I have a road race in October this year that I want to prioritize. I’m going to be using Plan Builder for the training block but I’m undecided about which discipline I should select:
Gran Fondo
Climbing Road Race
Rolling Road Race
There are 3 main climbs; Below is a PDF of the course
76km = 2.6km @10.5%
130km = 9.1km @4.5%
180km = 11.1km @4.8%
My goal is sub 9.5 hours. Currently 29 years of age, been riding since December 2017. 2019 was my first year with intervals and some structure. Coming from a professional sporting background.
Current FTP - 315
Current Weight - 74kg
Current FTP/kg - 4.26
Coach Chad once recommended in a similar case:
If the goal is to finish the race as a bucket list achievement: century/gran fondo plan.
If you want to race it: climbing road race.
On such a distance (over 250km) those 3 climbs aren’t that big of a deal once they are either too short (1st one) or don’t have a big climbing percentage. Have you tried plan Builder?
With that amount of climbing over that distance, you would be looking to keep things under threshold virtually all the way. In this case, Century is a better speciality for Fitz’s. Climbing Road Race is generally for shorter punchier climbs, where you may go over threshold for short periods of time to stick with the bunch.
Do the plan builder, but I’d reckon you basically want to do heaps, and heaps, and heaps of sweet spot. My best result was 2002 and I had 10.40 riding time, according to Strava. From memory the course was a little bit different that year, we went out to Tidbinbilla Tracking Station because there was a land slip at Corin??? Strava says 5245m of climbing and weighted power (NP?) of 188w. At the time I was probably about 68kg.
There’s lots of climbing (duh) with a stack of pinchy bits in there. Add in the dead roads and it’s a long, long day out. Not a single flat metre the entire ride.
This is from somebody who did the shorter version.