Transcontinental Race No. 6 - TCR6 - #TCRN06 - 2018

There we go. Just say no kids.

You've done big races before though so other than missing a bit of butt hardening there's not likely to be a big disadvantage when training this way? It'd be cool to just to tabata or something silly only and see how an ultra race goes.

Like it says in the article, you guys are used to racing these events and you know you can do it. The only question that remains is: how fast? So you can focus on just the physical aspect of the preparations.
I'm fairly new to this game so I'll be doing long rides and multi-day rides as well as short hard rides (Zwift). Maybe not benificial for the body but very much so for the mind. (And testing and getting to know the gear.)

you can focus on just the physical aspect of the preparations

LOL and the route planning and the never ending kit choice shenanigans and the which bike questions :P

Well, I'm still an advocaat of the go-long method. Let's see how I go this year with less TOB.

Ofcourse the route planning also. But the article (and conversation) was about "how much should I ride?".

Lots.

How do the overall loads compare? Between you’re two types. Either tss or kIlo Joules.

Much higher for longer rides

But overall, say weekly, monthly. It’s still higher over the time period when you do longer rides?

You've done big races before though so other than missing a bit of butt hardening there's not likely to be a big disadvantage when training this way? It'd be cool to just to tabata or something silly only and see how an ultra race goes

Sure, someone who is not used to long rides needs to do long rides. Not doing them might not work for me: I've only done one 200km this year and I suffered, both back and motivation.

Also I'm missing out on trying out stuff like new lights and different luggage setups. Those things will need to be tried so I will throw in a night ride or two later on.

But I reckon there is value in training what you've not previously trained for. I've hardly ever done any speed/threshold stuff so reckon I should get a reasonable improvement from modest investment there, compared to the benefit I would get from doing more 3/400km rides.

If I focused on crits and 10-mile TTs I'd be inclined to throw in more long rides.

If I was Steve Abraham maybe tabata would be the thing.

TOB

What?

Absolutely, there's a learning curve to long rides; even stuff like sleeping in ditches, etc, all needs practice. In 2016 I'd never bivvied wild, so I did a couple of all nighters to Wales where I had to do that, then ride an Audax the next day. Felt much more confident on TCR having done it.

Yes, I think so. I never looked at those figures before, but do a 400km and spend 18-20+ hours on the bike, burn 12,000 calories - takes a lot of pyramid intervals or even 100 mile TTs to burn as much.

Time On Bike

I was racing and PBing TTs before the 2016 TCR.

I did no other racing in 2017 - just the TransAm and TCR

This year I'm doing 25s trying to beat my PB and have done fuck all miles. I'm probably going to flip out, play catch up and dig myself into a hole.

If I go better or worse though it'd be hard to distinguish physical performance from mental. If I go better it could just be experience vs. if I go worse, maybe the lack of miles did make a difference or maybe something else went wrong. Dunno yet.

Sure, very hard to know how to get it right as there are no opportunities to do a dry run.
Lack of time this year makes it much easier for me to decide what to do - going long isn't an option.
But you are doing 800km in a couple of weekends' time so you won't be too underdone!

That's true. But do 18-20 hours and how many days do you need off to recover? So if you look at overall load over a unit time frame (1 week, 1 month). I'd think by riding frequently (every day), versus one big ride a week, you'd get more load.

Though, with a job, or young kid, obviously it's not possible to do 4-6h a day everyday.

But then again, TCR isn't one 20h ride a week, it's 9+ days of sustained long rides. So riding every day and decent rides, is good preparation. Building accumulated fatigue over multiple days.

I'd like to do more, but I can't. I can't bring a high enough overall load with me from Jan-June, in order to then do solid 25-30h weeks in june. So I have to settle for 20h hard weeks, or I'll end up in a hole.

Check out Christof Strasser on facebook, he posts about how he trains, it's similar to I. I don't have facebook or I'd post.

Note. It's all about consecutive load.

“The last day of training was the toughest; I was going all-out for 270km and scored a TSS (Traings Stress Score) of 450, after averaging TSS 300 the last days. Now I am completely exhausted, my legs are burning, and I will do some recovery days next week. I know that there are riders who do more hours and more miles, but I prefer going fast and not longer than 6 hours a day. Only in this 2-week-period I rode more than 6 hours a day."

https://www.facebook.com/RAAMraces/posts/10158614603940093

Yeah and that weekend worries me.

All this training chat is very helpful, probably explains why I'm feeling so fucked after 10 hours on the bike last Sunday.

Looking forward to reading all of your rider bios! Now to think of something funny to write.

Does that fucker have a job?

Also you left the best quote out...

“In general I advise riders not to think too much, nowadays a lot of people are afraid of too many things: wrong training, wrong nutrition, the internet permanently floods us with tips and "no-gos". Yes, it is important to have a training and nutrition plan, track your training and do analysis by the numbers. But the most important thing is to listen to your body!”

:-D

That's true. But do 18-20 hours and how many days do you need off to recover? So if you look at overall load over a unit time frame (1 week, 1 month). I'd think by riding frequently (every day), versus one big ride a week, you'd get more load.

Sure, but that is a different scenario. That sounds like what pros do. In my world, shorter rides every day is 1-2 hours, basically commuting with some extra loops and finding quieter roads (or towpaths) where I can do intervals, and topping up with 100km every other weekend.

Doing that, I get much lower TSS than audaxing.

What does Kristof do? He posts quite a bit about long rides.

Jesse and Sarah post about long rides a fair bit.

Chatting to Mike before Indypac last year he said he'd not done long rides (probably because winter) but had focused on strength by doing lots of hill repeats in high gears.

As you point out, everyone is different!

Check out Christof Strasser on facebook, he posts about how he trains, it's similar to I. I don't have facebook or I'd post.

Interesting

Indeed.

But my body quite likes being lazy. So you can't always trust it!