Grafton to Inverell. Training tips for time poor please

[evrcycle]

Hi all I'm not riding grafton inverell this year but intend to next year. I am after any tips on how to prepare for a 200 km+ race without doing such time consuming training rides. Also interested to hear how experienced riders fine tune their program in the last 4-6 weeks before race day.

Cheers
Peter

[othy]

I too am interested in this topic. Currently considering planning my next year of riding around this race.

[lemmiwinks]

I know someone who's going to ride this year and from what I hear he is doing long rides and lots of them. From this I infer that the best way to prepare for riding a long distance is to ride long distances as much as you can. Dunno where that leaves you though.

[drubie]

Dunno where that leaves you though.

In the sag wagon

(at least that's where I'd be. I'd reckon if you weren't doing 3-400km a week then don't bother showing up at all).

[toolonglegs]

I would have thought exactly the opposite,a coach may have more to say .I finished the etape du tour (7.5hours) on training with very few rides over 3 hours,I hardly ever go over 2.5hours.Building your FTP (function threshold power / best hour power) is the key...it is a race so the higher your ftp the longer you will survive....I am pretty sure it would be "easy" to complete this on 8 hours training a week.Of course you need to know you can sit in the saddle happily for 4-6 hours,but the higher your FTP...the more watts you can hold as a percentage of that over a few hours the better...and you don't raise your threshold by riding long....you raise threshold by raising intensity.
But depending HOW time poor you are?...I would think 7-8 hours a week would be the minimum.

[MichaelB]

But TLL, you're not normal

You have already cycled almost double the distance I have this year , and all of that would have been a lot harder than I have done.

I would have thought to do the ride that he is enquiring about that at some stage it would be wise to have at least done several approaching that distance from a metal point of view, not only a physical one.

[toolonglegs]

Ah but I am very normal for someone who races constantly.
Yes like I said he needs to know he can sit in the saddle for 4-6 hours...ie: if you have never done a ride that long it is good to know if you have any physical reasons that might play up after a long time...also you need to eat eat eat (how long is Grafton to Inverell?)...but you do not need to train for a long race by doing long rides.

[Ant.]

TLL is 100% right. You don't need volume to raise your power, although it helps. Many people use volume in place of a good training program, and it works. Many people use a good training program in place of volume and that works better.

[Jono L.]

I would have thought exactly the opposite,a coach may have more to say .I finished the etape du tour (7.5hours) on training with very few rides over 3 hours,I hardly ever go over 2.5hours.Building your FTP (function threshold power / best hour power) is the key...it is a race so the higher your ftp the longer you will survive....I am pretty sure it would be "easy" to complete this on 8 hours training a week.Of course you need to know you can sit in the saddle happily for 4-6 hours,but the higher your FTP...the more watts you can hold as a percentage of that over a few hours the better...and you don't raise your threshold by riding long....you raise threshold by raising intensity.
But depending HOW time poor you are?...I would think 7-8 hours a week would be the minimum.

Ok,

Here's my take. Just something that worked very well for me.

Bottom line, you do need to do long rides. But not all the time, ie a weekly structure focused on shorter rides to build ftp with one long ride 5-6.5 hours. The biggest thing for me was to do these long rides hard. Really hard. You can't simulate the race by yourself but you may as well induce some serious pain, within reason. Obviously I'd aim to build up this long hard ride each week, not jump straight into 6 hours on the rivet, but if Grafton ain't the place to go under-prepared.

I suspect a lot of people do their long rides too slow.

[Ant.]

I would have thought exactly the opposite,a coach may have more to say .I finished the etape du tour (7.5hours) on training with very few rides over 3 hours,I hardly ever go over 2.5hours.Building your FTP (function threshold power / best hour power) is the key...it is a race so the higher your ftp the longer you will survive....I am pretty sure it would be "easy" to complete this on 8 hours training a week.Of course you need to know you can sit in the saddle happily for 4-6 hours,but the higher your FTP...the more watts you can hold as a percentage of that over a few hours the better...and you don't raise your threshold by riding long....you raise threshold by raising intensity.
But depending HOW time poor you are?...I would think 7-8 hours a week would be the minimum.

Ok,

Here's my take. Just something that worked very well for me.

Bottom line, you do need to do long rides. But not all the time, ie a weekly structure focused on shorter rides to build ftp with one long ride 5-6.5 hours. The biggest thing for me was to do these long rides hard. Really hard. You can't simulate the race by yourself but you may as well induce some serious pain, within reason. Obviously I'd aim to build up this long hard ride each week, not jump straight into 6 hours on the rivet, but if Grafton ain't the place to go under-prepared.

I suspect a lot of people do their long rides too slow.

I agree with that last sentence.
However if I only had 10hrs to train per week, I would not spend 5 or 6 hours on one ride, regardless of what I was aiming for.

[Alex Simmons/RST]

But TLL, you're not normal

He's pretty normal.
Quality over quantity, then it's a matter of the quantity of quality.


A goal of Grafton is a little ill defined as many do it to race competitively, others do it like a Sportive ride. There is a big difference between those two goals and what may be necessary for any individual rider (based on their riding/training history, current performance levels, physiological profile, training time availability etc).

In terms of the final weeks before, and assuming this was a main goal event, well I would probably be looking at some solid volume of tempo and hard endurance riding to get some training load into the body before a taper (but probably not a longer taper - depends a lot on how much you have been doing up to that point - in some cases no taper at all). These might include other races in the weeks leading up or at least some high quality hard long training rides. The work to raise threshold should have already been done before that stage though.

For someone with the talent and wants to be competitive in that race, I'd say you'd want to be looking at 10-15 hrs/week. Quality hours.

For others, then you can do it on 5 hrs/week and 7-10 hrs/wk can get you into excellent shape.
For these riders, the most important thing is using the hours wisely and knowing how to pace themselves on the day. The latter point being where most come crashing down.

[Jono L.]

However if I only had 10hrs to train per week, I would not spend 5 or 6 hours on one ride, regardless of what I was aiming for.

Agreed.

[snedden9485]

Im looking at donig at next yr, will do the cyclo sportif early in the year to see how i go. Would have liked to have done it this yr, but dont have the miles in the legs yet. Im training with a few guys who are doing it and they are knocking out the kms. We are going on a 230km ride on wednesday, will be tough as there is alot of dead roads and undulations. But as mentioned, doing long rides isnt the only key.