I don’t have a power meter, but I do have a hr monitor. I’m not going to be any where close to competitive but it doesn’t feel super out of my league? maybe I’ll be humbled, we’ll see. I was working as a courier for the last couple years, now working a desk job so gotta be a little more on top of it though
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yeah, I’m looking into a fit because I’m definitely concerned about having some issues on longer rides
Ah you e got some base miles and you’re young you’ll be fine just ride a lot and figure out fit and eating and maybe do some squats.
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Best thing you can probably do is ignore any advice about squats, trainer road, training plans, etc. Maybe use Strava to track your weekly hours and try to build as much volume as you can leading up to the event. Do most of your work in Z2. Your Z2 HR shouldn’t be hard to figure out and not much precision is required. If you like, add in a ride once per week that has a couple hard efforts in it. More importantly, carve out some time to do some really long rides. When you do those long rides stay in Z2, not harder, not easier, no coasting no coffee breaks and stop as little as possible.
‘Bout six weeks out from the event you’ll need to start acclimating to a feeding strategy to get your gut used to it.
Optimally you’d shortly be able to knock out a 100 mile ride on any given day without feeling too fatigued.
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No they aren’t. Anyone can sign up for and level. Only zwiftpower tracks what category you should be in.
I don’t think squats are gonna be the magic ticket for @alp , but depending on their existing fitness level, some gym time likely wouldn’t hurt. Bike packing is significantly more strenuous on the rest of the body than road riding. The route posted goes over some roads that are extremely rough and are going to cause a ton of fatigue on the arms and hands and require some pushing the bike.
Some strength and muscular endurance work would likely go a long way.
Ride your bike more
Ride a long time on the weekends
Take a recovery day
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I think yes, but between now and June for a 600 mile ride?
That looks quite gnarly! I haven’t ridden much of that route, but that it goes over Corona/rollins pass. Hopefully you can get that early in the day as that’s a rough one to do after a long day. It’s a tough push to bypass the tunnel and the descent into rollinsville is really bumpy the whole way down until you get on tolland rd.
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The event is in July. There’s 15 weeks between then and now. That’s plenty of time to make some gains.
yeah, that pass is actually one of the only sections of this route that I’ve done! definitely a rough descent though the climb up the corona side is nice. weirdly this route has very little overlap with the GDMBR so it’ll be a lot of new roads for me
kinda sounds like I just need to ride my bike a lot, get some core strength/upper body strength, and doing intervals maybe isn’t the best move.
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lol I spent a summer living directly on that route rebuilding this old roadhouse in Gould from scratch, but it closed again some years after my family gave it up
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If you’re able to build the necessary volume between now and then and you manage to complete a 300 mile training ride and you have 2-3 weeks left before a 2 week taper then you might consider some VO2 intervals.
Typically that’s 4x8. Ie 4 minutes at the maximum pace
You can sustain for that period. Do that 8 times with a 2 minute rest between. Twice a week.
During your taper ease up m volume substantially, and do two of these workouts the first week of taper and one the second.
I’m not a training expert, but Alp isn’t looking to win anything
To keep it simple – as many hours as you can do in Zone 2 will be fine with some hard intervals if you want
^Like they said
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this whole zone 2 business has been great so far, i get on the bike and i am not dying yet i feel tired AND i can do it again the next day
plus that blue color on the little zwift chart is so pretty
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I don’t personally thinking all zone 2 work translates well to off road riding because it’s impossible to stay in that zone on dirt. Are a ton of intervals needed? No, but you either need to go over z2 on your training rides up any punchy climbs or simulate them on the trainer so your legs can actually handle the repeated abuse they’re going to go through on these rural gravel roads (and trails). A little intensity is needed. For me, lifting actually fills in some of that void. If i’m not lifting and only riding z2-z3 on the roads all winter, then my first mtb ride is hell.
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my problem in every sport that i’ve ever done is that base training is boring and it’s just way more fun to do what i am relatively good at (go fast for a short time). so i do that. and then i have no endurance
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yeah, this is why you do base for long rides and intensity for short rides so you get a mix. so if you can only do 1 hour rides mid week, just do the intervals.
if it was November-December, sure, stick to 100% z2, but there ain’t time for that now.
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You’re not wrong, but from where I sit, any hope of doing well in a 600 mile race in 15 weeks will come from increasing muscular metabolic efficiency, which entails a boat load of z2.
At that distance don’t matter how punchy the climbs are imho.
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