Training (with power) for an Ultra Event

Steve_B

I'm with Dave on this one. I've been through the same thing.

Assuming you have done rides of that length in the past (i.e., your knees/joints/butt/mind is/are capable of handling the chamois time), it is a high FTP and CTL that will allow you to ride well below your max (FTP) for a long time (CTL). I'd still subscribe to the a FTP development strategy of beaucoup L4 and L3.

For L3 specifically, I would keep increasing how much time your can stay in L3 continuously out beyond 2 hours and just keep building up until close to your event. Then rest up before the event and go in with a high TSB and you'll be as good as gold.

Watoni

I agree with that to a great degree.

The one issue is that it is often difficult to know how your body will deal with the nutrition and other physical demands (such as saddle time, feet, etc) without doing a ride of that time/distance. I think of a double metric as closer to a European gran fondo/cyclosportive that will not necessarily push that envelope. 7:30 hours is much different that 11-15.

In terms of preparation, I also find there is a huge difference between riding 170km with 4500m of climbing, even at altitude, and a 330km ultra with 6000m of climbing. I can complete both without having done a century if my training is good; however, if I want to motor on an ultra event I start working on my nutrition/arse strategy and test over a 120-150 mile ride first.

I also do a ton of tempo/sweet spot riding. Riding at 80-90% of FTP not only can help raise your FTP, research (or at least Ferrari's research) indicates such intensitites improve your efficiency with fat metabolism, which is crucial in longer events.

YMMV and good luck!

I am out of shape now (overweight and CTL of about 40), but may come down to do the Mulholland double to kick start the season. Look for a Peg Love#3 with a Powertap SL

Spunout

Great. But, I thought that perhaps the OP's goals were to do a bit better than this.

daveryanwyoming

touche'

But personally I was pretty happy finishing within half an hour of the course record but then again I'm nearly 50.... Maybe a bunch of long training rides would have made me faster

LT Intolerant

Thanks, I will look for you. I'll be riding a Scott w an SRM (red computer), wearing my red and black Chicken Ranch kit. See you there.

gene r

chainstay

You had a great result in Lotoja. Here is my question though: If you were dedicating your training to doing well in 206 mile Lotoja rather than dedicating your training to doing well for an entire season of USCF cycling races, would you train substantially differently, and if so, how?

daveryanwyoming

I suppose I might, but I don't think it would be very different except perhaps for peaking strategies. LOTOJA was sort of an afterthought to a good season. My power numbers peaked in early August for the Montana State 40k TT and I started a new job about the same time. But I'd registered for LOTOJA back in the spring so I figured, why not?

If that event had been my season long goal I would have continued to build CTL up through late August (I was in heavy CTL taper for all of August with the new job) and would have done a structured week to 10 day taper prior to the race. I probably would have skipped the microintervals I was doing earlier in the season as I wouldn't care as much about crits and an event like LOTOJA isn't going to be determined by how many times you can jump in sucession.

If a race like that, or maybe a really long event like a 24 hour Mtn bike event were my season goal then I'd guess I'd do some longer training rides. But I still wouldn't try to match the event time, distance or caloric requirements as has been suggested here. I just don't believe you need to train your body to burn X number of calories to be able to do that on race day. I'd still have a power first focus since it's power margin that allows you to burn fat and it's peak sustainable power that allows you to hang in the tough sections.

It's a good question Chainstay, but since I don't really target ultra events I don't have a good answer. My point was that for relatively long road events even including something as hard as the Everest Challenge mentioned early in this thread you don't necessarily have to do regular long endurance rides. Some sure, for the reasons listed on page one but not necessarily weekly, biweekly or as regular part of training as many seem to believe. Yeah I know it's sacrilege but so is advocating SST over LSD and lot's of things we talk about on these power forum threads.

-Dave

chainstay

Thanks for your answer. I just started checking in here periodically over the last year, but left for quite awhile considering all the spam and just checked back. I have noticed from your posts that you made a great deal of progress using modern training methods. I am a beginner racer in my fifties (have raced three times) who managed to pull out a win in one of the Lotoja Cat V divisions this last September (much slower division than yours), and now being mildly encouraged, I am wanting to prepare for Lotoja a little more scientifically this next time around. I am still reviewing various strategies though.

I don't have a power meter, but there are stationary bikes at my gym that read watts output that I have been using lately to try to improve power while there is snow out on the ground. But my intervals are relatively short and I suspect I am doing much more to improve my power over short durations than long durations like an ultra event. But hopefully some of my progress with short distance sustainable power will be useful and transfer over to helping my long distance sustainable power when I get back outside.

daveryanwyoming

Good job on your LOTOJA, how did your race play out? Did you get away with a small group on Strawberry or Salt River Pass? Did it end in a sprint or were you solo at the end? Regardless of the category a win in a race of that length is great. Nice job.

If you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of on the bike PMs as they've helped me tremendously and really turned around my training and racing. But obviously they're a big investment that not everyone will make. Still I'd get one if you're serious about tracking your improvement. Just the ability to load data files(or manual entries from gym ergs) into the Performance Manager in WKO+ is worth it. Tracking CTL prior to an event like LOTOJA is crucial in terms of keeping tabs on your training load and planning a taper if you've got the CTL to spare.

But, sales pitch aside I use gym ergs as a regular part of my training and they're a great tool. The power numbers vary a lot and you can't take their numbers too seriously but if you can ride the same erg regularly you can use it to gauge progress. When I travel for work I use ergs in hotel gyms but adjust levels based on how I feel.

Whether your "relatively short intervals" will help you for long races depends a bit on what you mean by relatively short. I do weekly gym erg intervals starting at about 20 minutes long but I prefer 30 minute to hour and a half efforts on gym ergs. These won't all be right up against my best possible power for those durations but given the big power jumps between levels on most gym ergs I'll tend to work longer efforts than I will on my road bike. Steady efforts at least 10 minutes long and preferably longer that push you to breathe deeply and steadily and that require focus and concentration to finish but don't absolutely kill you are the key to getting a lot of benefit from these shorter efforts.

If your relatively short efforts are less than 10 minutes long, then no I wouldn't expect them to help much for an event like LOTOJA but longer efforts focusing on core aerobic fitness can lay a great base for outdoor work later in the season. And to be clear I'm not suggesting that you never ride long all day rides, just that it isn't necessary to base your training on really long days. But definitely do some of them just not necessarily weekly or even monthly. Get your power up with steady efforts including Tempo rides up to 3 or more hours in length. And when you do ride those longer days, try to ride them quickly don't just slog out the miles at low speeds.

Good luck,
Dave

Watoni

Great job on the race!

Your strategy sounds on target.

My first event for the this year is the Devil Mountain Double in the SF Bay Area, which is 206 miles and 18,500 feet of climbing, so the course record there is somewhere around 12 hours.

Right now I am working on upping my FTP using SST/L4, and I will mostly doing long rides to do the Bettini:


"Two-time World Champion Paolo Bettini has passed a relaxing winter to ready himself for the 2008 season, on the roads in his rainbow jersey. The 33 year-old Italian put on some extra weight this off-season, but now the Quick Step rider is ready to battle, starting with his season debut in the GP Etruschi on Saturday.

'This winter I exaggerated a little bit and found myself nine kilograms over my inform weight," noted Bettini to La Gazzetta dello Sport. "It was almost double body fat [59 to 68kg, 7 to 13% body fat - ed.]. However, when it is a party, it is a party.'

Ever professional, Bettini was already back down to 63kg during the Quick Step training camp, thanks to five hour rides without as much as an energy bar. Often he will not eat or drink in training to simulate emergency racing conditions."

Steve_B

I can't tell if you're kidding here. Try that for 5 hours and we'll see you on the side of the road, laying on the ground, staring into space, trying to figure out why you have tunnel vision and it feels like your brain is shutting down....because it is, from lack of glucose.

WattsAMatta

For a multi-day ultra event, specifically the Everest Challenge, what is the best way to train for recovery? I rode the DeathRide last summer (comparable to the first day of the Everest event) and it was hard for me to even look at a bike the next day much less climb another 13,000 feet on it.
-- Bryan

daveryanwyoming

I'd start by getting your CTL up as high as you can within real life constraints of work and family obligations. I don't have any hard and fast numbers, but I'd be thinking in terms of a CTL of at least 100 to 110 TSS/day prior to an event like that.

-Dave

chainstay

My race really had a lot of ups and downs, including me having a lead going over Salt River Pass and even bigger lead going in to Afton, only to lose that lead again heading in to Alpine when I was nearly bonking from lack of proper nutrition---my support guy was missing in both Preston and Afton. But I made somewhat of a miracle recovery following the Alpine feed zone, and managed to catch back on to the race at about the 180 mile mark. I finally came across the finish line first in a full anaerobic sprint that I think may have well have been the longest, most intense anaerobic period that I had ever experienced, although I suspect it was just par for the course or even short for you more experienced racers. But the thought crossed my mind more than once during that sprint as to whether I was putting myself at risk of having a heart attack and dieing. I think you guys may call it L7. Nonetheless, I have a long lifetime of relatively intense exercise activity at the recreational level, including running, mogul skiing, mountain biking and road riding, including plenty of hard mountain climbing on the mountain bike and road bike, so my heart and lungs have quite a bit of cumulative, high intensity training over the years, which I am sure helped let me leave the finish line on my own two feet rather than in a coffin. LOL.

Well I hate to admit it, but I am not a very motivated winter bicycle trainer; I ususally do other athletic activities altogether during the winter, so I figure that maybe doing any length intervals at all this winter is better than none. My intervals have been under 10 minutes, but off and on over the course of an hour. When it warms up and the snow melts off the roads, I will start making at bare minimum, 45 minute hard efforts up some of the mountain roads like usual, and later on, the minimum, hard climbing efforts will be at least an hour.

Also, I have relatives down around the Monterey, California area, and I am probably going to go down there with a buddy and and participate in some of the Sea Otter races this April. The 50 mile road race has an 8 mile loop with a couple of half mile climbs in it for which I figure it would pay for me to be strong for three or four minute intervals, so I have been convincing myself that some of the real short intervals that I have been doing lately are helping me get ready for those two half mile climbs on the road race loop.

The anti slogging message is something that I can easily grasp. I have never really had to fight off "slogging" once I am out riding on the road, whereas I definitely have to fight off slogging when I am sitting on the gym bikes. When I was outside last season, I tried to go hard over a wide variety of distances, (unless I was purposely doing the occassional recovery ride) with the shortest distance being about a 9 mile climb out my door, and the longest distances being a couple of 150 mile events that turned in to a psuedo races like events are prone to do. I sort of worked up to going hard for longer and longer distances, but even when I worked up to the longer distances, most of my training was still on shorter distances. I had a log of personal times for many routes so I could race against myself. I also used a HRM extensively last season for the first time, although I am well aware of the many limitations concerning drawing conclusions from heart rate that have been posted here.

Looking at my log, it looks like I had about 6 centuries last season, and then about 4 more 125 mile plus days with over 10,000 feet of climbing each time, including those two 150 mile events above. Overall mileage was a little over 6,200 miles. But judging by your Lotoja experience and hearing the experience of a number of other USCF racers above Cat V who had experiences similar to yours where they did well with many fewer long distance rides, it sounds like I easily had more than enough long distance rides under my belt to compete. And I don't know how you measure it, but I am guessing my critical training load going in to the race was high, since I did a great deal of hard riding in July and August. On another note, I believe, but can't prove it, that I was in shape to do better than I did in Lotoja had my support been there and I had got my planned calorie intake, but I guess I will have to try to prove that hypothesis another day.

Of course I can almost picture you raising your eyebrows and scoffing at that last remark, and saying well "what is your FTP/kg?" Sorry, I still don't know, but eventually I will. Thanks for sharing your tips and your training experience.

So what about your Lotoja race? Were you riding in that group with the overall winners at some point? How did it all play out?