Hi everyone! I’ll be riding the gran fondo Strade Bianche on the 5th of March, 8 weeks from now. It’s a 140km ride with a good amount of “easy” gravel.
I had planned to follow the 100 Mile Gravel training plan but due to personal reasons I’m one month behind schedule with very little training in the legs.
What should I do? Start the training plan now and loose the final 4 weeks (but include a week of tapering) or jump directly to week 4 and follow the original schedule?
Thanks, I know that functionality which has the result of removing the initial weeks from the plan.
My question is more from a fitness/science perspective, i.e. is it better to cut the initial part or the final part? Considered there is a progressive increase in the load, starting from week 4 might be counterproductive…
@VicB83 Personally I would start at the one month mark but keep a close watch on recovery between activities - solid sleep, hydration, manage stress, etc… Assuming you have some sort of base despite the lapse in training I would think that approach would work best.
Personally, I would do the initial first 4 weeks (3:1) as a goal to build up fatigue if such plans incorporate building base before specifics.
Then do specific training of SweetSpot/Tempo work followed by AC and NM work in the final week/s before tapering into race week.
no science from me! but my personal preference – I would use the event as my end date (lose the first 4 weeks of the plan) and monitor fatigue, drop out maybe 1 day/week of training for a little extra recovery. for a 100mi ride, i want to make sure I can do 60-80 comparable miles before the event day, and the early weeks of training won’t show me how close/far i am from achieving that.
but i do think this is very personal – will you feel more confident on the day if
(a) you have done your basic training and you know you can just keep grinding consistently through to the end, or
(b) you have done distance/effort similar to the target and you just have to power through a little more?
