I’m doing my first century, a charity ride, in a month. I just finished a block of crit racing and set up a new plan for the century, but the training plan rides don’t go longer than an hour and 15 minutes. Should I set up my plan differently to build up distance and time in the saddle?
Use plan builder and make sure the weekend endurance is set to dynamic
Nothing massive is going to change in four weeks, and I’d assume crit racing plan is all about short burst rather than long steady
In your training plan set up, have you set the endurance rides to ‘dynamic’ and specified the maximum amount of time you have on those days? Also, keep in mind that you can always ride as long as you want to, no matter what is on the plan for the day. Just be sure to rate it properly, and future workouts will be modified accordingly.
Additionally, I have found that TR is reasonably likely to never plan rides that are as long as your event, if the event is more than a couple of hours. This doesn’t mean that it won’t give you the fitness to do the event, just that you won’t have as much saddle time before you get there. This is why I will try to get in a long ride (3-5 hours) at least once a month, even if not suggested, and let the plan adapt. For me these aren’t particularly hard rides, but more about just getting used to being on the bike for a longer period of time, and dialing in nutrition and fluid intake.
Like said above:
Set the weekend long ride to dynamic and go ride for hours . The old rule was if you could ride 80 you can ride 100. It’s more about getting used to being on the bike for 4 or more hours.
I find that the Sunday right before a recovery week is perfect for doing that. Will trigger a yellow day or two… but with basic Zone2 rides for that week you get minimal negative effects to key hard workouts.
Thanks for the suggestions. Since the plan calls for a longer endurance ride on Sunday’s, I’ll make that my long ride for the week in the weeks running up to the event, even if the TSS goes higher than what Trainerroad has planned. I’m more worried about time in the saddle than performance, so it’s OK if my “hard” workouts afterwards get easier.
That’s a question that only you can probably answer. TR will probably say their data shows the hard workouts will be better. Anecdotal evidence will say the long ride.
How long have you been doing this plan for? A month really isn’t much time at all to train
I spent all winter training for the April crits, so I had a week of recovery and last weekend I started my training for the long ride. I did 28 miles yesterday, and I plan on increasing my mileage each sunday up to the ride.
There’s no way TR will advance time in saddle fast enough for something this close. Have to a little bit wing it and just make sure you don’t go too hard.
That’s what I’d do. Roughly 40,60,80 each of the next 3 weekend long rides, progressively increasing volume each week overall, then light week / taper week leading into the 100 miler. When I did my first century, this is exactly the plan I followed and I wasn’t doing any structured training - worked out fine.
Normally you cut back on long rides / endurance rides to prioritize intervals. In the short term though, I’d do it the other way around. Prioritize seat time and long weekend rides even if it means cutting back intervals to 2 a week.