This August I’m participating in The Day Across Minnesota, which is an ultra endurance gravel race. You essentially started on one side of the state and you have 24 hours to get to the other side. This works out to be exactly 245 miles.
I completed it last year and was amazing. I had a live coach and all of that. Was well worth the cost.
This year I have the same coach, but wanted to compare and contrast his training plan with TR’s.
The BIGGEST difference I can see - and it’s pretty glaring - in the plan TR came up with, there is not ONE single ride over 2 and a half hours! That cannot be right…seriously? Not even a three hour ride?? I have a hard time coming to grips with the idea that for a 245 mile/20+ hour race, TR would not prescribe some rides with durations longer than 3 hours.
The main reason that you’re not seeing any long rides in your plan currently is probably because your recent training stimulus has been really low. Last week was the first week that your 6-week average TSS was above 100 in the past four months.
We aren’t going to start you out with a ton of volume as that’s not likely sustainable. Instead, you’re getting those 60-minute Sweet Spot, Threshold, and VO2 Max workouts that will quickly get the needle moving in terms of regaining fitness.
As your TSS begins to increase and you adjust to the workload, you’ll be more capable of increasing your training stimulus through volume (if you so desire). At that point, it could be wise to start to extend one of your weekly endurance rides to a longer duration. I’d recommend doing this gradually and keeping an eye on any warnings you might get from Plan Builder if/when you try this though and respect Red Light Green Light and Adaptive Training’s suggestions as they appear. Long endurance rides are much more taxing than most people think!
Keep in mind, that you don’t need to train with super long rides in order to perform well in one. We’ve seen athletes perform really well in ultra-endurance events with low-volume plans. Check out the link below.
You can train your aerobic system really well with shorter rides and simply start to sprinkle in longer race simulation rides just before the taper for your event. It doesn’t take long to get some specificity in your legs which is why our Specialty phases occur just before A races. This is a great way to get some extended time in the saddle and work on longer-duration fueling practice, though GI training throughout the entirety of your plan would probably be beneficial given the duration of your final event.
Ultimately, it’s up to you in terms of how you want to build out your plan and with Plan Builder v2 you have more control over things now than ever. If you want to start with longer endurance rides, you can certainly do that, but we recommend starting with what you have in place and increasing the length of those rides over the next few weeks/months as your body adapts to the workload.
You’ll likely gain a lot of fitness pretty quickly by following the plan, and then you can start to back it up with longer rides if you’d like.
Let me know if this helps to explain our logic and if you have any other questions. We’re here to help, and we want you to succeed! That’s our #1 goal!
So I was essentially sick almost all of January, hence the lack of workouts and TSS. So as I get back into it, TR will actually begin to “stuff the turkey” as it were?
We’re giving you what we feel is the best for you right now. That doesn’t mean that this is going to the best plan for you moving forward, but for right now, this is what we recommend.
As you adapt to this plan, we’ll have new data to reference in terms of your abilities and will likely make different recommendations down the road.
It’s not all linear and that’s why it’s impossible for any of us to say “this + this = this,” but I can tell you with confidence that if you consistently progress through this plan you’ll see good results and your abilities to handle more training stress will likely increase.
Looking at the big picture (all of the time between now and your event) it makes way more sense to start easy on the gas and consistently increase over time to build top speed by the end rather than stepping on it too hard and hitting the brakes over and over (hopefully that metaphor makes sense).
