About 6 months from now, I’m committed to a double century (triple metric).
If I set up my own plan, I’d typically figure out how much to increase my long ride by per week to hit about 80% of the target ride time a few weeks out.
I’ve set that ride as my A ride for generating a plan. I’ve been executing it for a couple of weeks and it looks to have mostly stabilized the adaptations for now.
When I scroll forward on the calendar to see the volume ramp up, it never schedules a ride more than about 5.5 hours long. My estimate on a good time in the saddle training target for this ride would be almost twice that.
I do plan on doing some 100m’sh rides fondo, gravel, road, etc. in between as B rides.
Just curious what others with more experience with TR do:
Trust the system, let TR map out your long ride ramp up.
Trust the system, but periodically modify the long ride to make you’re endurance is on track.
Modify the long ride times for your own ramp up schedule, let the plan adapt the rest of the week
Just tossing this in here: I’ve done a double century, and longest ride I did prior to that was ~90 miles solo in a little over 5 hours. Now, I was doing 4-5 hour rides twice a week and about 14-16hrs per week of total volume at that point, but the double wasn’t an issue at all. Having a good plan to eat enough was just as valuable, if not moreso.
All that to say you don’t need to do a bunch of 6+ or even a 9 hour ride to prep for a single 11-hour day necessarily. If you’re racing it, etc., that might be different… but still. Huge long days on the bike take a toll and you might be better off NOT doing a 9 hour day a couple of weeks before your double than doing it.
What did your ramp up look like? I can do a 5h weekly ride pretty easy right now. I think 2x 5h’s off the bat would put me into an overtraining zone though.
What did your long ride split look like? Maybe something like Sun/Wed?
I’ve never done a double century, however a couple of years ago when I managed to do 14-16hr weeks I’d usually stack long rides on the weekends so I’d do 2x3hr then 2x3.5 and 2x4hrs I think merely doing that will get you a long way for being ready to do double century
As others have said, you don’t need to do anything longer that 5.5hours in training to complete that distance. Topping out at 5-6 hours should build plenty of fitness and should be long enough to make sure you have decent comfort on the bike, fueling, etc. That said, I’m personally a fan of putting in a couple rides closer to the event distance as long as it’s not jeopardizing the quality of your other training. A ~75% hard ride/race a couple weeks prior to my event seems to work really well for me. Also, about a month out (last hard block), I’ll often stick a really long ride onto to the end of the block to overload my stress (with proper rest to follow).
All of this should be balanced against your typical training activity. If you are training 8 hours a week on average and adding an 8 hour rides turns it into a 14 hour week, that could really wreck you. If you are already training 15+ hours a week and that 8 hour ride takes you to 18 hours for one week, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
I used TR to train for my first attempt at a double last fall. I DNF’d that ride after 115 miles. I came to the conclusion that TR alone is not adequate at all for that kind of distance. I wasn’t able to build mental endurance on top of the physical endurance required. It also doesn’t let you test your nutrition strategy for a duration of that type. I did do long climbing rides on weekends that were not in the TR plan but everyone I know who had done these ultra events were doing century rides and back-to-back long rides on weekends.
I’m attempting a double in May and went with a coach this time around. The training is a lot different than what TR had set me up for the first time and I feel like I’m much more prepared.
I would adapt TR to a double century training plan – basically let it run your midweek workouts – but I’d follow a traditional double century training protocol otherwise.
So far, I’m liking the idea of split rides. I could do back to back long rides on weekends. I’m already at about 3.5h. The 3.5 is actually shorter than my pre-TR long rides which were closer to 5 or 6h. . . I decided to let TR do its thing for a while, see how I feel since I have al to of slack before the A ride.
Ok, so back to back would let me stage this out. Take that 3.5h ride, increase by like 10% each week till I get to about 5h. Then start increasing the previous days ride volume till I get it up to about 5h too.
I have enough weeks so I can have recovery weeks after my B races and still track that pace.
From what you said in the original post, it sounds like you’re on the right track! The harder interval days will target the energy systems you need to train for a big ride like this, and it looks like you’re getting plenty of volume – 5.5 hours of riding should be plenty long to get you ready for a double century.
As other athletes mentioned above, nutrition and hydration planning/experimentation leading up to the ride will be key. Keeping your energy stores topped off and staying well-hydrated on a long ride like a double century will be just as important as your fitness itself. Eating and drinking well while riding is something that can be trained as well, so make sure to stay on top of that – even on your rides that aren’t super long. It all adds up and helps your body adjust to the demands of taking all of that nutrition in!
Make sure to balance all of your training with appropriate recovery as well. It can be tempting to really pile on the extra volume thinking that it will help, but it also causes a lot of extra fatigue. If you ever start to feel run down – especially from an “extracurricular” long ride – don’t be afraid to take some additional rest to keep your overall plan on track.
Hope that helps – feel free to let us know if you have any other questions!
This can’t be highlighted enough. The mental side has a huge influence in being able to fully express your fitness. Again, you don’t have to do 200 mile 10+ hour training rides for a 200 mile event, but mental training for “dark times” is critical. For me, a 5-6 hour ride in the heat can seem like forever and can be great prep for a much longer event. Same goes for a route with a ton of climbing where you are just crawling up hills as you fatigue. Basically, you want to train your ability to stay positive and keep the pedals turning over when every bit of your mind and body is saying stop.
I wasn’t on TR at the time but with a coach doing similar or shorter interval sessions when I did the Mallorca 312. We did a few flat centuries (the 312 was 20x the climb and twice as long), but the interval sessions IMO was the main thing that set me up for the event. Trust the process and if you have time add a few longer rides if you have time but you don’t need to have done the event before the event
