first time poster. just signed up for TR last week. a friend of mine rode with me in Taiwan early this year and he decided to try out the Taiwan KOM challenge. i wasn’t keen being overweight and underpowered.
but few months ago, i changed my mind and decided to give it a try. signed up for TR as i realised i work better with structured workout. i tried Zwift but it doesn’t work for me.
the KOM challenge is a 105km ride with a 3275m elevation. ideally i want to finish the ride before the cut off timing of 8hrs. i come from a place that is pretty flat so training outdoors is impossible.
the ride will likely be happening at the end of april 2019. i started with a SSB1 MV. current ftp is 209 and my weight is 82kg. i will be 43 next year.
i realise if i do 2 SSB and a build plan, i won’t have enough time to get my fitness in peak shape. any advice from other riders?
Living on a flat land might not be a problem. This is all about having enough gears, watt/kg and mental toughness.
Most of your weight loss should happen now and should come from doing easy rides from the plan in fasted state (mornings work well). You will be in a good shape after the build plan even without completed specialty plan. If you are new to this, you will be able to get nice FTP increases from doing structured work.
Use Best Bike Split to calculate your optimal effort level for the climb.
Your current stats give you a finishing time of around 5 hours 45 minutes (including the 20km neutral zone). Like Papuass mentioned, I think it will be down to mental toughness, because the last 15km is quite a climb.
I did it in October 2017. I was training a lot ( too much) and had access to mountains, so our situations are quite different. I made my training rides leading to the event harder than the event itself, so I found it quite “easy” in the end.
If/when I know I can beat my time, I would do it again for sure. Awesome event. I just do not know how to achieve that now. (Well actually I do, just need to lose weight…)
thanks for the advice. i don’t think i have enough time to go into a proper taper week before the event. should i just stop all the training one week prior regardless?
Not to push other products but Fulgaz has several very long rides which might be helpful to train on. Alpe D’Huez at 2.5 hours being one. Do that and something like Galibier consecutively might put you in the correct area to feel the hurt you will likely have doing the real event in Taiwan.
Did you finish the event?
I am considering to try this event this year. But still not sure about doing my training by TrainerRoad only or mixing TrainerRoad with outdoor ride.
I am from Taiwan. FTP=222, Weight=68kg, 38 years old.
I am planning to do the summer KOM. I just finished the Thailand Inthanon Challenge. Had bike problem so had to half ride half walk up. Are you doing the spring one?
Not decided yet. Not sure about how good power-to-weight ratio should be to be able to catch up with event closing time of each check points.
in the document, it says XinBaiYang and BiLuSacredTree have no event closing time. but I googled some information and found that they do have closing time.
I attempted Taiwan KOM spring edition last year in 2018. My FTP at the time was 200W, weight 71Kg, was 48 years at the time.
I was running 50/34T x 11-36T.
The cut off was 9hrs (Kick-off at 6am for 3pm final whistle)
I didn’t quite finish.
I rode steadily with a average of 130W until 4h15m about 60km, after which I was told to get onto the sag waggon even though I was well within the target cut off time. The sag waggon just took me up to the next feed station at XinBaiYang (200m vertical further up) and let me carry on from there. I then went at about 170-180W to the next feed station at BiLu Sacred Tree so I would not get picked up again.
Then I continued well within the time but gave up at 7:45hrs at the extreme steep bit at about 2770m (500m short of the end). A van picked me up and dropped me 150m from the top and let me continue to the end, where they gave me an undeserved finisher’s medal. So in essence I did all of it except for about 500m in total.
I reckon if had I maintained 150W all the way to the last feed station at about 2300m then I would have finished. That would have kept me from being picked up by the sag waggon in the lower slopes before Xinbaiyang and not over-exerting myself over the middle section up to BiLu. I also reckon I only had about 50m more vertical climbing of the steep bit at 2770m and I would have been over the worst of it. Mind you at that time and at that altitude I was struggling to put out more than 90W.
I’ve been training again for it and signed up for this April. I’ve done 3 sets of SS base and got my FTP from 195W in October at the start to it being now 208W (lots of illnesses have led to lack of progress). I feel a bit more confident about it this year as I have a plan. I’ve signed up again for the Summer version just in case I fail again.
i am at around 260w now and at 81kg. i hope i can hit around 280w and drop my weight to 75kg.
the advice i received was be ready to ride for 2hrs at tempo without stopping when you past bilushenmu all the way till dayuling. then after that, just grit and bare it till you hit the top.
“not sure if I have time for a full taper week. Should I just stop all training. A week before”
If there’s a week left before your race and you’ve been ramping your training and TSS you have time for a taper/rest week.
The idea for a taper week is to absorb the stress from your training, and get you in a better spot to race than if you just took a week of no training.
Example: you ride 700 tss weeks. 200-400tss would be a taper. You ride 300tss weeks, 100-150 tss would be a taper week.
It helps. Both psychologically, and I personally feel my legs feel tired and dead if I take a week completely off the bike.
There’s lots of things people do in their taper. Some people just do endurance, I personally like adding in short 1 minute intervals at sweet spot threshold and maybe a little higher.
Then maybe a couple longer 5 minute intervals at sweet spot.
So long as the intensity and overall volume is reduced substantially from a normal week of training it’ll help you feel better on race day and still absorb your weeks of stress and training.
If you try to hit a race training right up to race day taking it’ll always be harder than if you tapered/rested for it.
And a week of light-moderate activity/volume will always help you feel better than a week entirely off the bike.
You need to do some long rides which could be outdoors or on the trainer indoors. Being in Singapore, I would think that indoors is your safest and best bet!
I recommend the SSB plans. However, I would do the optional Sunday ride listed in the notes instead of the intervals. It is a longer endurance ride such as Town Hill or Big Mountain. Using Big Mountain as an example. This is a 3hr endurance ride on the trainer. 3hrs on the trainer of non-stop pedaling is not the same as 3hrs outdoors. Hence, you are getting a solid long ride. Prepare your gels, bars, etc…
Get your bottles ready in advance so that you can stay on the trainer the entire 3hrs. This is also your best chance to test nutrition.
You mentioned you tried Zwift. If you still have a Zwift account, then I recommend running Zwift and TR at the same time. You use Zwift for the distraction while TR provides your workout and controls your trainer.