Doing a long endurance ride during last 2 weeks of Speciality?

Training
1

A race, in exactly 2 weeks. Currently starting week 7 of RR speciality plan.

Thinking of substituting mid week 30 min endurance ride with a 3-4 hour outdoor ride for pleasure. Would do it at 60-70%. Also hoping to give myself an endurance bump with it as A race is a 3 hour road race.

Good idea? Bad idea? Would it negatively affect my taper?

2

Bad idea if you think it will help your performance in the race. You should already have enough endurance , and doing the ride tis close to your event won’t have any benefit.
If it were me, I would stick to the taper you have planned. When I was a runner , my taper was to run 7 400 metre reps a week before race , decreasing by one each day ,so the day beore the race you just run 1 400 metre rep.
So you keep some short intensity, rather than a long endurance session.
Some may suggest otherwise, but this is my take on it.

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3

This is a classic mistake people make and a bad idea. This won’t help you, in fact it will just add fatigue when what you should be doing is shedding it now. If you don’t have the aerobic fitness now, you aren’t going to get it in two weeks. Now it’s about staying as sharp as you can and ditching long term fatigue.

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You’re asking, for permission, because you know it will compromise the textbook taper.

But doing things by the textbook isn’t the only way. Do you want to do this endurance ride because it will be a great experience in a relaxed setting, and appealing because you are socially starved? Or do you just crave a mental break from ‘training’ and rekindle the joy of bicycling for pleasure?

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5

2 reasons:

  1. Fresh air and nice scenery.
  2. I’ve stuck rigidly to the trainerroad plans and have only done a handful of endurance rides. Due to extreme time pressure and worried I won’t have the lasting ability to race full on for 3 hours.

I’ll be doing a B race this weekend, would you all consider that negatively affecting my taper?

6

No advice here from me but I’m in a similar boat. two more weeks of build before starting rolling road race speciality.
I’m aiming to substitute out the weekend sweet spot rides for a longer ride. Mainly so I know I have the endurance to complete the race but as it’s a multi day teams race, so I can have time to train with my team mates.
I’d say if you are going to sub anything perhaps do the sweet spot rides and keep it easy. Be wary that your longer ride doesn’t leave you too fatigued to complete the TR session the next day if you have one.