Has anyone trained exclusively following a TrainerRoad plan successfully completed the Dirt Kanza 200?
How was your time?
Did you feel like TrainerRoad set you up for success or was it lacking?
How long was your longest training ride before DK200?
I ask because I just used plan builder to get me ready for the DK200 in 2021 and the longest training ride it has me doing is 2 hours, that doesn’t seem possible you can know if you can ride for what could be 16 hours when the most you’ve done is 2.
Even if your legs and aerobic engine are trained for it, a lot of shit hurts after 12 hours that doesn’t after 2. How could you know if your saddle or shoes are not going to be huge sources of pain 12 hours in?
You will want to sub a couple of long(5-6 hours should be good, wont dig to massive of a hole to recover from.)
what did plan builder give you? I assume SSBI and II, GPB, and RRRS? This is where I think Plan Builder falls short. IMO SusPB and Century Specialty is more appropriate. This wont result in any longer rides though. But once in the build and specialty phase, feel free to sub in a long 5-6 hour z2 ride. More than that IME doesn’t provide much benefit, and the massive hole they dig will set you back in regards to your following training days. If you feel the need to go longer than that, I would plan that ride for the end of build or the end of the first 4 week block of specialty, right before a recovery week.
Yeah Plan Builder isn’t smart enough to know that the event you plugged into it is 16hrs and then adjust your longer rides to match. It just takes the type of ride that you input and then come up with a combination of existing TR plans that correspond to that ride type. So you’ll get the same plan if you put a gravel race in whether it is 5 hours or 16 hours.
The first thing you can do is to read the weekly tips. They will usually have suggestions to swap the longer SS ride on the weekend to a longer Z2 ride. This will still only max out at probably 4 hours or so. I would probably plan on doing a ride around 6-7 hrs and then another 8-9 hrs just to find uncomfortable spots like you said but also to dial in nutrition and train your gut for those long rides. I’d probably aim to do those 12 and 8 weeks in advance of DK and before a recovery week.
You have to remember that TR was sort of designed around a time crunched, working schedule. So you won’t regularly find rides over 2 hours unless you go the Traditional Base or Long Distance Triathlon routes.
The plan builder issue iirc from myself, is if you pick Gravel Grinder it gives general build, rolling road race, which may be appropriate for those at the pointy end. Personally, I picked my A Gravel Events (Dirty Reiver didn’t happen, Lakelander still might) as Gran Fondo’s and that gave Sustained Power and Gran Fondo Speciality.
Not comparable to DK200, but I did a 200km Audax straight off an exclusively inside block (due to injury) a couple of years ago. Only at the very end did I really suffer, and it was cramps which could’ve been nutrition on the day. The last 10km is where it became problematic.
I did not do DK200 specifically as I did not get in but I did a “similar” race in that it was a 210 mile gravel race in Michigan. The heat wasn’t there and I heard from a few people who rode both that the Michigan gravel was more forgiving on tires. I did only TR, sweet spot base-Sustained build and rolling road or century specialty but cannot remember. I did one ride over 2 hours which was a century ride just to make sure I was comfortable on my bike, nutrition, etc… I beat the sun by 45 minutes, 14:44, and feel I left a decent amount in the tank. My biggest concern was neck, back and wrist pain from not doing any super long rides but luckily it was a non-issue. I was going to follow a similar plan for 2020 and was hoping to break 13.
Thanks for the reply,
Yeah it put me in Sweet Spot Base, General Build, and then Rolling Road Race.
Where should i sub in a long 5-6 hour long ride. I have time for a long ride mostly on Saturday and sometimes Fridays, Those days are often workouts like Winchell, Broken Finger, Diamond V…
But Tuesday looks like zone 2 rides, workouts like Townsend, Pettit, Taku…, Should i switch Tuesdays workouts and move those to Saturday and then make that workout 5+ hours ?
Thanks for the reply mwglow15.
I think i’ll try to get in a long ride, 5 to 9 hours on Saturdays. Do you think i should wait until the specialty phase or just as soon as i can get them in?
I wouldn’t wait for specialty. Because (IDK your history but…) A) you may not know how well you’ll recover from these long rides and B) if you do find a source of discomfort (saddle, shoes, nutrition, etc.) you want to give yourself enough time to not only attempt to fix the issue but also another opportunity to test the change.
I would probably start doing longer rides sooner rather than later and aiming for increasingly long rides right before recovery weeks. But I’d probably put your longest one 6-8 weeks before you event.
I don’t know what volume plan you are running with, but my n=1, with Saturday also my usual window for an outdoor ride, at mid volume, I switched to Monday to Saturday (with Sunday off). So that it was the “Moderate” “Sunday” workout that was swapped for an outdoor ride rather than one of the three “hard” workouts. That was in the old normal world of commutes (trying different things being remote!).
I would sub a sweet spot ride out in favor of a long outdoor ride.
Since a 5-6 hour ride will most likely result in a 200+ TSS day I would try your best to have a rest day follow it. Any thing above Tempo will be hard I suspect unless you know you can bounce back very quickly from that kind of ride.
I just did a 6 hour ride Saturday that resulted in 280 TSS. Normally I would have done that on Saturday but life happens and the long endurance ride is more important to my goal event than the Over unders. I’m at the end of the first block of specialty. If next week wasn’t a recovery week I would have skipped riding Sunday to set me up for the next week of training. But since it’s recovery week I gave it a go. Made it through the first 2 sets(hard) dropped the intensity of the 3rd(still hard) then sucked it up and muscled through the last set at 100%. It wasn’t as pretty as it would have been if I would have been able to do it on Saturday.
I did it in 2019 and was probably 90-95% TR. For the legs and cardio, I was fine. Where things broke down for me was my back. I’m in DK again for 2021. My plan will be to use TR but I plan to swap in a pretty good number to long outdoor rides on the weekend, and add yoga. I did a one 110 mile ride pre DK2019. I don’t think I need to go longer than than but I think doing at least 3-4 long rides in the 6-8 weeks leading up will help. And I’m also expecting the yoga to have a big benefit.