Seven steps to prepare for a multi-day sportive

It’s not all about the miles

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When training for big endurance events people often fall into the trap of concentrating purely on the endurance side of things, thinking ‘I need to be able to ride my bike for six hours for five days running’.

However, what you shouldn’t neglect is the quality and intensity of your training. Endurance as a principle is not timed-based – for example, you can sit on the sofa for five hours without becoming tired at all – but instead it is intensity-based. Doing something very easy for five is not that fatiguing, however riding on your limit for five hours most definitely is.

Concentrate on raising your Functional Threshold Power in the run-up to the event (find out how to do that here). This is important for the following reason: having a higher FTP means that any given wattage is a lower percentage of your newly increased FTP. If two riders are doing the same event and rider one has an FTP of 250w and rider two has an FTP of 200w, then the 180w required to get up a climb is going to feel an awful lot easier to rider one than rider two.

As a result, because rider one isn’t working as hard, they wont become as fatigued as rider two. Over multiple climbs on multiple days this effect is compounded. You may think that you can ride all the climbs at your own comfortable pace and you are probably right but if you find yourself in a group then there will be a certain wattage needed to remain in the group and get a lift to the next climb. The more comfortable you are at that given wattage, the better recovered you will hit the next climb.