Trainer Road didn't build any rides longer than 2 hours for the 4 events I am doing, all of which will be longer than 6-7 hours. Should I be concerned?

Says it all in the title.

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Longer rides are great for working on nutrition/hydration, especially if you’ve never done a longer event.

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Would you want to spend 7 hours indoors?

The catalogue has Z2 rides going up to 6 hours - I’d say you’d fair well if you can manage that indoors! Try searching and look at the duration filter. There are plenty of rides over 2 hours.

N=1. -Completed my 21 hour event on trainer road workouts, non of which exceeded two hours.

As mentioned maybe do a few longer rides to iron out hydration/fuelling plans.Also for bike feel for long hours in the saddle and maybe to judge pacing.

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You will be fine. I have not had any issues working high volume plan and being able to ride for 9+ hours. I would throw in a long ride on the weekends

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i was able to complete a couple of centuries no problem last year with just 1 hour to 1.5 hour workouts. The capability can be created without having to practice that type of duration. Now, I wouldn’t hesitate to add some of your own practice rides of length so that you can get a feel for it and work on your pacing and nutrition strategies.

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Do some outdoor rides to supplement, so switching some of the Sunday sweetspot workouts with 4-6 hours of Z2 outside is a good idea

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Just to echo comments above, you don’t necessarily need to do long rides to be able to do long rides. Last year I trained exclusively indoors on high volume plans with a max session of 2hrs and did 2 centuries outside, both 70-72% for over 5hrs. The training will get you there, it’s just up to you to pace/feed on the days of the events.

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Here’s a 4hr+ ride.

Says it all in the title :rofl:

Your overall fitness for any long event will come form your overall volume, not necessarily long rides by themselves. As noted above, plenty of people have done 6+ hour rides successfully on 2 hour training rides (provided their overall volume is sufficient).

That said, I know that I personally perform better for long events if I do longer training days…Specificity is a real thing and can help you perform better on the day of the event. So as suggested above, just swap out one of your weekend structured rides for a longer, endurance based ride.

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You will have the legs and heart ready… but arms, lower back, nutrition, focus… over 6 hours is a different deal. Get some long rides in so you are not shocked by the experience.

I’m preparing for a big climb in January (5-6h) straight up. I’m doing a indoor 8 week plan that is roughly like this:

Monday > Core, Bands work
Tuesday > 1.5 hours, Threshold
Wednesday > Weights
Thursday > 2.5 hours. High Tempo, SST
Friday > Off
Saturday > 2h Snowboarding
Sunday > 4-5h High Z2/Low Z3

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same here, FWIW.

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I can only repeat the above. I have similar in my plan for next year. Aiming to do 2 B races of 5-6 hours and A race is 6-7 hours. My plan is to swap out a weekend TR workout for a Z2 ride progressing from 3hrs up towards 5hrs over next 3 months.

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It is interesting that the majority of the comments suggested to change one of the weekends workouts for a longer endurance ride. But why TR is not placing that kind of volumes on the created plans? Even, sometimes I tried to change the workout for an alternative with longer time on the bike, but are not available to use on the alternatives section. Anyways, in my weekends I tend to ride with my friends longer rides (3-4 hours) no matters that in my plan a 2 hours max ride is scheduled. It is a good suggestion to have TR include plans with higher volumes (longer rides)?

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I have done a 200 mile ride with Ctl of 50. You can be just fine with max of 2 hour rides

If you look at the high volume plans they do have 2:30 workouts. If you hit alternatives they will give you 4 hr plus options.

Outside rides: a lot can be gained with longer outside rides. Fueling strategy, bike handling skills and pace line skills are just a few.

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The forgotten (?) traditional base plans offer longer rides. Even the mid variant has workouts around the three hour mark.

What would be wrong with doing 3 x 2hr Trainerroad work outs back to back, if you genuinely have the fortitude to sit on the turbo for 6 hours?
The body won’t know any difference will it?

Or did you want the bragging rights of a monster progression level for endurance :wink:

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You can modify your plan’s hours for each day of the week by clicking on the box at the beginning of your training block in calendar.

If you want long rides, you can have them. Your plan will automatically adapt after you change the hours.

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Tons of useful information on here already @TBONE!

I’ll also echo the belief that you don’t necessarily need to train long hours day after day in order to build the fitness required for long events. The goal of TR is to continually build your fitness given the specific amount of time you have to train.

As many others have said already, I do think that it can be a good idea to do at least one long ride before your taper starts just to test out fueling, pacing, and all of your equipment as well as to simply get a feel for what a long time in the saddle is going to feel like to you. This doesn’t necessarily have to be as long as your event, but somewhere in between what you’re already accustomed to and what you’re anticipating on race day.

@Jorgito, @BrianSpang is right. You now have the power to dictate exactly how long your training rides are on a day-by-day basis. Custom Duration Caps is an awesome tool that allows you to specify where you want your volume throughout your week. If you have time to ride 4+ hours on Saturdays, great! We’ll gladly serve that up for you! :fried_egg:

Just know that we don’t default to really long rides in our plans because it’s not realistic for many of our users and it’s easy enough to simply increase your duration caps when you need to. It’s also worth noting that some workouts (most notably Endurance) have higher Workout Levels as the duration increases, so even if you set your duration cap to 4 hours on Saturdays, you might not immediately get served a 4 hour long workout. Adaptive Training will respect your Progression Levels in conjunction with the duration caps.

For example, I believe that the lowest level workout that’s 4+ hours long is Hemp which has a rating of 3.9. This means you’ll have to have a level 3.9 Endurance Progression Level or higher to be served a 4-hour long Endurance ride.

Just shout if you have any other questions. Otherwise, good luck at your events! :trophy:

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