MTB Ultramarathon, sweetspot or tempo pacing?

[tshortt]

I’m training for a similar race at the end of summer.

@cabbgage

Should I adjust my watts down to mimic the race or keep doing the hills at 85%.

I would keep doing the hills during training at between 80-85% FTP. I personally wouldn’t ride 88-92% FTP regularly (or at all if you are me) for this type of event. I’m building up my CTL with as much tempo and Z2 as I can. In fact, if you can, I would try to do entire steady rides at 80-85%, not just the hills.

As you get closer to the race, I would gradually start to mimic the demands of the race with simulation rides. As you have suggested, this will mean those simulation rides would be at a lower intensity.

Also, see @chad advice here:

Using TR to prepare for Dirty Kanza 200

Hey Aydraper, No personal experience at DK200, but I’m happy to weigh in on your questions. Any of those specialty plans are appropriate, so I’d choose the plan you find the most interesting, the one that’s likely to keep your training consistency as high as possible. For DK, I’d lean more toward Century simply because the efforts are the most similar to the Kansas terrain, but the 40k TT plan could work just as well if you swapped out one of the weekend workouts for some longer, outdoor mileag…

Particularly the part starting: “You could definitely see some return on a bit of Traditional Base in those final 4 weeks,…”. To me he is effectively saying lower intensity and try to increase duration as you get closer.