Etape Training Question

UncleFred said:

Does anybody have any Ideas, hints, tips for me to get the best out of what I'm doing. Or even a critique of my training so far.

Thanks

You're getting a lot done in a short amount of time so I'd say you're getting a lot out of your time. However for the race as long as the Etape, you'll need to work on your base miles. Every good endurance program, whether it be cycling, swimming, or running includes long slower efforts.

There's still time, but soon you'll need at least one workout a week of long slow miles amounting several hours in the saddle. As the event gets closer (about a month to three weeks prior to the event) most endurance training programs would have you do your long training ride built to a minimum 75% of the total distance to complete the event. With a month to three weeks to go you can start tapering your training for the event.

Good luck! I wish I was joining you.

Thanks for taking the time to comment, I have a few questions....

1. I can do a long ride once a week, I have between 4 & 5 hours available but what sort of pace should I be looking at? I like to ride at about 80%MHR, I feel like I'm getting a benefit at this pace, but should I be slowing down a little?

2. I can do the long rides on an almost flat route, but if I wanted I can put in up to 8 short, steep (20-25%) climbs on each lap. Is this worthwhile doing or should I just stick to the flat.

3. Most of my climbing training is off road and on my MTB, that way I can get the climbs in in the available time that I have. Is this riding beneficial or should I switch to my roadbike and try and climb on that. The only problem is the paved roads that are easily accessible from my house are very rough, concrete roads and I don't want to trash my Road bike.

4. Looking at the profile of the Etape, the climbs are long and not as steep in comparison with the short steep climbs that I do. Will the endurance training be more beneficial to me to complete these climbs or do you have any suggestions for improving my climbing. IE get off the MTB and do more work on the Roadie..I've been working on the principle that the short steep climbs will improve my power.

5. Basically it's the climbs that are worrying me, should I stop worrying?

These are my thoughts, for what they're worth

1. Try to keep your HR below 80% on your long rides to keep the effort mainly aerobic. Basically your pace (and HR) is what you feel you can comfortably maintain for the length of the ride (3 hours or more)

2. Maybe put in those climbs (20% is really steep :eek: ) every second or third lap if that possible.

3. Use your MTB for the shorter days when your working on climbing and LT work. Use your road bike for everything else as that will be the bike you'll use in the Etap and the setup between road and MTB will be different

4. Keep doing the 4 x 8-10 miles of very steep climbing but try and keep your HR at around 86-88% whilst on the actual climb. During the Etap you'll want to stay mainly aerobic on the loooooong climbs

5. Yes 😉

UncleFred said:

2. I can do the long rides on an almost flat route, but if I wanted I can put in up to 8 short, steep (20-25%) climbs on each lap. Is this worthwhile doing or should I just stick to the flat?

Long mountain climbs are more like riding on the flats than riding up short, steep climbs. On a short, steep climb, the tendency is to push hard (anaerobically) to the top, then rest and catch your breath before continuing. On a long grade, you'll want to use your low gearing to settle into a steady, aerobic intensity that you can maintain for a long time. Your speed on the climb will be limited by your long-term aerobic power rather than your ability to ride hard for a minute or two. Make sure you have gearing that's plenty low, relax, settle into a sustainable rhythm, and enjoy the views.

UncleFred said:

Thanks for taking the time to comment, I have a few questions....

1. I can do a long ride once a week, I have between 4 & 5 hours available but what sort of pace should I be looking at? I like to ride at about 80%MHR, I feel like I'm getting a benefit at this pace, but should I be slowing down a little?

2. I can do the long rides on an almost flat route, but if I wanted I can put in up to 8 short, steep (20-25%) climbs on each lap. Is this worthwhile doing or should I just stick to the flat.

3. Most of my climbing training is off road and on my MTB, that way I can get the climbs in in the available time that I have. Is this riding beneficial or should I switch to my roadbike and try and climb on that. The only problem is the paved roads that are easily accessible from my house are very rough, concrete roads and I don't want to trash my Road bike.

4. Looking at the profile of the Etape, the climbs are long and not as steep in comparison with the short steep climbs that I do. Will the endurance training be more beneficial to me to complete these climbs or do you have any suggestions for improving my climbing. IE get off the MTB and do more work on the Roadie..I've been working on the principle that the short steep climbs will improve my power.

5. Basically it's the climbs that are worrying me, should I stop worrying?

In consistency with what the other posters were writing, I'll also explain the long ride as opposed to discussing an exact schedule.

The idea behind the endurance ride is to build your aerobic system and getting your body used to putting in the time. If you don't do this, no matter how much climbing power or sprint ability you have, you'll run out of gas. Hence, for that one ride a week, enjoy yourself and don't worry about power, speed, and heart rate. 70 - 75% MHR is fine for that ride. If it goes to 65%, don't worry about it. If it goes up to 85% at some point, don't worry about it. Just try to make it an enjoyable nonaggressive ride. If you're sitting at 80+% for a long duration, pick a lower gear so you're not working as hard.

To keep from getting injured or over training, try to build each week at 5% or less total time in the saddle. Keep in mind that a 3-hour ride at 4% increase 3 hours and 7 minutes so it isn't an exact science and it's only a general rule, not something that requires exact calculations. The goal is to have your long ride be of a minimum of 75% of the total length (and time in the saddle) at around the 3 - 4 week range prior to the event before tapering your training. To get to that length, you can do the math between now and then to see how long your rides should be at this point with about a 5% increase per week.

For us "less then elite" athletes (I won't categorize you in there but I'll definitely speak for myself), I've found that, following a published training program or not, the best thing I can do is take the entire last week before a major event off completely. Drink a ton of water that week (I mean more then you'd like to) and eat what you want. It's what I've done anyway...

Most of what I've just written is found in just about every endurance training program book.

In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with training on your mtn bike, however I'd have one concern, your body will also have to adapt to the position of your road bike for the event. If you train exclusively on the mtn bike, you'll probably get stung on that point. Also, on road bikes a person tends to just "go", but mtn bike riding can have a lot of starts and stops. At minimum, you'll want to ensure you're getting quality time in on the road bike.

Your shorter hard climbs are a sort of interval training. That's a great part of your training program. However, one trick I stumbled upon that improved my interval training massively was adding one swim day of, say, 45 minutes a week. I'm a crappy swimmer (which is probably part of the reason it's works my heart so well is that I work too hard), but the controlled breathing of every third stroke and the racing heartrate made a HUGE difference in just 6 sessions of once a week.

Once again, I really wish you good luck. I'd have to cross an ocean to join you so I'll just have to stay jealous.

Cheers Guys. That's some of the best advice have had so far.

I've been reading the CTS/Armstrong book but it all seemed tailored to someone who has a variety of terrains to ride on and a lot of hours available for training.

It's good that I can ask the questions and get answers to my specific questions and situation.

I'll be having a good read of what everybody has written and adapting what I'm doing.

I have a weekend off the bike now so I can recover from what has been a hard tiring week, but from what I've read I've realised that I have been overtraining on the hills, the tried legs all of the time certainly confirm that!

BTW Posite, my route to the Etape involves taking three flights a ferry and driving for 11 hours!!!

UncleFred said:

I have a weekend off the bike now so I can recover from what has been a hard tiring week, but from what I've read I've realised that I have been overtraining on the hills, the tried legs all of the time certainly confirm that!

Hills are good, but you'll get more benefit from longer climbs of 15-30 minutes in duration than from short, steep climbs. If you don't have access to hills that long, then you can simply ride hard on the flats or against a headwind for a 15-30 minute interval, then rest and repeat. That'll help increase your aerobic power more than doing a series of climbs up a 20-25% grade.

UncleFred said:

I'm doing the Etape this year and I've been training since January although I've been riding at least 3 times a between the end of the season and January.

Here's what I'm doing pretty much every week.

4 x 8-10 miles of very steep climbing, 20+ percent 1 hour every day on my mountain bike,mostly off road, average heart rate is 81-85%MHR

1 x 1hour flat ride building my effort from 70%MHR to 85%MHR finishing with a 1 mile climb where my HR goes up to low 90%. This is on my Road Bike.

1 x Long fast ride, normally about 45 miles, 85-92%MHR all flat, high cadence. Again using my road bike.

I am able to ride from sun up, about 6.30 at the moment, to 7.45 when I have to go to work. Sun sets at the moment at about 6.15 but I could ride until 6.30-6.45 ish, but I don't want to ride in the dark as it's too dangerous on the road.

I'm also trying to run a MTB club race season and ride in the various events the Road Bike club put on, I completed a 15k time trial in 32 minutes a couple of weeks ago.

Now, I don't feel as though I'm doing enough training to be able to do the Etape and I'm starting to think that I'm not using the time that I do have to train effeciently.

Does anybody have any Ideas, hints, tips for me to get the best out of what I'm doing. Or even a critique of my training so far.

Thanks

Ride 120 miles a day, honest 🙄

be sure to recall the severity of this years etap... One nasty nasty stage....

Tempo, or whatever one wants to call it.

Remember you will be on the bike for quite a while and you need to survive to the end, not just hammer the first climb!

IMHO, you need:

1. Base miles: If you can't ride for 6+ hours, you are in trouble. That being said, you can build to 75% of your target time and be ok. I have (perhaps foolishly) ridden 200+ mile rides with 5,000-6,000 meters of climbing without having ridden more than a century prior. The key was that I was training, doing quality work with lots of climbing during my longer rides.

2. Efficiency: You cannot ride too hard all day. By training somewhere between 80-90% of AT, you can train your body to be more efficient, or so the theory goes. In any event, this is the zone you will hopefully be in during your longer efforts. Here you should be sure you have a low enough gear to maintain 70+ rpm. That will help save your legs for the multiple climbing efforts you will need to make during L'Etape.

3. As your training progresses, some harder, short efforts will help you fine-tune, but be prudent. You will not get your best time on L'Etape by "attacking" on the Izoard, and high-intensity work can be easily overdone.

4. Have fun and kick a$$. I hope you have or will have rideen in the high mountains and have some sense of descending mountain roads (and how tired your arms can get after a 20km descent), the joy and pain of climbing for 1-1.5 hours at a clip, etc.

I am facing a similar challenge with the new Gran Fondo Dolomiti Stars (a attempt by the Giro organizers to run an Etape-like event in the Dolomites) and L'Ariegoise in the Pyrenees. Snow & work have put me mostly on the trainer thus far, so long tempo intervals at night are the current staple.

Bonne chance!