With unpredictable rhythms and highly-varied terrain, Marathon mountain bike races ask a lot of successful competitors. You need tremendous endurance for these long events, but you also need to put out repeated, high-intensity efforts, too. In the end, well-rounded fitness and wide-ranging capabilities make the difference, so the Cross Country Marathon specialty plan is designed to get you to race day in peak form with these needs in mind.The low-volume version of this 8-week plan includes 3 workouts per week, each ranging from 60 to 90 minutes in length. An easier 4th week offers the chance for some mid-plan recovery, and the last 2 weeks of the plan serve as a taper, reducing volume but maintaining intensity in the final leadup to your goal event.

Cross-Country Marathon - Low Volume

This week gets you rolling with an ever-present FTP assessment to account for any recent improvements in your sustainable power via our Ramp Test. You're welcome to use either the 20 Minute FTP Test or the 8 Minute FTP Test if that's your preference. In any case, try to have a day or two of recovery in your legs and feel ready to fairly demonstrate your current level of fitness. If not, consider riding easy today and postponing your assessment until tomorrow.
The second workout of the week will force you to operate at a high percentage of your VO2max by pushing the watts high and then only letting them drop into Sweet Spot territory rather than allowing more sufficient recovery. Efforts like these closely simulate those times when aggressive riding--due to competitor tactics or the nature of the terrain, or both--is necessary and unavoidable.
Finally, a round of hard-start Threshold efforts will accomplish three goals. First, you'll target your ability to generate&nbsp;real big&nbsp;watts. Second, you'll tackle some muscle endurance work up at the high end of your current sustainable capabilities. Third, you'll have the opportunity to confirm your FTP assessment results many times over.&nbsp;

Week 1

Riding above FTP is tremendously productive, and it's also tremendously taxing. But by trimming down the interval durations and inserting short but adequate recovery valleys, you can accumulate quite a lot of time at this tough but productive output level without exhausting your muscles excessively.Up next is a workout very similar to last&nbsp;week's. This affords an opportunity to improve on something you may have struggled with, or it allows you to dress things up a bit. Maybe you'll spend some of the VO2max surges out of the saddle. Maybe you'll vary your cadence during a short burst or two every round. Or maybe you'll simply try to make each acceleration as smooth as possible thereby conserving as much energy as you can.&nbsp;Lastly, last week's already long muscle endurance repeats grow even longer. If you find yourself in a bad spot, consider an occasional backpedal (no more than 30 seconds, and no more than 2 per interval) in order to keep your productivity and your cadence lifted. Think "smooth power", even if that means an infrequent and short impromptu recovery.&nbsp;

Week 2

This week commences with one extra (but shorter) round of slightly-supra-threshold work where you'll continue to challenge your current sustainable power limits as you manage the accumulating fatigue without easing up.
Then your race-simulating VO2max + Sweet Spot intervals grow ever so slightly in duration but retain every bit of their relentless&nbsp;on/barely off/on&nbsp;pattern&nbsp;of muscle and lung abuse. &nbsp;
This pre-recovery-week round of workouts then bestows upon thee an&nbsp;opportunity to make good use of that ever-reliable backpedal tactic, should you need it. By drawing each post-sprint Threshold effort out to a full half hour, you're sure to occasionally question your ability to endure the discomfort as you reinforce your rising ability to withstand high, but not too-high, watts.

Week 3

Time to let the last few weeks of training soak in over the course of an easy week of riding. During this week, try not to lose sight of the fact that&nbsp;adaptation happens during recovery, not during the often muscle-damaging doses of high-intensity training that comprised much of the last few weeks.&nbsp;Until you firmly grasp the benefit of proper and adequate&nbsp;recovery, only hard lessons await you out on the trail. If, however, you've recognized the benefit of recovery done correctly, you'll happily abide the low-intensity, same-training-schedule nature of this easy week.

Week 4

With rested legs and a reinvigorated mind, it&rsquo;s time for some new workout formats to further broaden your base of capabilities and to start to put a point on your high-level forms of fitness. Up first, a round of short but closely set anaerobic repeats that grow increasingly aerobic as each set progresses thereby affording you the best of a couple worlds.
Up next, you'll couple your hard-start prowess with your ability to accelerate, relent only slightly, then ramp up the power until the end of the interval. Repeats like these are akin to the combination of efforts required to accelerate hard but briefly and then stay on the gas until the top of a hill or well past a competitor.
Then, this week closes with some extended Sweet Spot intervals aimed at furthering your ability to sustain a high but manageable level of effort for increasingly longer periods of time.&nbsp;

Week 5

First up this week, your&nbsp;anaerobic-aerobic&nbsp;repeats hold duration but become even more tightly packed together. Stands to reason that if you struggled with this wattage and longer recovery valleys, a slight drop in target power is in order for these compressed sets of repeats. Remember, it's not about survival, it's about productivity. Performing 7 high-power minutes steadily and with proper pedaling mechanics is far superior training than 7 minutes of fighting the bike and repeatedly falling apart during the final 30 seconds. Then, this week's iteration of hard starts + Threshold ramps simply&nbsp;ups&nbsp;the demand of the initial sprint while leaving the rest of each interval the same. This is likely to inspire slightly greater fatigue during the initial minutes of each ramp, but half the challenge of this interval format is pushing through the pain and keeping the power rising all the way to and through that final second. Push past that rider in front of you, push past the top of that hill. Your week then closes with some longer but ever so slightly kinder Sweet Spot repeats where your objective is to make the mildly varied efforts as smooth and seemingly effortless as possible. Look relaxed, be relaxed.

Week 6

Your final&nbsp;full-strength&nbsp;week of Specialty training begins with a workout very similar to last week's, but this time the durations shrink a bit in order to allow a touch of race freshness to rise toward the surface. The still-short recovery valleys will again elevate the aerobic demand earlier in each set as they increasingly tax your aerobic capabilities when your anaerobic power loses steam.Then it's onto a final round of a now familiar combination workout. And this week the severity of the sprints rises yet again in the interest of peaking your sprint power delivery right along with the rest of your off-road endurance fitness.This final, pre-taper week then closes out with one last round of Sweet Spot intervals, each of which is downright long. But then, it's likely you'll face repeats as long as these over the course of your next XCM race.

Week 7

With your peak fitness and events on the immediate horizon, it’s time to pull you up from the depths of your fatigue and sharpen your fitness. To this end, you’ll face reduced-load workouts very similar in format to recent corresponding workouts. The difference will be evident in the reduced volume, but that’s where the reductions end as all of the intensity is necessarily maintained.Saturday is an&nbsp;openers&nbsp;workout based on a Sunday race, but if your race falls on Saturday or perhaps both weekend days, perform the short priming workout on Friday instead. If you'd prefer a different openers workout, take a look at Scott Peak or the other versions of&nbsp;Truuli.Alternatively, you can move Crane +1 to Friday if you'd like to make the week a bit lighter but still precede your race(s) with an openers&nbsp;workout.And if for some reason&nbsp;you aren't racing this weekend, it's a good idea to&nbsp;slot&nbsp;in a repeat of one of your Sunday Sweet Spot workouts in place of an outdoor race or get out on the trail for something equally intense and of similar duration as your&nbsp;upcoming event(s).Otherwise, go&nbsp;toe&nbsp;the start line with a rested and primed body along with a confident and refreshed state of mind. You’ve done the work, now go out there and grab the glory.

Week 8

For offroad events lasting 3 hours or more, there’s simply no way around it: you need serious aerobic endurance. That said, you also need the top-end fitness to power over climbs and muscle through punchy terrain, so the Cross-Country Marathon specialty plans are built around all these diverse needs. For endurance mountain bikers, these 8-week blocks are simply the most time-effective way to perfect race-winning fitness.

Cross Country Marathon

With unpredictable rhythms and highly-varied terrain, Marathon mountain bike races ask a lot of successful competitors. You need tremendous endurance for these long events, but you also need to put out repeated, high-intensity efforts, too. In the end, well-rounded fitness and wide-ranging capabilities make the difference, so the Cross Country Marathon specialty plan is designed to get you to race day in peak form with these needs in mind.The mid-volume version of this 8-week plan includes 5 workouts per week, each ranging from 60 to 90 minutes in length. An easier 4th week offers the chance for some mid-plan recovery, and the last 2 weeks of the plan serve as a taper, reducing volume but maintaining intensity in the final leadup to your goal event.

Cross-Country Marathon - Mid Volume

With unpredictable rhythms and highly-varied terrain, Marathon mountain bike races ask a lot of successful competitors. You need tremendous endurance for these long events, but you also need to put out repeated, high-intensity efforts, too. In the end, well-rounded fitness and wide-ranging capabilities make the difference, so the Cross Country Marathon specialty plan is designed to get you to race day in peak form with these needs in mind.The high-volume version of this 8-week plan includes 6 workouts per week, each ranging from 60 to 120 minutes in length. An easier 4th week offers the chance for some mid-plan recovery, and the last 2 weeks of the plan serve as a taper, reducing volume but maintaining intensity in the final leadup to your goal event.&nbsp;As with all our high-volume plans, this plan is intended for experienced athletes who have plateaued at lower volumes.

Cross Country Marathon

Cross Country Marathon (8 Weeks Per Block)

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Cross Country Marathon

Cross Country Marathon (8 Weeks Per Block)

Training Plans for Your Needs

Focused Training for Your Event

More Plans for Off-Road Racers

Ready to Get Faster?

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Training and Racing Videos

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