I’m looking for some advice on how to structure my winter training after completing my first Gran Fondo (Whistler BC, 120km with 2000m of climbing) at 30 y/o and my first “season” of structured training this past weekend. I’m hoping to get some insight into a specific issue I ran into during the event.
I followed the TrainerRoad Gran Fondo plan for about 3 months leading up to the event. My compliance was good, and I felt strong and confident leading into the race. My w/kg (3.0) was about where I wanted it to be.
The Problem:
During the race, I hit a wall about halfway through, but it wasn’t a “bonk” in the traditional sense.
My legs felt completely empty. I couldn’t generate power and I was basically spinning at 90mm during climbs. My heart rate wasn’t rising anymore. Usually, when I push hard, my HR spikes, but here I felt like I couldn’t get my HR up to threshold even if I wanted to. It felt like my aerobic system had gas in the tank, because I was not struggling with breathing at all
I suspect (Correct me if I’m wrong) my muscular endurance (fatigue resistance) was the limiter, not my aerobic capacity. My Gran Fondo plan did not have enough volume / long distance rides to adequately prepare me for a 4 hour + effort.
I think I made a massive error with fueling as well. I struggled to consume 60g of carbs/hour during the race. Looking back, I realized I never trained my gut to absorb that much sugar during rides longer than 2 hours. I think the lack of fuel availability directly caused the legs to fail early.
My Questions for the Community:
I am planning my winter base season. Do you think switching to the “Build Endurance” plan is the right move?
My feeling of “low power/Low HR” Phenomenon: Does this sound like a classic case of energy depletion, or is this a sign that I need more climbing endurance?
How do you practice fueling? Do you literally sit on the trainer doing endurance rides while forcing down gels and chews to train the stomach?
I want to come back next year stronger, but I want to make sure I’m fixing the right weakness. Any advice on workouts or nutrition strategies would be greatly appreciated.
I do feel that TR plans have a blind spot when training for long events. Even if you put in the plan generator that you have 4 or 5 hours to train on a particular day, or days, the likelihood of actually getting prescribed a ride of that length is minimal. So, my recommendation would be to pick whatever plan you feel would suit your next few months of training (you’ll have time to get through several cycles before next year’s event), but then manually schedule (and pin) at least one long ride each month. It doesn’t have to be a hard ride, but there is something about just being on the bike for that length of time that can’t be replicated with an hour, or two, on the trainer.
The food thing is a hard one, as people can be very different on this. For me, the important things are to find some items that I can tolerate eating and drinking for that length of time, and then working up to getting enough into my system. I’d also caution against trying to get 120+ grams of carbs per hour into your system because ‘that’s what the pros do’. Not only will you need to build up your tolerance, but you’ll have to figure out what your tolerance level is. And you’ll need to find the right mix of glucose and fructose for your metabolism. This can be another benefit of the long rides in the first item, as you’ll get the opportunity not only to eat/drink your nutrition for all of those hours, but also to see how you feel at all points of the ride. (Chances are you won’t be doing these long training rides at the same intensity as your actual event, so a bit of extrapolation is needed, but I think you’ll get a much better idea of what works, and what doesn’t.) You can also experiment with what you need to eat before your ride, if anything, and how that affects you.
Those are my two basic thoughts on your situation, but I’m sure others will have additional thoughts to contribute.
Yes. Every single ride I’m having 80-100 calories per 15 minutes. Doesn’t matter if it’s 90 mins on the trainer or 4 hrs on the mtb. Races come and fueling a breeze.
Easier rides get more solid foods (gummy bears etc) and harder rides are more drink mix and gels.
Depending on your power, you may be ok with 250-300/hr.
You say it wasn’t a bonk in the traditional sense, but it sure sounds like a run of the mill bonk to me. 60g of carbs per hour is what I do on easy rides so if you were targeting that during a race effort AND were coming up short, it stands to reason that you were just out of gas. I’m not saying not to train because the more you ride, the more you can ride. But the nutrition part sounds like the main culprit in that specific instance to me, just from the info given.
Did you pace harder in the first part than second of the fondo? I experienced same thing and I overdid it in the first part of the fond? Sometimes when riding in a group we forget our pace plan and end up doing more than planned.
Yes classic energy depletion, 60g per hour is not enough even if you are only 50kg at 3w/kg is 150w which burns 540kcal per hour or 129g of carbs. Climbing endurance is no different to any other type of endurance. Riding uphill uses the same muscles and energy systems as riding on the flat.
60g per hour is only a can and half of coke original. What do you mean when you say you struggled to consume 60g/h?
Gels and chews are expensive and offer only very small gains over white sugar. I add 1/4tsp salt and 55g of regular white table sugar to my 550ml bottles. In cool weather I take a drink every 10 minutes, aiming to drink 1 bottle per hour thats 55g of carbs already, and top up with an oat porridge bar or sushi rice cakes. In hot weather or indoors on the trainer where its always harder to keep cool than outdoors I take a larger swig and drink 2 bottles per hour thats 110g per hour.
Just going to chime in quick on 2 and 3
2. Yes very normal to get the low power / low HR when fatigued and/or energy depleted. True bonking doesn’t always happen, 1st stage is greatly reduced ability to push the pace - this can happen (especially in newer riders/runners) when your glycogen levels are dropping, body shuts you down a bit as a central governor by your brain (similar when overheating). Likely a combo of fitness and energy balance (spent much more than took in)… maybe not a true hard bonk, but def a power FADE lol bonk’s 1st cousin
3.) Practice… just do it! it isn’t practice actually… it is fueling your body to do the work that you are asking of it. When you do an hour easy ride, you are burning many calories… way more than you can take in on the bike. Get a bag of fructose and a bag of maltodextrin… mix up per TR recommendations or any other ‘high carb mix DIY ’ with some sort of flavored electrolyte mix. Super easy then to put down 50-120g of carbs per hour on the trainer. OR supplement with also some gummy bears or other easily digested carb of your choice. On outdoor long rides I will use my normal DIY carb mix and then also bring a gel and bar snack per hour typically. To hit my target of around 100g per hour. Sometimes mid/late ride I shoot for 120-130 if i can to shock stomach just a bit (i’m 6’ 174#) - smaller riders will have more trouble taking in >100 maybe, test your limits at least monthly. For shorter easier rides I will wait for 10-15min before taking on carbs to help with fat utilization and blood sugar levels overall, but not really needed.
I just finished my first 100 mile Fondo, with about 6500 ft of climbing . I"ve been pretty religious about the TR workouts for about 2-3 years now, and my FTP as basically a newby to training to now has raised substantially. I’ve done a few other 100s/70s as part of just riding. I fueled for the Fondo at 80 g of carb per hour. My energy seemed good throughout. However, my muscles and sit bones ached a lot in the last 1/3. I worried about getting muscle cramps – something I’ve experienced before on long rides, but I managed not to by trying to be careful about my speed/efforts in the last stages of the event. While I believe TR has prepared me in a lot of ways for this type of effort, I don’t really think it’s prepared my body to moderate the suffering that seems to come with just being on the bike for 6 hours+ compared to my friends who just ride volume. I’m not sure what the solution is. But the one thing I do know is that its not simply more carbs.
Also wanted to chime in about the course itself. I also did the Whistler Fondo last weekend. Don’t underestimate the fact that the bulk of the climbing is in the last 50km. It’s almost all up from Squamish. That will definitely sap the legs more. Especially if you managed to do some drafting during the first sections.
Lastly, this year had some pretty solid headwinds, most notably in the latter half. That killed my legs more than I expected.
For reference, my NP for the whole event was almost 10w higher than last year and my time was 2 min slower overall
These are all connected and the biggest red flag is you struggling to take in calories. You do not need a huge amount for 120km but you do need keep the blood sugar at a stable level.
You do not say how hard you pushed relative to your threshold, VT2 etc. That will influence how rapidly you are heading to a wall and what you need to do to keep up.
The training that gave me what I felt like the best preparation was following the TR plan but adding in a long ride once a month. If you can get 2 hours then 3 then 4 etc several months in advance then I found I actually got used to 100k pretty easily.
There was a Saturday ride on Zwift, BMTR I think, that ran a long ride every weekend which helped pass the time when the weather was too wet for me!
Hey, fellow first-time Whistler Fondo attempter here who also used TrainerRoad with the Fondo as my A-event. I felt the same way as you during the back half in that my HR wasn’t the limiter; it was leg fatigue and keeping cramps at bay. Nutrition was fine (hit my 80g/hour target).
My IF was 0.75, in part due to a punchy first half before Squamish, but still a bit disappointing since I was targeting 0.8 (within TR’s pacing guidelines). My theory as a relatively new cyclist is that I have yet to build the cumulative base that comes from long rides, and / or experience riding at a higher IF for longer durations. If that is the case, then as a time-crunched cyclist who does not have the liberty of doing long, uninterrupted rides (excluding cafe/group rides where stop-and-starts doesn’t really simulate race day), maybe the practical fix is just increasing FTP and benefit from improvements in base that come as a natural byproduct of that.
Whistler was my last event this season, so I’m taking a short break and then jumping into an Increase FTP plan. That way, even if I hit my 0.75 IF wall again next time, that’s fine if my overall power ceiling is higher.
Thanks to everyone who replied . I will work on my fueling and try to incorporate longer rides into my training schedule. Winter is coming, so I’m not sure if it’s mentally feasible for me to do multi-hour rides indoors (I get bored easily) but I definitely want to increase my fatigue resistance this winter. That said, I do want to give credit to TR’s Fondo plan—Istill did relatively well and finished in the top 50% of all riders in the race!
Definitely get outside, if you possibly can. Even check the forecast and rearrange some things, if that’s possible. You don’t need a long ride every week, so hopefully things will work out.
It’s definitely back loaded for a lot of the climbing. After the neutral stanley park, punchy taylor climb it’s much more laid back til the real climbing starts, so anyone that has done too much the first half, not eaten enough etc etc, is going to suffer that back 50k.
The headwind day certainly didn’t help, hope anyone was hiding from the wind as much as possible!!!
Individual long long rides are definitely not necessary. Not sure how long you DID get, but I have some weekly wednesday rides that I help lead one of the groups, and between the ride there, the ride itself and home, probably get about 2 1/2 hours.
Those would have been my longest going in and I felt pretty strong at the end.
I think it’s not NECESSARILY about a long long ride ( unless you’re NOT getting in anything over say 90 minutes ) but more about smart pacing, nutrition, and as far as training I’m more an advocate of just pure volume.
Couple years ago I did festive 500 in one ride on zwift, off of these similar length rides, just with lots of frequency and decent overall volume ( 10 hours a week, riding most days? )
Nothing to add from a training perspective but glad to see the Whistler GF is still going. I did it about 15 years ago. Amazing ride and a fun place to end.
Congrats on finishing and coming away with some things to work on. Now that you’ve reflected and taken aways some aspects of your performance that you want to work on I would suggest the following, similar to what others have suggested.
TR is great in laying out a plan, picking workouts and setting up your macro cycles. I’ve found that I have had to take the wheel when it comes to planning my long rides to buid up enough training load in order to be prepared for my A events which are usually 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 hours. I’ve also had to include intervals on those long rides to replicate the stresses of my events. TR hasn’t done it for me and that’s okay - I’ve learned to do it myself. The biggest thing I learned last season is that I have to fuel those rides in order to be able to make the big efforts at hour 3, and hour 4 +.
Putting all those things together has changed my riding this year even as I get older and ride a bit less volume compared to a couple of years ago.
If you are interested in learning more about fueling, this was a great podcast got me to commit to fueling properly : https://youtu.be/t6gl8H-u9Zg?si=JLW5kx4-i4P9p9-4 They’ve been putting out a treasure trove of podcast lately so give them a listen.
I don’t train with trainerroad anymore but I feel I have riding fondos pretty figured out by now. Firstly none of my training rides except perhaps an vEveresting 9 months earlier have been much longer than 5 hours. I also tend to eat and train low to no carbsthroughout the year. What I often see happening during those events is people starting way too hard. The idea is to start way too easy until you are 50‐60% in (depending on the parcours of course) and only then pick up the pace. And even though I am mostly low carb, 6‐8 weeks out only I started introducing carbs gradually ramping up to 100g /h for around 5h. During the race I consumed around 80-90g/h (except for the last hour when I ditched my carbs for the final climb). Also I set an alarm on my headunit to drink my carb mix every 10 minutes and eat every 60 (though I had to shift the eating a bit around to when it was possible). Anyway most important thing is to start easy, you can try to catch a group on the flat after the start but try keeping it manageable and once on the first climb let the rest go. Set your own pace
bonk’s 1st cousin
. I will work on my fueling and try to incorporate longer rides into my training schedule. Winter is coming, so I’m not sure if it’s mentally feasible for me to do multi-hour rides indoors (I get bored easily) but I definitely want to increase my fatigue resistance this winter. That said, I do want to give credit to TR’s Fondo plan—Istill did relatively well and finished in the top 50% of all riders in the race!