Thanks for taking the time to dig into the data. I didn’t stop at any of the aid stations, ran a camelbak and bottles. Stop time was likely for a pee break, also I was riding with a buddy who’s crank fell off mid race… Stopped to help but there was noting to I could do to fix it. I didn’t prioritize start position which I will this year looking back that probably cost me a decent amount. I might see if I can get a hand up from a friend or family member at the bandy aid station or later this year to save some weight on the twin oaks and raptor ridge climbs.
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Ah understood, great work riding through then!
For those of you who are coaches, are self coached or just have a deeper knowledge base than I do, what do event specific workouts look like as you approach your A gravel even, as in “peak” phase.
I’m taking in all the information I can get my hands on, but the more I learn the more questions I have. For instance a popular coaching philosophy I hear is as you approach your race your workouts should become more specific to that event.On the other hand I have also heard that intense efforts such as Vo2 result in fairly quick training adaptations and other physiologically beneficial adaptations but they are also more quickly lost. This would lead me to believe that doing them closer to the event could be beneficial, but it’s not very specific to my event. I’m guessing this particular bit of advice is more applicable to crit, road or MTB racers. Where I am in the pack Vo2 like efforts don’t seem to be a big part of the race, I’m guessing there would be more of this at the front of the pack
I see the demands on myself in these events much more in the tempo to threshold range. With a lot of time at sweetspot. The workouts many have listed here in this thread, long higher intensity bouts after having burned through 2K+kjs seem like a great way to build durability and maintain the power later in the race. While good at building general and even specific fitness. I don’t know that these would be my focus during a peak phase, maybe I’m wrong…
What are you looking at for key sessions as the race approaches and you enter more of a peak phase, if you do this at all? Is this where you go more intensive on some efforts vs extensive? Pushing the watts up on shorter threshold work? My thoughts were to focus on 6-10 minute efforts at slightly above threshold. Doing a lot of sweet spot in a “peak” phase is not something I have heard of, but then again it would be pretty race specific. In listening to some training podcasts for Ironman athletes it sounds as if they do a fair amount of work at race pace as their main event approaches.
Here is the time in zones for my last race.
Last year I finished up my training with the Gran Fondo specialty phase after completing the sustained power build - basically my goal was to push out time to exhaustion and I feel like the plan delivered on that goal for the event. Prior to that, either I or TR would recommend Rolling Road Race which no longer applied to the type of events I was doing.
This year I’m on board with a coach and building up FTP right now with a VO2 max block before moving on to working on increasing TTE, because at some point, I’ll have raised my FTP ceiling as much as I can and sustaining power will become the priority.
I don’t have any key sessions yet - but last year was a lot of time at/above threshold and dreadful over unders. Looking back at my calendar and I had several failed workouts but also a lot of trophy’s signifying increasing power.
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The Gran Fondo plan is great for gravel events, base 1,2,3- sustained power build - grand fondo specialty.
Other plans that I have looked at are all different leading up to a gravel event. One had 2 Vo2max workouts a week in the specialty phase another one was lots of tempo and sweet spot only . Dylan Johnson’s gravel build has 1 Vo2 workout and 1 long sweet spot or tempo workout, the rest endurance.
Which one is better 
I bought them only to see how they’re programming things and had a discount.
I’m currently doing my own thing but if not I’d probably follow the gran fondo plan.
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