Ultra endurance cycling training program

It will help to track your current fitness and experience the fatigue you may encounter during the event. These long rides should focus on being 6, 7, or 8 hours or more in duration. And should be included in your training plan at least once a month. Then as you get closer to the event and your fitness improves, try increasing this distance to help the body adjust to spending long times in the saddle. Outside of these long rides, you should include multiple mid-length rides each week.

These rides should be distanced-focused but not as long as the long ride we discussed above. In terms of intervals, you should be focusing on steady-state efforts by including threshold intervals and longer tempo workouts. Both of these workouts will help increase your overall power and help you get over any longer climbs you may face. Focus on one long and two medium-length rides per week, and add two interval sessions a few days apart.

For the remaining days available, either take them as complete rest days or add an extra recovery ride. Cycling endurance training for beginners takes time, and the focus should be on consistency rather than volume or intensity. Building your endurance requires many months of aerobic riding and will provide a base for you to build upon later.

During the early stages of endurance training, the focus should be on consistent riding each week in zone 2. Ideally, starting with rides per week and increasing this as your fitness improves. On top of those aerobic rides, your plan should also include days of light riding or complete rest days.

As your fitness increases, you can start raising the number of long days on the bike and reduce the number of rest days. Preparing your week this way will help the body adapt to the training and allow enough recovery for long periods of consistency.

You can find the DVD or download the workout at www. Nordic Skiing — Cross-country skiing is arguably the best cardiovascular training activity of all and, as evidenced by the successes of uber-champions like Scott Jurek, Kilian Jornet, and Nikki Kimball — all of whom have backgrounds that involve cross-country skiing — has tremendous crossover benefit to ultra-running. While many are logging hours on treadmills due to cold, snow and ice, I recommend a change in stride and scenery while maintaining aerobic and anaerobic fitness.

Nordic skiing is a tremendous upper- and lower-body workout that uses the largest muscles simultaneously. While minimizing impact on the joints, you can train muscle groups specific to your sport in a slightly different manner, and condition those supporting muscles to really fire when your race season arrives.

Whatever you choose, enjoy it and reap the benefits of some alternative activities while you perhaps learn a new skill and give not only your body, but also your mind, a change of pace. The optimum amount of training at any time is a bit more than you are comfortable with but not enough to be overwhelming physically or mentally.

So how much sleep do endurance athletes need? A general rule of thumb is between 7 and 9 hours per night for adults, but studies suggest athletes may in fact need closer to 9 or 10 hours per night for optimum performance. Rest and recovery is an essential part of getting fitter and faster for any sport. There are many ways to incorporate recovery into your training and in this article, I share some of the ways I have found to be most effective during my years of experience as a cycling coach.

Interval training is an essential part of becoming a fitter and faster cyclist but what should you do, how much and how often should you do it? Racing off-road adds complication with the skills element and what aspects of training should be on technical terrain and what should be on the road or perhaps even an indoor trainer.

Many of us like to enjoy different sports now and again so I thought it would be useful to explain how you can fit them into your cycling training in the most effective way.

So, how should you fit other sports into your cycling training? You need to think about how the sport will complement or hinder particular cycling training workouts:. What is the sport that you will be doing? Is it explosive with lots of sprints and recoveries like football or hockey, extremely explosive like racket sports or circuit training, more sustained like running or swimming or applying lots of force like weight training or heavy gym work?

It is common for people to get tired at this time of year when the better weather comes around. This can be for a number of reasons and I thought it would be useful to write an article describing why you might feel overtired and explain what you can do to get back on track. So, should you change your training plan if you are tired? I just finished a YouTube video on how to use heart rate for endurance cycling training and after a quick look on the internet, I decided it would be useful to write an article to go with it.

So, how do you use heart rate to train for endurance cycling? So how did stress have such a drastic effect on my training? When we are using up a lot of energy on stress this can limit the energy we have left for good quality training; in addition to this when emotionally stressed it can take us longer to recover. Unfortunately it is difficult to monitor this closely as emotional stress is very subjective; what causes debilitating stress for one person is a perfect motivator for another.

I thought it would be useful to write an article explaining the details of what I have found to be the best way to train and prepare for a bike-packing event. I was having a quick scan around the internet at the information available on training for endurance events and thought it would be useful to write an article on training for Mountain Bike Marathon Events. So how do you train for a mountain bike marathon event? The best way is to break your training down into specific areas to meet the demands of your event, here are 6 of the most important:.

Perhaps the most effective thing you can do to improve your ability to run or cycle faster for longer distances, longer than 2 hours up to several days, is to improve your speed or power at your aerobic threshold. I thought it would be a good idea to explain why this is and how you can use the knowledge to get faster, so I wrote this article.

So, why is aerobic threshold important? Your aerobic threshold dictates how fast you can go for durations of more than around 2 hours. There are a lot of applications available to track and analyse running, cycling and other endurance training sessions. I have used quite a few over the years and I thought it would be useful to combine my experience with that of my athletes and an in-depth survey of currently available diary application and analysis tools.

So, what are the best cycling and running training and analysis applications? In no particular order, my top 3 applications are Strava, TrainingPeaks and Final Surge but I think combinations of applications work best.

Read on to find out why. So can walking help you be a better trail runner? As a way of cross training and getting in some guaranteed easy miles absolutely.

This can work particularly well for trail runners in several different ways. What you eat and drink during your long bike rides, races and events makes a huge difference to how fast you can go and how long you can ride for without having to stop or slow down.

I have done some research and combined with my personal experience as a cyclist and a professional coach, here are some ideas that might help you. Life can be busy and it can often seem impossible to find the time to train for the event that fills your dreams. You may have heard that fitness develops during recoveries and not during your workouts.

Here is a bit more detail on the subject and the reasons why recovery is so important. So, why is rest and recovery needed for you to get fitter and faster? Training is a process of stressing your body to create a response and then waiting for it to respond and build up stronger before stressing it a bit more so that it responds again. It is all about creating and maintaining good habits.

I thought it would be useful to share some of what I have learned from over 50 years in sport and my experiences as a professional running and cycling coach.

So, why do you get fitter by developing good habits? Last week, I wrote an article about how to set the intensity of your interval training sessions and made a video about why you need interval training to help you get faster, so I thought it would be a good idea to explain why you should be doing interval training in more detail, to help explain in more detail how it will help you to get faster at your running, cycling or swimming.

So, why do you need interval training to get faster? One of the ways I have found most helpful in ensuring that I complete my training is having a solid routine that I can use again and again. Spending time establishing this routine has been part of what has helped me train regularly even when my motivation has been low. I like simple, adaptable systems and the 5 pace system is such a system. I have successfully adapted the system to work with cycling, leading to many successes with athletes at all levels including professional elite competitors and I thought it would be useful to share the details of how to apply the system to your training.

Power meters have been around for over a decade now and are becoming increasingly affordable, particularly if you look to the second-hand market. There are also many affordable alternatives to buying and fitting a power meter on your bike such as using a Wattike at the gym or a smart trainer. Even basic trainers can be calibrated to give power output when combined with Apps such as Zwift, TrainerRoad, etc. I thought it would be useful to reflect on why I think training with power is a worthwhile investment.

In fact, in many cases, I think it could be better to spend less on a bike and save enough to buy a power meter if you are serious about getting the best out of yourself. Sign In My Account. Back Bike packing plans Trail Running Plans. Back Blog Blog - cycling Blog - running ebook Downloads. Learn to ride for one long day first For it to be possible to ride for more than a few days with only minimal recovery such as a few hours sleep, the speed you are riding at must be sustainable. Your long ride is the most important of the week Not surprisingly, doing regular long rides is the most important thing to do.

Most people find it convenient to do their longer rides at the weekends If you work Monday to Friday, you may have more time at the weekends, so it can be most convenient to do your longer rides at the weekends. Do some harder, faster workouts Including some harder workouts into your weekly schedule will make a big difference. How hard is hard? Training Zones Harder, faster training is done at different intensities.

Tempo Tempo training is something that you can sustain for quite a long time, maybe 45 minutes to 2 hours and is represented by your zone 3 heart rate or power.

Lactate Threshold Threshold is a bit like hard tempo, a level of effort you can sustain for between 30 and 60 minutes before you have to slow down. Maximum Aerobic VO2max After a few weeks of doing tempo sessions you can start to include some VO2max sessions into your plan. Plan a good weekly schedule It may be tempting to think that continuously building your training volume, hours, distance and intensity up until your event is the best way to go.

If you work with the longer weekend sessions like I mentioned earlier, a good week might be: Monday : something easy or a rest day with no riding to recover from the weekend; Tuesday : some easy riding of an hour or two at your endurance pace below aerobic threshold ; Wednesday : a hard Threshold session like 4 x 8 minutes as hard as you can with 2 minutes recoveries between efforts; Thursday : a longer easy ride, as long as you have time for; Friday : either a Tempo session or a VO2max session; Saturday : your longest ride of the week where you build your endurance and practice everything like pacing, nutrition and gradually build your skills on representative terrain; Sunday : another endurance ride, initially the point of this ride is to get used to riding the day after a long ride but as you build your endurance, increase the duration of this ride to be more representative of your event.

Ride twice a day if you have time Doing two rides on some days can be a great way to build your aerobic fitness. If you have time, spend some time in the gym to build strength Spending time in the gym working on building strength if you have time is likely to pay dividends and even one session a week can be worth it. Get enough rest and learn how to spot when you are getting too tired This is perhaps more important than getting the nuances of training right.

Thoroughly research the route and plan as much as possible. Get the right equipment and develop the skills to make basic repairs Think about how much time and money you are committing to training and how you would feel if you had a mechanical failure because you had skimped on a certain piece of kit. Plan a daily time schedule, not a distance schedule Most, if not all, ultra endurance cyclists I have worked with have found that working to a time schedule is far more effective and less stressful than working to a distance schedule.

Get your nutrition right Nutrition is vitally important to being successful. Make a plan and stick to it There is loads of stuff to go on there, now you have to make sure you do it and do it in a structured way.

Good luck and have fun! Get in touch to find out how we can help you. First Name. Last Name. Email Address. Sign Up. We respect your privacy and only send content that we consider relevant to you. Thank you for joining the JHCoaching community. We will be in touch within the next two days to help you schedule your consultation. Welcome to JHCoaching. Quick View.

Coaching Silver Your Silver coaching package is the perfect way to take your training to the next level. Preferred Coach:. John Clare running only No preference. One Hour Consultation The coach consultation includes a one hour discussion with the coach of your choice on the phone or video call.

Add To Cart. Endurance Cycling - Training Group If you have purchased on of our training plans, you can join our Training Group and take advantage or contact with our coaching team and shared group activities. This is a tremendous resource that I am sure you would benefit from joining. What is included? TrainingPeaks Premium Subscription, where you can access your plan and see your improvement as you build your strength and fitness; A startup one to one consultation with one of our coaches to make sure that you understand everything and to help you set your plan up perfectly to meet your needs; Access to our weekly Zoom meeting where we get together to chat about topics relevant to training and racing in a learning and sharing environment.

This group is attended my many experienced and successful endurance athletes sharing a wealth of experience and knowledge; Access to a monthly interactive workshop led by one of our coaches on topics chosen by the group as relevant and interesting; Unlimited email support from our coaching team; Membership of our Training Group media platforms that will allow you to interact, share your experiences as well as learn from each other and our coaching team.

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