Rapha Festive 500 (2021)

Who is in this year. Mine will be all virtual.

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I’m in. Assuming it doesn’t rain, mine will be all outside

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Should be able to get it in quite quickly on Zwift, under 20 hours.

Indoors for me. Too miserable, dark and dangerous at that time of the year.

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Luck of living in San Francisco. Minus rain - which we haven’t been having lately :astonished: - Festive500 is an outside event.

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Will be mostly virtual. Weather is typically -10 to -30 at that time of year. Doing it on a fat bike would mean riding outside for 4 hours every day. Doable, but don’t have the free time for that.

Sounds like quite a few Festive 0’s :wink::yum:

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Done it every year so far and I think I’m gonna do some inside for a change. Just sucked it up every year to date. But my cave is really come together this year

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Yep - will be out as long as its not too dangerous to ride. Looking forward to it as a big block of endurance work in my plan this year.

Nope, I pass. Rapha Festive 500 always seems like a recepy for unproductivly overdoing volume, then suffering with motivation in January / February. Incidently those arethe most difficult months of the year for me - and others, if I go by my quiet Strava feed.

I hope I can just sitck to the plan this time…

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Depends hugely on what training you normally do. If 500km isn’t that much more than you normally do, and you do it (nearly) all at z2, then it can be a productive block and set you up well to start the new year. If that’s a big bump over
what you’d normally do then yes it’s quite likely you’ll just dig yourself into a hole.

I actually find January and February to be quite good months for motivation. The days are gradually getting longer again, racing is getting close, and social life tends to be quite quiet so not too many distractions. December is the hardest month for me with days getting shorter and a bunch of fun family and social stuff making it very easy to both skip training and over indulge off the bike.

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Will be aiming to do it, and hopefully not on the trainer. Last year the weather was so bad, I really had no choice. I’d love to maybe do two 100 milers at either end, then filler in the middle.

Think I’ll be sticking to my new plan. May go out and support friends not on plans doing it just to add a little volume as I will be off work anyway.

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100 takes 2:40 @ 250W (4x Wandering Flats on Makuri Islands this past Tues, upper end of Z2), so the Festive 500 can be knocked out in 13.4 hours that way. Could also do tons of sweet spot, and probably knock that down to 12.5-13 hours.

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If I do it, it’ll be outside - 500k on Zwift is not really much of a challenge (personally…), and I will be away sans turbo 26-28th anyway*.

Kind of depends on weather, last year I still did it but we had a lot of snow/ice so I ended up doing a lot of the same roads (which I knew would be clear), which was not all that fun. Year before it was easy, we had really nice weather for most of it and it was almost springlike. This year I’ll try to take Christmas Eve off and get a decent ride in; past years I have not done as much as I would like which always starts you off behind.

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*although actually doing the whole thing in 3 days 29-31st on Zwift would be, which might be the only choice with my current travel plans…

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I’ve done it (the Festive 500) by coincidence other years but I don’t intentionally ramp my mileage up at this time of year in the UK weather (also know as yUK).

I am going to try to do it outside with a gravel and mountain bike.

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500km on a mtb. Oof, that would hurt

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To be fair I am planning on doing 2/3rds on the gravel bike.

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Still. Impressive