I'm training for the etape du tour this year and after building a reasonable base with a 'just ride' plan I thought I'd try to put a plan together based on Allen/Coggans book. My goal is just to finish the 200K ride, with 5 alpine climbs comfortably in around 9 hours and I have 16 weeks left. I was thinking of something that provided a lot of level 2 & 3 at the weekends and level 4 interval work midweek to give me the endurance and FTP improvement for the climbs I need.
Assuming this is okay (!?) I’m struggling with ride time planning. Like many, I have a lot of time at the weekend but very little during the week. Is it okay to be adapting a 3.5 hr weekend group ride (level 2 and 3 if I don't race) and slowly building to it to 6/7 hours (mainly level 2) each week, when I’m only doing 3 * 1.5 hour intervals at level 4 during the week? This looks very much like a stacked plan.
Do I really need to build the 7 hours endurance like this or is there a better use of my weekend time, like two days with the the sample 2.5 hr shorter level 3 tempo rides?
Don’t know if this helps, but I did the Etape last year and finished in under 8 hours.
All of my training consisted of L3 Tempo riding. My intervals consisted of 90 minutes of tempo twice a week at slow rpm on the trainer with the front wheel up (no mountains in Ohio!) On the weekends I did maybe a total of 6 rides over 150KM always avoiding to go in the red. Was not the fastest but I had plenty of stamina to get to the end. The 34x27 helped too 🙂 I am hoping to get back again this year too and have modified my training to include some L4 2x20 intervals twice a week.
