Although cyclosportives are long-distance endurance events, training for them isn’t just a matter of riding long distances all the time, although a limited amount of long rides has its place. The most efficient way to train is to improve certain key capacities your body has to power a bike. And although these capacities might look as though they have little to do with riding a bike a long way, they are crucial and back each other up, to make you a better cyclist and well able to cope with the specific challenges of cyclosportives.
Key capacities
This is the maximum pace you can ride at for the following durations:
+ Ten to twenty seconds
+ Three to five minutes
+ One hour
+ Two hours
Not all of the above are as important as each other. You don’t need telling that your speed when riding for one hour is far more important than the speed you can ride at for 20 seconds. However, the latter does have a bearing on the former, as have all the other durations on each other.
The pace you can ride at for these durations is crucial because your body is using different physiological systems to produce the power necessary to do it, and these systems all require training because they have a positive role in making you a better cyclist. We’ll start looking at them from the shortest time upwards to appreciate better how they fit together.
Ten to twenty seconds
This represents the maximum power your body can produce going absolutely flat out, and as such probably looks as far removed from the demands of a 160km sportive as you can get, but it isn’t. By increasing the absolute power you can transmit to the pedals, you increase the efficiency of your cycling. In short this means you can put in more power for less fuel, a significant factor in long-distance riding. Also, done in a certain way, very short intervals are good at building core strength. You don’t need much training at this intensity, but it is still very important.
Three to five minutes
Riding as hard as you can at a constant pace for three to five minutes, where at the end of that period you can hardly ride any further, is a measure of something called your VO2 max. It’s the maximum amount of oxygen your body can process while exercising, and is a limiter on performance in endurance sports. Every individual has a pre-set genetic limit to the maximum amount of oxygen they can process while exercising, but up to that limit it is very trainable.
Again, like the 10- to 20-second intensity, you don’t have to train very often at your VO2 max (except if you decide to become very competitive once your experience builds, when you should do a little more). However, training that pushes your VO2 max towards its potential will increase your endurance and your pedalling efficiency. It also has a bearing on the pace you can ride at for one hour, and the overall average pace you ride at in a sportive.
One hour
Years ago exercise scientists discovered that there was an optimal pace cyclists can ride at where their bodies just about keep up with processing the fuel they need and removing the by-products of exercise. You can keep up this pace for about one hour before other factors come into play that tend to slow you down. But go any harder within that hour and you have to slow down to recover.
This pace has been given all sorts of fancy names, such as anaerobic threshold. But referring to it as a threshold can be misleading as it’s more a zone of transition. So we’ll call it ‘one-hour power’. You will dip in and out of this intensity a lot in cyclosportives, and improving your one-hour power has a direct bearing on your average speed. One-hour power is very trainable, and training it will also help increase your VO2 max and efficiency at the same time.
Two hours
A lot of very important changes occur in your body when you exercise at the intensity you can keep up for two hours. These changes are crucial when training for cyclosportives, not only because this is the intensity you will ride at for much of the event, but also because the changes have a direct effect on increasing your physical endurance and efficiency in a sportive-specific way. These rides, which we refer to as level 2 rides, will play a big part in your training and are a big part of your event.
The recipe
Although these durations are crucial, they don’t mean that you have to stick to them exactly in training. They are simply the physical capacities you need to train to take part in and improve at cyclosportives. They are the ingredients of a cake if you like, and you chop them up into smaller units of time, adding them to the mix in different proportions.
For example, riding for one minute at your three-to-five-minute pace will improve it. And you can improve your one-hour power by exercising for periods of 20 minutes a few notches under it, and for four to five minutes a few notches over it, for example. These periods of exercise are called intervals, and interval training will form a crucial part of your regime.
But how do you know when you are exercising at these different capacities? You need a measure, and the one most often used in endurance exercise today is exercise intensity expressed in terms of levels or zones.
Different authorities suggest differing numbers of levels or zones, but to keep things simple we’ve chosen five. You also need something to provide feedback as to whether you are exercising at the prescribed level. You can assess this by how it feels, or use a measure such as a heart-rate monitor, because the levels can be expressed in terms of a percentage of maximum heart rate. To ascertain your maximum heart rate you can either subtract your age from 220, which for a 50 year old gives a maximum heart rate of 170 beats per minute. Or you can perform a maximum heart-rate test.
You can make the determination and zoning of training intensity levels very complicated and very precise, and that degree of application is required for many aspects of cycling. However, the primary challenge of cyclosportives is riding long distances, so it doesn’t pay to get bogged down in the minutiae of intensity levels. The changes you need to bring about in your body are quite straightforward.
There is one tweak worth noting, though, one little sub-division of the training level table, which applies to level 2 and 3 and is very important in training for sportives. There is a small window of transition between upper level 2 and lower level 3 that, if you train in it, gives big returns for time invested. It’s so effective that some people call it the ‘sweet spot’ of training, but we’ll refer to it as ‘upper tempo’ because that gives more of a feel for the pace involved. It’s a pace you have to concentrate on to maintain, but it doesn’t feel an all-out effort like full-on level 3 does. Riding at this level is important because it pushes up the pace you can ride at level 3, or your one-hour power, from below, but does so while not being as demanding as riding at level 3. You recover quicker and can do more total work riding at upper tempo than at level 3.
You need to be well rested to do this. Design a 5km route that ideally ends on the top of a hill. Put on your heart-rate monitor and warm up by riding for at least 20 minutes, pushing progressively harder all the time. Then do three 15-second flat-out sprints, with two minutes of easy pedalling in a low gear between each one. This warm-up should take you to the start of your 5km route. Start the route, riding at a pace that’s as hard as you can just keep up for the whole 5km. Continue this effort on the hill, then for the last 200m of it go as fast as you can. Your maximum heart rate is the figure you see at the top of the hill.
+ The five exercise intensity levels
|
Level |
Perceived effort |
Percentage of maximum heart rate |
|
1 |
Easy, just turning the pedals over, can speak easily |
←65% |
|
2 |
From being able to speak freely but still feeling like you are making a sound effort, to only being able to speak in sentences before catching a breath. A good solid riding pace |
66–80% |
|
3 |
Difficult to speak, the pace you could keep up for 20–30 min and, at a push, for 1 hr, but only just |
81–90% |
|
4 |
Can’t speak at all, the pace you could keep up for 3–5 min before slowing |
91% plus |
|
5 |
Flat out for 20 sec |
Not applicable |
Training diary
This is crucial. You can do it any way you want, but somewhere and somehow you must keep a record of all the training you do. Record your weight each day or so, record how much sleep you have had each day, your waking pulse rate and how you feel. In particular note down any illnesses you get.
Your diary will present a picture of how you react to training. For example, if you have a good event or feel particularly strong in a training session, look back at the training you did over the previous three weeks and that will be a good mix of sessions for you.
Recording your waking pulse shows how well you recover from training. If it is normally 60 and a reading of 65 pops up one morning, it means you either haven’t recovered from the training you’ve done or you might be fighting off a cold or an infection. Whatever, it’s the sign either to miss that day’s training or to have an easy day.
Your diary will also show how you react to new training sessions, and to increasing the duration or intensity of your training. Over the years it will become your personal training manual, showing what training does and doesn’t work for you.
First-timer’s training plan
To do your first cyclosportive, say an 80km event, you now know enough theory to begin training. All you need is a training plan to act as a map to help you get there.
Plans are good. Especially if you don’t have any experience of training. They tell you what to do on certain days of each week, but they don’t suit everyone’s circumstances. So, although the plans in this book can act as a guide, giving you the feel for the doses of training you need to include during each week, try to draw up your own plans once you gain some experience. This is especially true if your work patterns don’t fit a five-days-a-week-weekends-off pattern.
Use your training diary to work out which training suits you. Add in what weaknesses and strengths you discovered in your first sportives. Use training sessions to target weaknesses and strengths. After all, you know where or in what part of your cyclosportive events you have struggled, so you need to tailor your training to address those problems.
Varied terrain
You also need a variety of roads to use with your training plan. Flat roads, hilly and rolling roads should feature in your training so you are ready for any terrain. If you don’t have all these where you live, be creative. For example, you can simulate a rolling road on a flat one by alternating from a gear ratio that gives your normal pedalling rate to a higher one where you are labouring a bit.
If you live in a hilly area you could re-use the same piece of flat road for a flat session, or do flat rides on a turbo trainer. I live in a very hilly area, so I use an old railway line that has been converted to cycle use for my flat rides.
Conversely if it’s dead flat where you live and your turbo trainer has a resistance mechanism, you can simulate hills on that. Just turn up the resistance and raise the front of your bike up on a block of wood to simulate riding uphill. Riding off road on a mountain bike is another way of simulating hills, because the loose surfaces are harder to pedal on or because there are often short, sharp hills and banks in woods and on heathland. Always be adaptable and imaginative with your training.
Hill repeats_
You’ll need to know how to do this training session for the 80km sportive plan.
+ Pick a steep hill that takes 1–2 minutes to climb.
+ Warm up for 15–20 minutes.
+ Ride up the hill as hard as you can, ensuring that you continue your effort over the summit.
+ Freewheel down the hill, the same side as you’ve just climbed or the other.
+ Repeat the climb 4 times to start with then add one extra climb each time you do the session, to a maximum of 10 climbs.
+ After that focus on increasing the speed at which you climb the hill by recording your times. Go for beating your fastest time, and your fastest average for the session. This ensures progressive improvement.
+ Practising with a mountain bike can be beneficial
Level 2 riding is a crucial part of training for cyclosportives, especially when you start out. At this level you increase the size of your heart and the efficiency with which it delivers blood, and with it oxygen and fuel, to your muscles. Level 2 also increases the efficiency of chemical reactions that take place within your muscles. This level represents a large bandwidth of effort: 66–81 per cent of your maximum heart rate, or from being able to speak freely to having to concentrate on your breathing if you go on feel. When you do level 2 rides try to push up and down through the whole of this intensity range.
Understanding the training plan
The training plans we’ve drawn up are all 12 weeks long, which is a good length of time for targeting a single event. You will find it easier to focus on training for a specific event over this length of time, while it is enough to allow significant gains in fitness. So choose an event you want to take part in then count back 12 weeks and begin the plan. Use a similar training period when planning future events, and as you become more experienced you can use other cyclosportives within each 12-week training period as key training sessions.
The plan builds in three phases of three weeks, each phase a little more demanding than the last. Each week is also slightly harder than the one before. Every fourth week between the phases is an easier week to ensure recovery and it allows your body to adapt to the progressive demands you’ve placed on it. This three-weeks-hard, one-easy-cycle of training is the best way to ensure your fitness progresses, which it does by being pushed along with slightly harder sessions, then being allowed some recovery to make adaptations.
The following table isn’t a training plan for beginners. You need to do some general riding before starting this plan and be able to complete three sessions of one hour at a good pace, plus a slower one of two hours in a week.
Cycling fact_
To improve any aspect of your fitness your training must push that aspect a little harder than your body is used to. This initiates a specific genetic response that tells your body to become stronger in that aspect. But remember, the training is just the stimulus. The response and strengthening only occur when you rest, and if you supply your body with the right nutritional building blocks for it to use.
First long event
While 80km events are a good place to start, most cyclosportives are 100km or over, and the true classics are 160km or more. To prepare for a longer sportive you could just take the 80km plan and double it, but that isn’t the most time efficient way, neither will it help you achieve your full potential.
Training for a 160km sportive requires a little bending of the fitness curve that simply riding more kilometres won’t achieve. It involves training more precisely, and in a way that you get more for less. To do that there are a few short-cut training sessions that you should include. One of them is a way of tricking your body into thinking it’s trained for longer, and therefore adapting accordingly. The other works on your VO2 max.
+ Training plan for an 80km cyclosportive
On-off switches
This can really only be done on a turbo trainer, but it is very effective at improving your efficiency and core strength. Two things that are crucial in long-distance cycling. Efficiency means you go faster, so further, on less fuel. Core strength also adds to efficiency because it allows you to put more power into the pedals, and it means that you won’t tire, or even worse suffer from backache, which can prevent you from completing an event.
Warm up with 10 minutes of steady riding:
+ Stay firmly seated in the saddle, don’t move your upper body, and pedal hard for 10 seconds.
+ Pedal easy for 20 seconds.
+ Repeat the 10 seconds hard and 20 seconds easy for 15 minutes.
+ Pedal easy for 5 minutes.
+ Do another 15 minutes, alternating 10 seconds hard and 20 seconds easy.
Intensity: Really commit to the 10 seconds hard, but don’t overdo the first 5 minutes of each 15-minute section of this training session.
Long rides
These are the lynchpin of cyclosportive success. You don’t have to do all that many, but they must be done, and there is an art to doing them. First though, how far and how many? For a 160km sportive your longest rides need to be around four hours. You will be able to complete a 160km sportive without doing them, so long as you have done some structured and progressive training, but long rides bring another dimension to your performance and experience on the day.
As for how many long rides you should do, two or three in a 12-week build-up to a 160km event is ideal. In addition, some of their effects can be duplicated in the rest of your training, by upping the amount of riding you do at level 2 each week, for example. Another way to simulate long rides is to do two shorter ones in a day, but upping the tempo. For example, one ride of 90 minutes and a second hour-long one later in the same day, with long stretches of each ridden at upper tempo pace simulates many of the effects of a four-hour ride.
You might find that double days suit you better, especially if you like to train most days. Because the thing with long rides is that you need to be well rested going into one, and you need ample time to recover from them. Back off the duration of your sessions with three days to go, take a day off training two days before (that’s no training at all!), and do one hour of easy pedalling the day before is good preparation for a long ride. Forty minutes easy on the day after, a rest day then a longer easy session should follow. After that you should be able to get back into normal training.
The other thing about long rides is that to be truly effective it’s no good doing them at a dawdling pace. Begin with 15 minutes of level 1 riding, but after that start pushing into the lower part of level 2 and higher on the hills. Drop back to level 1 for stretches of 5–10 minutes every half hour. This simulates what will happen when you ride in a group in the actual event. Take enough food and drink with you.
VO2 max intervals_
These can be done on the road or a turbo trainer. If you use a turbo, limit the interval effort to three minutes. If on the road the intervals can be three, four or five minutes long. Stick to three minutes for uphill VO2 max intervals, four or five if done on the flat.
+ Warm up for 15–20 minutes.
+ Ride hard for 3–5 minutes. These should be full-on efforts. For example, if you pick three minutes you should be really looking forward to the end of it by two. For five minutes the same should happen after four.
+ Ride easy for the same duration as the interval you have just done.
+ Repeat the full-on effort interval.
+ Ride easy as above.
Start with two full-on intervals and if you cope well with that increase by one interval each subsequent time you do this session, up to a maximum of six repeats of three minutes, five of four minutes and four of five minutes. Don’t focus on the quantity of these intervals, only the quality of them.
+ Training plan for a 160km cyclosportive
Supplementary training
There are some things you should do off your bike that can give you huge gains in performance on it. They are supplementary training that supports your cycling. They aren’t alternatives to cycling, like the things we’ll talk about that you can do when the weather is too bad to ride.
The most important supplementary training exercises are core strength and stretching ones, although strength training by using weights or your own body weight is also important and well worth doing. Strength training becomes crucial as you grow older. We’ve included a strength-training programme in chapter 7 (Going Further).
Case history_
Hannah Reynolds, who finished 10th in the 2010 La Marmotte in a time 1 hour and 20 minutes better than her previous best says: ‘My training was very focused for La Marmotte, which is one reason why I had a good result, but my longest ride was only four hours. The event is much longer, but you are going downhill for a lot of it, so you don’t need to ride for the same number of hours. What I did do, though, was go quite hard on my long rides. I did 20-minute blocks at upper tempo pace, separated by bits of easier riding.’
Core strengthening
If your core isn’t strong, when your legs push down on the pedals they also lift your body slightly, which absorbs some of their energy. A strong core resists this tendency to lift by pulling your body down into the saddle, giving your legs a solid platform to push against. With a strong core all of your leg power goes into pushing the pedals. Imagine being seated on the floor with your back against something and pushing a heavy object away from you with your feet. If the object behind you is rock solid you will be able to give a much stronger push than if it’s flimsy and moves. Your core muscles are extra important when climbing.
Your core muscles also provide a link between your arms and shoulders, and your legs. You use your upper body a lot when you climb. Well-conditioned, strong core muscles provide a strong link between your legs and arms so their power is all transferred to the pedals.
Strong core muscles help to preserve optimal spine alignment. If there is one injury problem that cyclists tend to suffer from it is lower-back pain. This is because some of the prime movers in cycling are two large muscles located at the base of your back. Problems arise because these muscles are developed by cycling, so they become stronger compared to other core muscles and can pull your spine out of line, causing pain. Strengthening the rest of your core muscles counteracts this pulling, keeping your spine in its natural line.
To understand core muscles and how they work, think of your body from below your ribs downwards to the boniest part of your hips. Basically your core muscles form a multi-layered girdle around this part of your body, which is capable of moving your body in any direction: twisting, bending or a combination of both.
Core muscles do this because they are orientated in many different directions, so to strengthen them you must exercise them in many different directions. The best way to do this is by using a Swiss ball. These are sold online or in sports shops. It’s important to get the correct one for your height, but advice is readily available on this.
The following is a core-strengthening routine using a combination of Swiss ball and free exercises. It takes 15 minutes at the most, and should be performed two or three times a week. You can do it at any time of the day. Follow the manufacturer’s recommendations regarding inflating the ball. If you have difficulty performing the exercises let a little air out of the ball, as this makes them slightly easier. When you get stronger and better at the exercises you can inflate the ball again. And remember, these exercises are only effective if you maintain proper form while doing them; never sacrifice form to do another repetition. They must all be done slowly and with control. To make the exercises progressive just add on repetitions as you get stronger.
The reason why Swiss balls are so effective is because you cannot isolate just one core muscle group when exercising on them. For example, the exercises we’ve given you each focus on a particular core group, but the other core groups all work to preserve stability on the ball while you do each exercise. That’s why one of the things to focus on for each exercise should be keeping the ball still.
You also need an exercise mat, or something similar, to perform some of the moves.
