Ultra endurance plan

[WindWarrior]

@SarahLaverty

@alexfthenakis

TR CEO Nate famously raced Leadville without doing a training ride longer than 3 hours (maybe even less - could have been max 2hrs?)

THIS! So many of our athletes have successfully competed in ultra endurance events without spending too much time in the saddle.

For more context he built up to 4x20 and 3x30 minute sweet spot efforts which are pretty potent. Thats 80 to 90 minutes of sweet spot:

Ultra cycling plan?

I liked working up to 4x20 and 3x30 SST for 2 hours of total riding. You can tack on 30-60 minutes of aerobic after that if you’d like. That’s a big workout. You could even take that farther and do 4x30 or 5-6x20 if you really hate the long workouts.

Thats some really good muscular endurance to have before an Ultra!

To continue the story, he took pre ride carb loading and event nutrition to the next level. This was my summary:

Ultra cycling plan?

not trying to take away from Nate’s position, as I agree with it, but keep this in mind: [Science the shit out of this] when a fueling strategy is taken to the next level and becomes a detailed tactical plan Also, I tend to believe that having more long distance training would leave you feeling better the days and weeks after a grueling race like that.

On the flip side, Nate didn’t feel that great for a few weeks after the event.

Just about anything is possible if you want it, I did my first metric road century after 2.5 months of averaging 2 hours/week in Tuesday/Thursday spin classes. On a mountain bike with friends that were on road bikes. Given my fitness level, a lot of it was like a race for me!

@83years putting on my Captain Obvious hat, I’d rather have 8 hours/week fitness than the 2 hours/week spin class fitness.

@alexfthenakis also gave you a couple options on modifying TR plans, even on 3-5 hours/week I’m a fan of longer and longer sweet spot rides like Nate mentioned in that old post. Really work on extending out your ability to ride a hard pace - around 85-90% ftp - out to 90 minutes or longer. I’m also a fan of a longer ride on the weekend, ideally a (once a month) 100 mile ride at the end of every 3 week loading / 1 week recovery block. Similar to @Amnesty I would rather ramp up training load on a budget of 7-9 hours/week for a minimum of 3 months leading up to the Ultra (ideally 6-8 months). Just a few ‘if I did another double century’ thoughts to add to the other comments. Hope that helps.