Hi, I’m a 38 year old overweight, UK based enduro racer.
I hurt myself in a crash in early 2022 and I didn’t touch the bike again until March 23. Honestly, whilst I’m active in general my bike fitness has plummeted and I’ve put on 7kg of fat!
I’ve booked an enduro event for in 9 weeks time and I’ve dived on TR to help me get at least a little fitter and leaner before that race.
My question is, I’ve inputted my stats and my discipline etc and TR has given me a plan, however I don’t feel like there is enough ‘short burst’ work in the plan.
I look at the pre-set gravity plan and it’s full of short interval style bursts.
Should I trust the plan TR has presented me with taking into account my stats or should I do the pre-set gravity based workout.
I’m guessing the plan is having you start in a base phase which by definition will not have a lot of the intense efforts since you’re literally building a base to work off of later in your training. With only 9 weeks until the event, I guess you’d have to decide if you’re ok doing lower intensity stuff or if you would want to scrap it and just add in a build/specialty block manually. Personally, I’d just use what TR gave me. It’s your first race in over a year, so I doubt you’ll be setting the world on fire anyways. Take it slow, build back and maybe by the end of the year you’ll be flying.
They have an article showing different ways to look at the build for enduro races based off where your starting from. If would recommend using plan builder and you may want to look at changing how your classify the type of each event in your calendar https://support.trainerroad.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024371752-Enduro-Training-
My opinion. Stick with the base stuff. While short burst / climbing is what you need in the long run. You will need stamina unless it’s a really short race.
You can always add a few train now sessions after a few weeks if you feel good.
The body doesn’t respond well to high intensity before you got a decent base fitness. So starting with high intensity and thinking you’ll improve faster is a bit backwards thinking, it’s just valuable time lost of developing your base fitness.
