I started a plan back in November to train for Etape du tour ( 170 km, 5400 m D+) which will be on July 19th, currently I’m on base phase with a demanding approach (AI activated). It has me doing 2 * 1 hour hard intervals (SS, VO2max) 45 min - 1 hour Endurance and 1h15 treshhold. When I set up the plan I did choose climbing road race as the event I’m training towards.
However, recently I got access to Claude Cowork and one of the use cases I thought of was to have it analyze my training, however it pointed out the following :
Volume: Almost all rides are 45–75 min. Only 3 rides exceed 2.5 hours in 3+ months. This is the biggest gap for an 8–9 hour event — your aerobic base at long durations needs urgent attention.
Consistent: Excellent consistency — 35 rides in ~15 weeks with very few gaps. This training habit is your biggest asset and the foundation everything else is built on.
Climbing : Only 2 outdoor hilly rides with meaningful elevation (881m and 655m). Zero sustained climbing simulation. This needs to change in months 2–3 with regular long outdoor rides.
Intensity : Good mix of recovery, endurance and threshold work. Normalized power on key sessions reaching 200–230w shows productive threshold stimulus. The structure looks right.
which got me thinking is this a good approach ? should I modify the event type to century or keep it as is ?
As the weather is getting nice here, I’m planning to have longer ride on weekends but do I need to adjust the duration of the workouts?
Also training for EDT2026. I made a program slightly differently from yours : I have a ‘gran fondo’ target, with dynamic endurance (gives workouts of up to 90minutes), but I chose balanced approach (4 trainings a week), and I added manually 4-6 hours solo rides 2-3 times per month which I will do outside with a lot of climbing. I think Claude Cowork is right in its analysis : you need more long rides, and climbing.
I did a similar approach 4 years ago for EDT and it worked rather well (EDT remains one of the hardest rides I ever did. Length in 2022 was 168km, but climbing was ‘only’ 4500m. I finished ~3200th in ~9hours. I am now 60years old, so what works for me might not work for you.
My approach is demanding, and I had increased the duration of the workout from 1h to 1:30 for the hard intervals and dynamic endurance (for now it’s a sunday ride and AI is suggesting I do a 1 hour ride) and I will try to do one long ride at the end of each cycle (I have 3:1 approach).
With these adjustement, I feel like it will work rather well than the previous. it look like this now
Good luck too! If you haven’t done it before, it’s a great event. Very challenging, but very well organized. Where are you from ? (I’m from France. ~40km from the start line)
The mud slide on Col de Sarenne was fixed the day after it happened, they were quite fast to act. I could do my opener for the Marmotte on it and run into Seixas and some other guys from Decathlon there
another ride. You just enter the GPX / TCX of a ride you did previously, the tool calculates a speed profile, and applies it to the GPX of the future ride. Pretty nice tool - and free. Example of the profile I generated for Etape du Tour 2026. Good luck with the race! I rode Croix de Fer today as slowly as I can as a test to see how fresh I can be at the top. It’s looooooong! 1 hour 56 from the dam a little bit below 200W NP. Good news : It was around 23 degrees at the top (35+ degrees in the valleys)
