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For issue 1 Iâd say you want sustained power, as thatâs what riding up a big arse hill is going to need.
For issue 2 itâs going to fit in everything as best it can with the small window youâve given it. If it doesnât have enough time to fit it all in, base 1 and 2 + build are the most important areas of the program to get through so it looks like it prioritses that.
For Issue 3 just substitute one of the weekend rides if youâve selected mid volume, especially if missing that day outside is important to you.
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Hi there!
It sounds like your event is going to require a lot of muscular endurance and steady wattage- my pick would be sustained power build and century specialty. You can play with the length of the base/build/specialty cycles in plan builder using the 'how much experience do you have with structured training" question- youâll have a heavier focus on specialty if you say youâre more advanced. Alternatively you can combine the blocks manually to your liking 
Regarding outdoor rides, a lot of the plans have an option to swap one of the weekend workouts for a long z2 ride- there are suggestions as to what this could look like in the weekly notes. Another option is to pick a lower-volume plan and supplement it with unstructured outdoor rides- I usually do this in the summer when the weather is nice.
Finally, the decision to follow any plan vs doing your own thing is pretty individual, and depends on your goals. My personal opinion is that itâs worth giving any plan a reasonable amount of time before deciding thereâs something better- in the end itâs consistency and progression that brings about improvement, regardless of what method you choose. And part of that is deciding what fits your personality/lifestyle and gets you excited about riding 
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Issue 2. the full program takes 28 weeks. If you are going to start on 1 Oct, there are going to be some compromises. Base and build are more important than speciality, so that is what gets cut. You bake the fitness cake during the Base and Build phases, Specialty is just the icing on the cake. What would be nuts would be removing Base. I note that if you had 29 July as your start date, you will get nearly all of Base, Build and Speciality in.
Issue 3. I totally get wanting to do outside rides - thatâs really what it is about. There are a couple of ways of dealing with this.
- Pick the low volume plan, and do all 3 scheduled workouts during the week. Then go and do your weekend ride as a free ride.
- Pick your terrain. There are some hills nearby that take me 20-25 minutes to climb. So I ride to them, climb and descend the other side, then turn around and come back. Hey presto, Iâve got in 2x20 minutes at sweet spot that is the staple of many Build and Specialty workouts, while enjoying myself climbing some beautifully forested hills. I also use a river loop closer to home that has a series of 2 minute hills, which are excellent for VO2Max workouts. These may not be as precise as the TR workouts, but by holding the same power for roughly the same time, I am getting most of the same benefits, while enjoying myself outside rather than staring at my garage wall.
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I totally agree with you @mcalista. especially the option 1 on Issue 3. This is what I do. I choose a low volume plan and get stuctured workouts (which I do on the trainer or follow the outdoor workouts). I make sure I do them first, then I add in other rides, in your case your big weekend ride. with the low volume plan you can also fit in a few more recovery days and still get your three key workouts in. This system has worked very good for me
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Why are you only starting your training on 1st Oct? Start now and youâve 6 months, i.e. almost the full 28 weeks of Base-Build-Speciality. TR arenât going for the quick HIITs (sorry 
) the plans are long term to give you long term gains so you do need that sort of commitment.
If youâve listened to any of the podcasts where they talk about the speciality phase youâll hear the phrase: âforging the blade versus sharpening the bladeâ. In a nutshell, Base and Build forge the blade, Speciality sharpens it.
80km with 4000m of climbing is basically a TT, itâs just that itâs going uphill ⌠for a long way.
Plan Builder has its quirks so itâs worth trying different input parameters to see what changes - experience is one, the more experience you have the more the plan leans towards Speciality. You can also set your start time âin the pastâ if you are already training and it will account for that. Having said that a lot of the Speciality plans (Iâve not looked at the TT ones) are aimed at short high power output rather than steady state so you may not need much of that work. Of course your climb could have a series of 20% ramps in which case âŚ
Iâd choose a Low Volume plan (or let Plan Builder choose that) and use the weekends for long steady state rides outdoors.
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As above my question is - Why wait 8 weeks to start the plan?
I would Start today or Monday, ride the weekends outdoors and move the Tuesday ride to Weds if you have battered yourself at the weekend.
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Keen to see these rides that generate 400 TSS, thatâs a heck of a lot.
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On the podcast they recommend against âhero workoutsâ and I suppose by implication âhero ridesâ would fall into that category. I donât believe any of the training plans are set up to accommodate digging yourself into a hole that it takes days to climb out of on a weekly basis. 400 TSS is a staggering effort. TRâs Mianzimu is 5 hours in duration and clocks in at 222 TSS.
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I opted for the already mentioned solution: Low volume plan Mon - Wed - Fri and a long easy free ride on the weekend (normally Sun). Wed is my hard day of the week (so I have a rest day before and after).
You have to ask yourself if you either want structured training or just riding around. Itâs a trade off between the best possible gains and well⌠more fun and flexibility.
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Big days those, FTP set correctly?
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Its hard to imagine a 70 mile ride with 7k feet of elevation gain providing 300 TSS. How long did it take you to complete the ride?
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Issue 1 - your event requirement is basically steady power for 4+ hours. Century plan is probably the best plan for this, the power requirements are pretty similar. Race plan is aimed more at racing over hilly terrain, which requires regular surges above threshold to attack, chase, get over a short climb, do a pull, etc. Going over threshold in your event is a bad idea!
Issue 2 - if you have to drop one phase, then Specialty is the one to drop. Specialty doesnât really build fitness, it fine tunes the fitness youâve built from the previous 2 phases to meet the particular demands of your event. In your case there is minimal fine tuning needed since your event just requires you to put out steady power for a long time. If you want to complete a full Specialty phase then the simple answer is to start 7 weeks earlier 
Issue 3 - just replace the longest ride on the plan with an outdoor long ride. Donât worry about structure if you donât want to. Replacing, say, a 2 hour Sweetspot ride with a 4 hour ride which is a mix of endurance and tempo, is absolutely fine, youâre just swapping more volume for lower intensity. Which given the demands of your event makes total sense.
Other approach is to follow a Low or Medium volume plan which you can complete during the week, leaving your weekends free to do whatever you want.
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TSS is entirely based on your FTP (not a Strava âhardâ designation, not elevation, only FTP compared to power). To do 363 TSS in 5 hours youâd have been doing around 72 TSS/hour - definitely achievable but pretty far out there on the bell curve of rides.
If you arenât riding with a power meter or have an improperly assessed FTP that would explain this. If youâre going that deep every weekend it is hard to imagine that one of these isnât taking place. That type of effort would take significant recovery and if youâre hopping back into training afterwards then Iâd guess youâve got your FTP set too low in Strava
Edit - to give you some context on what your effort is like, I went back and looked at some races from last year. The information below is from a P123 road race and a 4 man breakaway I was in that lasted nearly two hours. This starts with establishing the break and then a period of time in a very small tight rotation - so basically an extremely hard effort. As you can see - Iâm barely at the same TSS/hour rate as your weekly outdoor ride, for a significantly shorter duration. There is no way I couldâve maintained this pace for five hours
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