Agree, but I’m a big proponent of trying to get reasonably close in training. Whatever your fueling (and pacing, hydration, etc.) strategy is for the race, I think it should be well tested in conditions that replicate race conditions as close as possible. That might mean prep “B/C” races or it might mean going out and just doing your best to create race day challenges. Sure, it’s hard to replicate race situations, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Try to work in early intervals to simulate race start, target expected NP, minimize/eliminate stoppage time, etc.
I ideally want the test rides to create tougher conditions than I’ll see on race day, just a little shorter duration. For me, that usually means training in the Texas heat. If I can push through a 6-7 hour day in the heat and still hold it together with nutrition/hydration/keeping the pedals turning, I know I’m unlikely to face anything as challenging on race day. That’s my approach whether it’s a 1 hour TT or a 10+ hour day at Unbound. Shorter duration, but with some additional manufactured adversity. I know that race motivation will allow me to “dig deep” on race day to get to the finish.
All that said, I wouldn’t recommend someone go out and just drop a 6+ hour really hard ride into their plan without progressing into it. If your normal long ride is 3 hours of endurance pace and you go do a 6 hour extreme effort, it’s going to leave you wrecked and you’ll need some serious recovery time. Might be good mentally to get a taste for race day, but much better if you can work into it physically.
I think this highlights the heart of the issue and can help inform a person’s approach. Some people want to go into a long event totally prepared and don’t want to end up in a miserable position of survival, death march to the finish, laying under tree waiting for cramps to stop, etc.. But others are seeking out that epic “type 2” fun where it’s not fun until after it’s done and extreme suffering is part of the deal (makes for great stories after). Of course there is some level of suffering in any bike race, but I am firmly in the first camp of wanting to be strong and reasonably comfortable all day and ready for anything that comes up. I’ve still had races I’ve suffered bad in (always the heat), but my worst suffering is usually in training when it doesn’t matter.
Totally fair point. Unfortunately the time investment to be able to regularly do 6-8 hour rides comfortably is pretty significant. OTOH, having that ability will make you a truly formidable racer, so it might be worth it! I think its one of those things that depends on you life capacity to handle that kind of time investment. I know personally I would be very single, very quickly, if I told my partner I was going to be out on a 6 hour ride every saturday!
I personally think if you want to do good at long events you need to put in long rides they don’t need to be every weekend but getting in a 4-6h ride a month would be something that I think helps a lot.
I recently did chase the sun in ireland and it was 340km in one day. I had never done anything like that before and followed a rolling road race plan doing 4 to 6 hrs per wk. I supplimented this with a very long spin every couple of weeks in the lead up (maybe 5 total) and did 100km,120km, 140km and a couple of 150km days(if you only do 50km long rides start building earlier). This prepared me more than enough for the event and im not that fit and 95kg.
I didnt do it fast but I made the distance relatively easy. Once you go over 4hrs in the saddle you mirror the effort for longer. If you do them every week you generally miss out an intensity days or two from fatigue.
Things I learned.
Raising ftp should still be priority
Learn to fuel the long rides (50g-60-70g/hr etc). Build it up.
Take sodium into account, electrolytes, tailwind etc.
Get a bike fit if 4hr +is hurting.
Train min 4 days per week.
Stack a few endurance rides together to build durability and increase volume where you can.
Rest on rest weeks.
If you do them every week then you will adapt, so you no longer get fatigue affecting intensity days. That as with everything it’s best to progressively get there if your current longest ride is a couple of hours etc. There’s some smart scheduling of your days you can do, but if 4 hours of endurance pace is knocking you out for day or two, it’s a sign it needs work.
There are broadly two reasons to train; physical adaptations, and ‘other’.
How long you train should be tied to the benefit you get from it, rather than the simple fallacy that more is better.
So if you’ve done ultra distance before, your position(s) is dialled, and your nutrition, and your mindset sorted then you are likely best to focus on physical adaptations.
As always, consistency and progressive overload are the prime movers - preconceived ideas that a ride must be x long or infinitely long will detract from those two prime factors. The length or any given ride should be the output from consistency and overload, not the other way around. This will naturally describe rides of types and lengths suited to one rider and not another.
Not sure why I quoted @JohnB as I’m not replying to him but it’s his comment that stimulated my thoughts on this.
No worries, I replied more as a review of my own thoughts on my own progress and lessons i learned but you are right we are all different and my thoughts are for people at my level. Come end of the summer even i won’t be at my level though!
Do I need to do a seven hour endurance ride escalating every week to stimulate adaptations in the type 2 muscle fibres and mitochondrial density in my body or will one hour endurance, or sweet spot, or vo2 intervals do that?
Indeed. When riders talk about being too fatigued to execute VO2 sessions well the day after a 4 hour Z2 ride, then it shows they are not adapted to those durations of Z2. They haven’t developed fatigue resistance at those intensities and durations.
Another rider who able to execute a 4 hour Z2 ride, and their VO2 perfectly the day after, is adapted and has greater fatigue resistance for that duration and intensity.
Not only fatigue resistance but their ability to recover from long duration rides is faster and superior. An important quality for ultra endurance where you may be riding for upto 16 hours a day for one or two weeks for your A event.
There’s lots of good debate on the tradeoffs between longer/fewer vs. shorter/more sessions. My take-away is that the total volume is the biggest adaptation driver while how you break it up is secondary but still plays a role. I’ve never heard anything magical about 90 minutes, but I’ve seen studies indicating there are adaptations that are stronger as you ride longer (up to a point). And just like any other adaptation, to keep progressing you have to continually increase training load. At some point, you can only generate so much tss when you are limited to 90-120 minute endurance rides. Unless you are doing 2-3 of them per day.
Yeah, if you need to break things into samll chunks to increase TSS, then go with smaller chunks. But I’m a big believer in going long. I’ve been regularly doing 1000+ TSS weeks and most of that volume happens across 3-4 days and I try to get a couple 5+ hour rides in every week (except rest weeks). That gives me 3 days a week that are either completely off the bike or short recovery rides while still racking up significant TSS. So, the benefits of the long rides are 2-fold. You get some of those nice adaptations that happen after 3+ hours, and it give you some quality rest days when you can get most of the training stress knocked out in 3-4 days a week. Just hard on the schedule for most to pull off those kind of hours straight. I’m lucky enough to be retired and riding my bike is basically a part time job.
@grwoolf How do you manage your intensity on the 3 to 4 days you are riding? Do you do it as part of the longer rides or two intense days and 2 super long days?
Tuesday/Thursday are almost always my interval days. Saturday is always a long ride day (often with a group ride in the middle). I’ll usually make Tuesday and/or Thursday a long ride and work the intervals in after about an hour or so of endurance as warmup. Sometimes I’ll do intervals on the trainer and then go out to add endurance or hit a steady zwift session in the evening. This week, it was intervals inside both days so I ended up doing 6 hours outside yesterday. Made for a little more fatigue than I like for today’s intervals (intervals on a yellow day), but I struggled through and it was my last day of a build block (so carrying a ton of fatigue in general). Racing on Saturday, should be a good test of where the fitness is. And then rest hard next week.
Ahh useful, thanks for the reply! If you work the intervals in, do you run the entire ride as an extended workout, do the workout without it on the head unit, or do you not worry about associating the planned intervals with the ride? Just interested how others do this, hope you dont mind me asking!
I’ll look at the recommended workout in TR, sometimes pick an alternate that is more outdoor friendly (less complex and/or suitable to terrain) and then mark it as “outdoor”. But I don’t load it on my Garmin, I just do the intervals during the ride. It will auto-associate to my outdoor ride as soon as I upload the ride. For progression levels, TR is just looking at the assigned workout and doesn’t consider what actually happened during the ride. So, you could assign a V02max workout and go out and do some sweet spot intervals and TR would still look at that as a vo2max workout if they are associated.
One other dynamic I like with this approach is the ability to pick a workout in real time when on the road. For example, I might be debating between a couple vo2max workouts and questioning my ability to complete the scheduled level (or maybe it looks too easy and I’m debating a harder version). In that case, I might try the first 1-2 intervals at the higher wattage (or longer duration) to see how it feels and then make a call between which workout I want to do. And then assign the workout I did in the TR calendar after I complete it.
My understanding is that TR generally discourages the practice of trying to match up their workouts with less structured rides and I agree that you need to be disciplined and have some experience to do it effectively. It’s not reasonable to go out for an unstructured group ride and then assign a TR vo2max workout just because you had similar time in vo2max. But it also doesn’t have to match exactly. Understanding why workouts are structured how they are is important. For example, it’s fine to change the recovery time and wattage on some types of intervals, but for other types the recovery time and wattage is a big part of driving proper adaptations.
noticed what I typed lol, was supposed to be: