Cape Epic - Trainer road

Training
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Hi Guys
Would like to find out from Jonathan and Sofia which TR plan approach they would recommend to finish the epic. not racing for cat’s with the new TR plan builder (masters plan) looking at my historical training it in my opinion is not giving enough time or load to be able to finish the epic.

around 340 TS and 7 hours per week seems a bit low. should i make it a demanding program. How much indoor vs outdoor riding, currently i change my weekend rides to outdoor solo rides and 2 x hard intervals during the week. ie 80x20 type training if i make sense.

Thanks

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You are being very vague here, because what is optimal depends on you.

  • How much training can you sustain in the long run? Maybe your current lifestyle only allows for 7 hours? But maybe it is more.
  • Forget about “80-20”, polarized, sweet spot, consistency is a lot more important than that.
  • As a general rule, I would add more long endurance rides on the weekend and include skills sessions.
  • I would test equipment during your skills sessions (e. g. tires, tire pressures, suspension setup and saddles).
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the issue is that it doent matter which approach i select on the the new plan builder, it only gives me a max of around 7 hours per week. (because it looks at me previous rides). Being almost 50 it is not feasible to do 3 hard intervals a week, i have tried that before and it just doesn’t work for me.
skills and equipment is not the discussion point. it is the optimal approach to follow for the plan. looking at the old type builder plan for high volume it suggest 9.5 - 10 hours, when i change that to a masters plan it gives 2 hard session and the rest is endurance hence my 80x20 comment.
so the bottom line is that i would consider 10 hours per week the minimum to finish the epic, yes i have changed my weekend rides to outdoor solo rides. but now im stuck with 2 x 1 hour hard sessions in the week which does not increase and if i change the durations it says that the plan might be to much. so in summary, the new plan builder (looking at historical training) does not seem one to allow to go beyond your old training. if i use the old manual way then i can manipulate it to train more., what i also found was when using masters it would recommend rest days after a outdoor ride and it wanted me to recover more than train tbh.

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You see, “I’m not/will not be fit enough to finish Cape Epic.” is always a possibility here.

Rather than forcing the issue in the near future, I’d make that a goal two, three years down the road and do things correctly.

That’s not correct, of course, you can override Plan Builder’s suggestions at any point. You just have to customize your training plan. However, the farther you go away from Plan Builder’s suggestions, the more likely it is that at present you cannot sustain such training.

In what way doesn’t that work for you, is it too much? Do you think it is too little for Cape Epic?

Au contraire, if you want to do well, these must be part of the discussion. E. g. you need to schedule for trail rides and the like, because you need to take the additional fatigue into account. Cape Epic isn’t like road riding where skills are less important.

Ditto for strength training.

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I did cape epic this year with the old mid-volume plan. It went just fin ! I even had time to look at the scenery :grinning:. I never took long endurance rides, just 100% the TR plan. I really do recommend to take some Mtb skills lessons, you can use them there.

Trust Trainerroad !

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Ah thanks, for this. what i was looking for on the planning side., yet i have followed mid volume before for stage raging lasting up to 5 days, trusted TR and it left me a bit short on long endurance days where we cycled for 5-7 hours in the mountains. TR helped with that short bursts of max power to clear trail obstacles and long climbs, but it did feel that it left me a bit short for that all day endurance. hence i asked the question if it would be better to only do hard sessions midweek, and then longer 4 hours free riding on weekends.

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thanks for the input, maybe i have not been clear enough.

I am a mtb’er been one for 15 years, done lots of stage racing before, i know the drill. i am also local to the trails here so i know the terrain and have ridden most of them.

I have been doing the mid volume plan for most of my stage events, and its great for the short max efforts to clear trail obstacles or long rocky climbs, i feel as if there is not 4-5 hour rides in the plan and that leaves me not conditioned for those long day long slogs. On the master plan if i do one of those rides then it wants me to do nothing for 3 or 4 days. due to the redlight green light system. i then en up having to change the plan away from masters because it will not give me enough tr stress. I know what Epic training involves i train with my mates that have done 3 now as a training partner. my question is what TR plan to take and how do you balance it with outdoor rides on the weekend to still have some structure. ie Mid-VOL with 2 outdoor rides during weekends, or High-VOL. Strength and Skills is not what i am asking. for im asking about the recommended TR plan. and with the new system it looks at what you did not what you want to do., and if i do change it it complains that i might be over reaching if it makes sense.
So i think the better question is for those that have done the epic or extreme stage racing on a MTB what TR plans did you use and did you compliment it with unstructured long rides.?

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I think you’re over-thinking it. If you feel you can only do 2 hard interval sessions during the week then you want Masters plan + Volume. Your volume doesn’t need specific structure as such. You could chuck in a bit of TrainNow or just fire up endurance sessions when you have the time. You don’t need to train for 8 hours at a time to do an 8 hour ride.

As Oreocookie said above, the consistency is more important than the defined type/zone.

If I was you, I’d legitimately decide how many hours a week you can dedicate to this, on a regular, weekly schedule and then fit in the correct masters plan around it.

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Same doubts here because I had a very low volume of cycling during summer and now wanted a high volume plan to prepare 2025 season goals that are ultra MTB events (2x the distance and climbing of a regular MTB marathon) and I get constant weekend group rides recommendations to decrease time on those days.

I guess ill have to ditch those suggestions and increase my weekly time and TSS a bit more so that TR in the future can take that kind of volume as my average load and not last Summertime low volume.

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I’d circle back to what I initially said: plan your unstructured offroad rides, strength training sessions and whatever else you have planned, and fill the rest with intervals and rest.

Let’s take my training plan for example: for years and years I have done 5 workouts per week where 3 days were with intensity. I moved earlier this year and my commute has gone from 2 x 4 km to 2 x 12 km. In addition, I’d go shopping by bike, etc. And I have started to take strength training seriously. I average 600–800 km per month just on my commuter.

  • I went down to a 3-day plan (2 days of intensity, one long endurance workout).
  • On rest weeks, I replace all workouts by 30-minute versions (on the two short days) or 60-minute version. It is just to keep the rhythm.
  • I tried adding one more intense workout and it wasn’t working. I couldn’t recover fast enough. RL/GL tried to warn me that I was flying too close to the sun, and I had to learn by getting burnt.

Translating that to your situation: if you know you can handle e. g. rides workouts per week and you want to train with your partner, say, once per week, then that leaves you with 4 workouts. If you are doing strength workouts, take that into consideration as well. Long endurance workouts are also a good thing for something like Cape Epic.

The new version of Plan Builder allows you to regularly schedule group or solo rides, so that’s how I’d include them in my training plan. That way, it does know about them and takes that into consideration when deciding on your ramp rate.

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Hey @iLikeMTB ! Stoked to hear you are taking on Epic. Truly deserving of the name!

In my prep for Cape Epic, I was testing different training methods (as we often do internally) and I personally did too many longer weekend rides coming into Cape Epic. They were 4-5hrs long, and while I know that’s a blip on the radar for the sport’s elite, those longer weekend rides made it tougher for me to recover to the point where I could effectively push myself and adapt with my mid-week higher intensity workouts (I followed a Polarized approach for Cape Epic, fwiw, so 2 intense workouts per week).

I didn’t realize this at the time. Instead of feeling like excessive fatigue, it just felt like I was nearing my limits. Now that TrainerRoad detects fatigue, I can see lots of yellow and some red days that weren’t respected.

My point in sharing this is that it is important to leave headroom rather than seeking to fill it up, and I think us average cyclists with a lot of life responsibilities underestimate how much fatigue comes from those longer weekend rides, as well as their damaging effect on adaptations.

There’s some great advice so far in this thread, so some of the below is redundant.

Addressing some of your key concerns:

2 vs. 3 Days of Higher Intensity
I’d go for 2 days in your case, particularly since you’ve found it to work well.

Training Approach
I’d stick with what TrainerRoad has suggested for at least the first four weeks, then reassess if you want to increase to Demanding after that.

Volume: Too Low for Cape Epic?
The right training volume is less about what’s needed for the specific duration of the race, and more about what you need to achieve sustainable progressive overload.

That breaks our brains a bit, because in our minds we simply need to rise to the occasion of the race by taking on bigger training volume to be prepared for the race.

But if you step back and look at it logically, that assumption falls apart quickly.

We get faster when we are dosed with moderate levels of overload that we can recover and adapt from. Our limits in this regard will go up if (and that’s a BIG IF) we are consistent with (1) Training (2) Nutrition (3) Recovery.

Our data backs this up and shows it’s best to meet athletes where they are at and give them progressive overload at a manageable rate, rather than just giving them a base volume of X hours because the event will be X hours long.

In your case, TrainerRoad has analyzed your training and recommended you start at this point. As you progress in your abilities, it will adjust.

If you felt you were lacking staying power later in the race, then I’d follow this self-assesment:

  1. Did I fuel the work at at least 90g/hr throughout the race with a simplified glucose/fructose nutrition product?

  2. Did I take in adequate liquid volume and sodium levels to match my sweat rates?

  3. Did I pace the race in a reasonable manner for my abilities?

  4. Did I come into the event glycogen loaded from an intentional carb loading plan?

  5. Did I follow my training plan with consistency (not missing workouts and not doing too much/not enough)?

  6. Have I been disciplined with my sleeping habits?

In my experience “the wrong training plan” is a common scapegoat for problems caused by shortcomings in the areas above.

Not to say you can’t have the wrong training plan, but no matter how good the plan is, if you miss on the above, your hard work will not be able to show itself.

If it helps, feel free to gradually extend your longer weekend endurance rides, but do so gradually (no more than 30 minutes per week is my personal suggestion), and not until you’ve gone through at least 4 weeks of your plan as prescribed.

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Super excited for you! I think you’ll do great with what the new plan builder will give you. If you can just focus on being strict with consistency, nutrition, sleep, and pacing, then you’ll outperform your near competition in the latter half of the race.

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Outside of training for Cape Epic, here are my two recomendations that I didn’t follow and paid for it and had to pull out on the 5th day.

Bring the most comfortable shoes you can find and make sure you hike up hill in them for long periods to make sure they do not rip the skin off your heals. I did not do this and my heals were destroyed and every step was painful. There are long stretches of hike-a-bike.

Just assume everyone around is infected with a disease that wants to kill you. Wash your hands constantly. I ended up with severe diarrhea which contributed to me having to drop out.

Good luck with your training and the race.

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It’s an international event so the active infections from around the world will be present. :pensive:

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I can relate to that too and will surely have all this info in consideration.

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Thanks for the sound advise!, what i was after.

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thanks for this, yes others have also mentioned to use the most comfy shoes there is.!, carbon soles and rock climbing is not made for one another.