- Just because a Gran Fondo is short
doesn't mean it's not going to be a big challenge.
Coming up are our tips on how to prepare for one.
(upbeat music)
Let us take, as an example,
the Maratona dles Dolomites in the Alta Badia region,
because that's the one that we're doing later on this year.
Now, the short route there, is only 55km long,
but it incorporates four major climbs:
the Campolongo, the Pordoi, the Sella, and the Gardena,
for a lovely 9km descent back into the finishing Corvara.
- How long a route like that is gonna take you
very much depends on your fitness level,
and also, I'm afraid to say, your weight.
So, the very fittest and leanest riders
could be taking as little as two-and-a-quarter-hours.
However, it's perfectly excusable
to take up to six hours on a test like that.
- Exactly.
Now since you're watching this video,
we're going to assume that it's going to take you
in the region of four to five hours
to complete this short loop, and it is really important
to make a good guess as to exactly
how long it's going to take you,
because it's the duration that's far more important
than the distance when it comes to making
a specific training plan.
- Yeah, and then as well as the duration,
you also want to think about the type of riding involved.
So, again, getting back to the Maratona,
if it's gonna take you four hours,
probably three of those are gonna be spent climbing.
So, regardless of your choice of gear,
you can say, how fast do you go up them,
you wanna be factoring in, you'll be needing to ride
for prolonged periods of time, really hard.
And so those are the efforts you want to
be replicating in training.
(groovy music)
- What we always recommend doing,
is working backwards from the date of your goal.
So in a diary somewhere, write down what that date is,
and then figure out how many weeks and months you have
until the big day.
Then, also have a look at what you've been doing
on the bike over the past few weeks or months,
average that out and use that as your starting point.
- Yeah, the idea is to then gradually build
both the intensity and duration of you rides,
although, importantly, not at the same time,
until a point about 10 days out from your target event.
After that you're going to be freshening up
so you're ready for the big day.
Now, fundamentally, it is quite straightforward.
You want to stimulate your body through training
a little bit more week on week,
but it's important that you do it gradually,
because if you do too much too soon,
you could well end up injured and/or ill
and therefore, you end up going back to square one.
- Yeah. Now if you've got the luxury
of a powermeter on your bike,
there are some great training tools out there
which allow you to score how hard an individual ride was,
such as training peaks for example,
and that is a great way of monitoring
over weeks and months that you are stimulating your body
that bit more each week, but not overly much.
- Yeah, and if you don't have a powermeter do not worry.
It's very easy to keep a track firstly,
of the duration of your ride, so build up a weekly total,
and then keep a track of the intensity.
You can either record your heart rate,
or indeed just score each ride that you do out of 10.
So, add up how much time that you spend
in the saddle each week and then how hard the rides are.
(groovy music)
- As time goes on, you should start to feel
stronger and stronger on your bike
and also have the ability to ride further at a time as well.
It's normal to feel some level of fatigue,
but be careful to monitor it.
If, for example, you've taken a day or two pretty easy
or completely off the bike, and when you get back on,
you're still feeling a lot of pain in your legs
and general fatigue, it might be time
to kick back, take a further easy day or two
before you resume your training.
- Yeah, you've got to also
think about stresses from day-to-day life.
Now, I'm assuming you're not a professional cyclist,
we aren't anymore either, so we can't just focus
on our training.
There are other things in life
that get us stressed or tired,
whether it's work or family commitments.
And those can have a really big impact
on both the way you feel on the bike,
and how you recover off it.
- It's also important to not just think
about training your physical fitness.
You also want to carefully think
about what you're eating and drinking
when you're on the bike.
So, for an event of this duration,
you're going to need to eat and drink quite a lot
to make sure you don't die at the end.
So it's really important that you do this
in your training as well.
Get yourself used to regularly sipping from your bottle,
regularly dipping into your pocket
for something to eat, or a gel, etc.
And make sure that you're using the same stuff in training
that you're planning on using on the day.
- Yeah that's really important
because your body can actually train itself
to absorb quite high volumes of carbohydrate
that you're gonna need, so actually training
on what you use on the event day
is really gonna help that.
- With all that in mind then,
following a structured but moldable training plan
which gradually builds either the intensity or the volume,
as well as following a sensible nutritional strategy
on and off the bike, should see you more than ready
to tackle a short event, such as the Maratona,
or any Sportive that's of a similar duration.
- That's right.
Another thing that may well help you on your quest actually,
is to subscribe to GCN, it's completely free.
You can do it by clicking on the globe,
because we're gonna have loads more videos
that will help you in the coming weeks and months.
But we've also already got an absolute truckload
on the channel as well.
And two that we've cherry-picked for you now are
"When To Eat On the Bike," giving you some valuable tips,
and then also "How to Speed-Up Your Recovery."
That one's just down there.