbound is, we’d recommend going with the Century plan for your Specialty Phase instead. That plan will have you performing more sustained power workouts that will better suit the fitness requirements of Unbound.
To change your Specialty Phase, you can follow these steps:
Go to your TR Calendar, scroll to where you see the annotation marked “Specialty” and click on it:
Next, a menu will pop up. Click on the drop-down menu that has your current Specialty Phase on it:
On the drop-down menu, select “Century,” then click “Update,” and you’ll be good to go from there!
Hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks, most helpful. I was playing with it a bit yesterday and couldn’t figure out the best way to to tweak the plan. Super easy and I’m back to vo2max/threshold on my interval days.
7:10AM Central Time…then a 2 minute stagger to the C group and another 2 minutes to the D group. There will usually be a flyer group that separates right at the beginning while the beacon group closely adheres to the advertised pace. It is a very well run ride…one of the best on Zwift, IMO.
When I did it in 2019, I made the conscious decision to drop off at ~90 minutes. we hit a pretty technical section and I just instinctively said “Yup…time to let go”. But as we discussed, gravel racing has changed so much since then that I honestly have no idea how realistic that would be today for me.
I got chopped at DustBowl last year around mile 35 and I had pushed it too hard / long to stay there and paid the price.
SBT last year, I had zero intention of trying to stay with any groups due to the altitude…my buddies were of similar ability so we rode together for the day, occasionally picking people up and then reshuffling the deck as we moved forward. I felt like the early rollers did enough to break up the groups anyway.
