Dragon Ride 2025

Hi all,

I thought I’d start a thread for anyone doing one of the Dragon Rides this year, a place to share training plans and the apprehension!

I’ve signed up for the Grand Fondo (215km + 3350m), it’s my first event so I must sound pretty naive but I’m committed to training and I wanted to do something significant before I’m 40 in September.

I have a FTP of 266 and stepped up my training with a weekly goal of around 200km with 2000m of elevation, all on the turbo with it being winter. I’m focusing on strength endurance at lower cadences to mimic the climbs as the climbs on the course worry me the most. I’ll increase my longer ride and weekly mileage once the weather improves. I’m 80.8kg and 6"3, there’s little room to improve watts/kg from a weight pov.

I have a wahoo kicker which is always set up at home, a watt bike and even an altitude chamber at work (I’ll use once a week for recovery) and have access to all the recovery modalities too so there’s no excuse for me!

Would be great to see how everyones training is going and what they plan to do over the next 5-6 months.

Thanks

Craig

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Good luck @cmaz

Looks like a great, tough, day out. I looked at this event too but couldn’t find anyone from my club to do it with me. Hoping to do Tour De Manc instead

Will be interested to hear how you get on with your training for the event and then how the event itself goes

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I’m doing the 296km devil… never done anything of that length so it’ll be a challenge!

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Hi @cmaz

Good luck with your training - I did the Gran Fondo last year for the first time and loved every minute of it.

I’m similar height to you, but a bit heavier and with a slightly higher threshold.

My training for the event was quite specific. I maintained a minimum or one (two until I added the protocol below) hard TR workouts a week focused on seeetspot or threshold - looking to push out my time in zone in preference to simply pushing my FTP up. Supplemented with additional Z2 TR workouts or easy Z2 outdoor spins.

About 8 or 9 weeks out I began adding an outdoor ‘climbing’ weekend ride. These were planned to gradually increase distance and accumulated elevation until a couple of weeks out when I was hitting 110 miles and 10k feet. The focus was on pacing - keeping below threshold wherever possible (much harder than you’d think) and maintaining a decent average speed as a result of keeping the effort well paced.

I had a week in Majorca a fortnight prior to the event and used this to add in some more intense climbs of around 30 to 60 minutes.

Tips for the day:

Take layers - the Welsh weather is unpredictable.

If the route is the same as last year then the start can be fast with groups of riders carrying each other along - so this could help you conserve energy and get a good pace at the beginning.

The last part of the ride has the two hardest climbs so save a bit in the tank for that. Food stations are very busy and the first one had not enough toilet facilities so bear that in mind.

I carried a fair bit of my own food - my goal was 100g of carbs an hour minimum - I trialled my feeding protocols as part of my longer weekend rides in the run up to the event - so I could work out what works for me (and what doesn’t). Eating that much proved not too challenging to start with but became a little harder after about 6 hours.

Video below I made of my experience.

Enjoy the next few months and the process of getting stronger and fitter in advance of the big day.

As noted the ride was a LOT of fun - loads of riders of all sorts of age and ability and a good fun atmosphere :grin:

Hope this helps :+1:t2:

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I’ve entered this years Grand Fondo more for a change of scenery than anything else.
The main thing I’ll be focusing on is back to back long rides at the weekend, ideally 5 hrs +
I think I may have been a bit keen with my estimated finishing time, as I forgot how hilly it is :laughing:

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@dsirrom well done and thanks for sharing your video. Looks like a really tough event and to do it in around 8 hours moving time is fantastic

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Thanks for taking the time to post and sharing your video

Sounds like you had a brilliant training camp with those long rides with plenty of elevation, plus Majorca too.

Except for a long aerobic ride what do you think is best to focus on for the turbo trainer sessions? For the moment I’m doing a route with a long 1 x 1000m+ climb, 1 x 40/50km with 750m+ then 1 x specific low cadence reps workout (increasing the length of each interval). I was doing standard Z2&3 workouts but I swapped these out for lower cadence reps. Your average cadence was 77 for the ride so it seems these hills routes and lower cadence rep workouts would be more specific. Any thoughts?

Appreciate the tips for the day and ideal carb intake. I think the route is the same as the route on your video. Any events planned for this year?

Thanks again

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Thanks, I haven’t seen the tour de man before, I’ll add it to the list for another year

Tour De Manc - Mad Manc - Tour de Manc

Another good one is Tour De Mon - Tour de Môn: Anglesey Cycle Sportive | Always Aim High Events
The wind makes this one tough, Anglesey is always windy

Nice one for posting.

I’ve signed myself up for this year, I may have bitten off more than I can chew but it gives me something to aim for on the bike.

I’m not big on chasing numbers in my training and I don’t have the indoor trainer as an option, so I’ll just be getting out on the road as much as possible, mixing up more short <50k speedy runs with longer/slower spins on the weekends.
I’ve also realised I think I need to enter another event earlier in the year, maybe around April time, which gives me something else to build towards - there’s a few sportives around then that have caught my eye.

I guess my biggest concern with all of my training is the distinct lack of elevation where I live (Leigh on Sea, Essex), I’m not quite sure how I’m going to build for those longer climbs consistently. I tend to be ok going up hills for my size (6’1", 83kg), I have a decent engine having always been active/involved in sport since my youth so I can run at a decent pace on the flats all day, but the climbing in this event scares the life out of me!

Very keen to share stories, fears, hopes and the rest :+1:

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That’s a good question. I guess to an extent it will depend on what your personal strengths and weaknesses are.

My weakness is / was longer power so that’s where my training focus was.

I went for progressively longer accumulated time in zone for sweetspot and threshold (not over unders). I mixed it up but generally looked to push out my TTE at the higher end of my Threshold.

The rationale behind this was that whatever my FTP, it was clear that a decent performance on the day would need me to need to operate a lot in that zone due to the amount of climbing involved.

Rather than trying to add 10watts to my FTP (even though it did go up a wee bit over time) my focus was on improving how long I could sustain myself at the higher end of my existing envelope.

At the same time I worked hard on improving my nutrition and slowly cutting excess bodyfat - it’s amazing what some goal-related discipline can achieve :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

My weekend outdoor rides were planned to slowly and steadily increase the accumulated climbing and distance - as a consequence pushing out further that time in zone.

I deliberately aimed to hold UNDER my FTP on climbs and just pace them out - a steady hard tap at high sweetspot, then rinse and repeat for the entire ride - so 6 or 7 hours-in, still doing the same.

The end result was I felt accustomed to that type of effort being repeated over a long day in the saddle and was able to replicate the approach across the course of the Dragon event.

Psychologically it meant letting go of the urge to stay with faster riders (which at the start I could have done) at the expense of dipping over my Threhsold more often, which would very likely have meant I blew up at some point.

Interestingly, I caught and passed quite a few people who’d passed me earlier in the day, on the last two climbs, which for me was an (admittedly N of 1) validation of the approach. :grinning:

Hope this helps :+1:t2:

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That’s always a great feeling.

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I feel the same regarding the hills on the ride. I’m in Brentwood so I’m not far from you at all, a few hills but only 70-80m elevation, planning on doing a reps of a few of the biggest ones near me in the spring. I’ve changed my training to mainly working on aerobic base for the next 6 weeks, with a climb session and a Zwift Event thrown in.

Add me on strava if you want, could always try and meet for a ride

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Thanks for this… lots to consider. I’m keeping it more simple and building up my aerobic base at the moment, limiting higher HR zones to once/twice a week via a hard climb and a Zwift Event. I’ll make it more specific in 6 weeks but for now as long as I’m getting 200-250km and 2000m+ elevation a week I’ll be happy with those numbers.

Got a new bike on the way too!! I don’t need anymore motivation to get out

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