seeking advice for most effective indoor training for ultra-distance cycling

[Iwan Barankay]

Hi,

What is the most efficient and effective way to train indoors for randonneuring?

Background: I live in Philadelphia, and all the trails are icy. I also tire of cycling when it is too cold, with some body parts turning blue or numb and others overheating (although heated socks and HotHands make a massive difference). So, I moved my training indoors. 

Goals for 2025: This year, I plan to ride several tough RMs abroad that feature substantial climbing in hot weather. I attempted some of them in the past and failed to complete them for various reasons, so this year, I want to do better at them. I considered losing weight, but I declined the offer. I am also really pressed for time.

Basic TrainerRoad: I have been using TrainerRoad for a few years now, especially in the winter. It's been a sweaty experience, for sure. There is a lot to like about it, as it allows you to design training plans around events. Following these plans, I have been able to raise or counteract the age-related decline in my FTP. I appreciate how the program has become so much better over the years at calibrating the effort levels that one feels challenged but can complete the workouts. The major limitation, however, is that TrainerRoad is not designed to create training plans specifically for randonneuring, with the nearest equivalent being Audax plans, which I guess refers to century rides but not  for 400+ distance events.

Questions for randos: The big question remains. What is the most time-efficient indoor training to prepare us for long hard hours of pedalling.

My latest modifications: I have tried to find research evidence on what the best indoor training is for ultra-distance, but the data is limited, with small samples and short follow-up. Usually, the endpoint is not whether participants were able to complete a hilly 1200. So I had to make up my own thoughts, which I want to share here and ask for your feedback.

More sweet spot: TrainerRoad and similar plans often emphasize over-under, threshold intervals, or VO2 Max sessions (98%-120% of FTP) on build weeks and then a lot of endurance sessions (55-75% of FTP) on recovery weeks. I wondered whether this distributions make sense. When I think about my randonneuring pace, it is higher than endurance, especially on climbs, but below threshold to avoid blowing up on long rides. So I replaced many of the sessions by sweetspot training at 75-85% of FTP to get more comfortable in that range. Does that makes sense?

The other thing is duration. I hypothesize that for me 90 minute sessions (at times fasted) are the most effective. One gets tired enough to train those metabolic systems that come into play deep in a long brevet but one does not get bored out of one's mind as is the case for a 2+h indoor sessions. 

Heat: There is growing evidence that training in the heat mimics some of the benefits of altitude training. Personally, my big Achilles heel is riding in the heat. Heat training is often done in a very hot environment, but again, I want to do the longer sessions as they better resemble the challenges of a brevet and I just can't survive high heat indoors beyond 45 minutes. So I simply don't use the fan and get plenty hot that way.

What do you think?

Does it make sense to emphasize Sweetspot training over threshold?

What are your experiences with heat training?

Iwan

12742

[Samuel Thompson]

Hey there Iwan.

I recently wrote an article on preparing for 1200ks in the latest version of the Randonneurs USA magazine and I run a coaching enterprise focusing solely on athletes who are interested in randonneuring and ultra-distance disciplines.

The vast majority of the athletes I coach incorporate some form of indoor training into their schedule and this can prove extremely effective, not just from a time-efficiency perspective when other commitments restrict training time midweek and/or the weather is less conducive to outdoor riding. The precise control that a trainer offers can also make certain workouts more effective on the trainer.

The fundamental training principle of specificity particularly springs to mind for key consideration when it comes to indoor training.

If your ultimate goal is to ride 1200k then no workouts performed on an indoor trainer are going to be truly ‘specific’. In this sense, I am more interested in the physiological adaptations triggered through the workouts and how they can then be beneficial for the longer rides outdoors. Periodization also plays a part in this - I take a ‘reverse’ approach with intensity emphasised in early stages, before moving towards more volume as the event approaches. The trainer is ideal for intensity, and working on your aerobic ‘ceiling’ which I find working at and around aerobic capacity (VO2 Max) can be effective.

You have rightly identified that generic training software such as TrainerRoad is not tailored for those riding Brevets, so will always have their limitations. Especially as they are overly focused on FTP, whereas we should be more interested in where your Aerobic Threshold sits (I explain this fully in the article). An individual approach will therefore always prove more productive, firstly identifying what your objectives are from the workouts and then ensuring these are effectively targeting those.

As for the longer rides, there are physiological adaptations, particularly benefiting your aerobic system, that you just cannot get from 90 minutes on the trainer. Trying to simulate this is thus less productive, so the focus should rather be on getting more bang for your buck - all whilst balancing the need to rest and recover between hard interval sessions.

Finally, heat adaptation is a critical consideration if you expect to experience very hot conditions during your event. Preparing indoors is likely to prove most effective for this. Slightly nuanced from my previous advice on specificity, when it comes to heat training the adaptation to heat and training stress must be separated. High temperatures put a lot of stress on the body and adaptations can be achieved (also in a more safe manner) without the need to also be doing intense and/or extensive duration workouts. There are indeed effective heat adaptation protocols which do not involve cycling at all - just spending increasing durations sitting in a sauna can help. So, just easy spinning in a hot environment will give you all the adaptations you need.

I hope this has been of help and I’m always happy to speak further with anyone who is interested in how specific coaching for randonneruing can help their enjoyment on the bike.

Samuel

sam...@acier.cc 

www.acier.cc

[Joshua Haley]

I can tell you what works for me given my lack of time to ride and most of the training at "Dad-o-clock", aka before 6am. 

I use TrainerRoad during the week more or less alternating blocks from the "Steady but Strong" and "Rolling Road Race" training blocks. I just trust the program to adapt to load and FTP changes.   I only do 3 1-hour interval sessions during the week that are HARD (every 4th week is the deload endurance week). Those 3 hours are as high value suck as I can go without burning out.  The program mimics my riding style (Pushing Sweet Spot and 1-2 minute jumps up for punchy hills). I've found both sweet spot and threshold help with steady-state effort and climbing, respectively.   If the weather is nice on Saturday, I'll do a local 100k if I don't have a brevet on the schedule. Otherwise, I do another 1-2 hours of Z2 work. Once a month I get at least a 200k in to keep the R12 streak going.

This is in addition to running twice a week & lifting weights twice a week.  I also have a relatively high amount of protein in my diet to try and speed up recovery.  I also keep to a low-carb diet while training (and sometimes do fasted sessions first thing) and then carbo load for brevets.  So, for about an hour a day, I've been able to keep in shape for the super long stuff (PBP, couple of 1200ks), where I'm pretty happy with my time, albeit I'm pretty wiped at the end.  The real key here is being smart.  I know I can hold my FTP for an hour, but riding smart means averaging at max 50-66% of my FTP.   I'm sure I could do quite a bit better if I could add a few hours of Zone 2 during the week, but I don't think reducing my interval training time in favor of Z2 would be very effective, given the low volume overall. 

My volume ramps up starting in March and usually ramps down in June for an SR series.  This usually works well to build until June, maintain, and then taper for long events in late July/August.  I'm 35, so I am relatively young for the sport and have a bit of a recovery bonus. 

Since moving from Florida, I've lost all heat adaptation and suffer.  In the summer months, I can run at noon outside and start to adapt, but going from Ohio to Florida in November for Crackerswamp was rough. So if someone has a good answer beyond wearing a trashbag while riding the trainer, I'm all ears. 

Josh

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[George Swain]

Hi Iwan,

I have absolutely zero helpful advice about training, indoors or otherwise. My approach is so idiosyncratic and inconsistent that it's a stretch to consider it "training" at all. I'll let others respond with helpful advice. On the subject of indoor riding, however, I am a bit of an evangelist. 

I was a late adopter of the smart trainer. Before the dawn of smart trainers, I had a classic Cyclops Fluid trainer I used for years for both intervals and to simulate very long rides. I did this with the help of the old Spinervals DVDs and would typically ride multiple 100Ks and even centuries indoors. I found this very helpful in laying a foundation of base miles during the icy months of a Northeast winter. The old Ultra Marathon Cycling Association had an indoor challenge which provided some additional motivation. 

During the pandemic, when I naively thought that the US might follow Europe in creating restrictions on where people could travel by car and bike, I picked up a simple Kurt Kinetic smart trainer and it has been a total game-changer. I sampled both Zwift and Rouvy (see my review several years ago in AR) and landed on Rouvy as a much more natural replacement for the type of training rides I might do outdoors. I'm not a gamer so the whiz-bang special effects of Zwift never appealed to me - great for social riding/racing, but aesthetically not my cup of tea. Rouvy (which just bought FullGaz by the way) is another story. I ride short intervals and follow their "workouts" a few times a week in the evenings and often ride 100K+ routes on the weekend, all while watching remarkably beautiful and often challenging landscapes unfold in front of me.  Using a large TV monitor, it actually feels remarkably like riding in the wild. Your mileage may vary, but it really feels like we're living in the Golden Age of winter training.

As I look back on all of the outdoor winter training I did in questionable conditions, I think I was confusing the training benefits from the pride associated with doing hard things. I think I was actually expending most of my energy to stay warm and upright.

Now if I can just get up enough courage to get out to ride the PA 200K on Saturday . . .

Enjoy!

George

[Fred Chagnon]

I'm not an expert or a coach -- just a randonneur who overthinks training. 

Training Indoors: Sweet spot training is indeed great. You're not riding in that zone when you're out on the brevet, but you're also riding all day long, which is totally different than your 45-60 minute training work. Sweet spot training is great because it conditions your body to raise your all day pace (by essentially raising your FTP). A rider with a higher FTP has a moderately faster all day pace than a rider with a lower FTP. The former's zone 2 is the latter's zone 3. So I train this way to continuously improve, or maintain a moderately all day pace (zone 2). And that involves pushing up the ceiling by working in zones 3, 4, 5. 

My weekly schedule includes two medium sessions (45 minutes), one longer session (60 - 120 minutes), and a short session (30 minutes). 

My training block is 8 weeks. 

* Week 1-2: 45 minute sessions include xone 3 work with xone 2 recovery, and the longer session is 90 - 120 minutes of zone 3/4 

* Week 3: 45 minute sessions include zone 4-5 (Sweet spot / threshold) with zone 2 recovery, and the longer session is 75 minutes of zone 3/2

* Week 4: 45 minute sessions include zone 5-7 (VO2Max) with zone 1 recovery, and the longer session is 60 minutes zone 3/2. 

Lather, rinse, repeat weeks 5-8.  I do an FTP test after 8 weeks and usually take a couple weeks off before starting again. 

You can imprint this on trainerroad, rouvvy, zwift, or whatever. I use Peloton. 

On heat conditioning, I have very little to recommend. I don't train for it. I just ride slower and drink more. ;)

On Wed, Jan 29, 2025 at 6:54 PM 'Iwan Barankay' via Randonneurs USA <randonn...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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[Fred Chagnon]

Important typo correction. 90 - 120 minutes of zone 3/2 (not zone 4). 

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[JinUk SHin]

Samuel, really enjoyed your article in American Randonneur.  I referenced it recently in a reddit post I was writing about someone's approach.

Iwan:

I've been coached for about a year now and have read a lot of the literature around this, so I'll give my very uninformed opinions/takes on this along with a GPT prompt I wrote that intakes a host of literature and acts as a cycling coach whenever i want analyze a paper.  I've added some of its output below along with actual links to docs I've provided it.  Anything generated by the GPT is bold.  Anything not-bold is my response directly.  

"TrainerRoad and similar plans often emphasize over-under, threshold intervals, or VO2 Max sessions (98%-120% of FTP) on build weeks and then a lot of endurance sessions (55-75% of FTP) on recovery weeks. I wondered whether this distribution makes sense. When I think about my randonneuring pace, it is higher than endurance, especially on climbs, but below threshold to avoid blowing up on long rides. So I replaced many of the sessions by Sweet Spot training at 75-85% of FTP to get more comfortable in that range. Does that make sense?"

• There's a great metaphor about training which is that you do specific work which is basically that training is like building a house.  You do Threshold/SST work to build out your foundation, you do Vo2max work to raise the roof.  If you eliminate any vo2max or you don't extend your TTE on Threshold/SST efforts, you're never going to truly progress.
  
  • Sweet Spot (SST) training (75-90% FTP) is effective for endurance gains, particularly for time-crunched cyclists. Studies show SST improves mitochondrial efficiency, lactate threshold, and fat oxidation in less time than traditional high-volume endurance work (Seiler, 2010. "What is Best Practice for Training Intensity and Duration Distribution in Endurance Athletes?").
  • However, completely eliminating threshold and VO2 max work is a mistake.
    • High-intensity efforts (VO2 max, 110-120% FTP) drive mitochondrial biogenesis and aerobic capacity (Yeo et al., 2010. "Acute Signalling Responses to Intense Endurance Training Commenced with Low or Normal Muscle Glycogen.").
    • Threshold work (95-100% FTP) improves lactate clearance, which is critical for long climbs and hard efforts in a brevet (Wadley et al., 2006. "Effect of Exercise Intensity and Hypoxia on Skeletal Muscle AMPK Signaling and Substrate Metabolism in Humans.").
  • • VO2 max and threshold work are still important for long rides (Wadley et al., 2006. "Effect of Exercise Intensity and Hypoxia on Skeletal Muscle AMPK Signaling and Substrate Metabolism in Humans.")
    • Even though brevet pace is below threshold, having a higher FTP will reduce relative effort at event pace (i.e., making 80% of FTP feel easier).
• "I hypothesize that for me, 90-minute sessions (at times fasted) are the most effective. One gets tired enough to train those metabolic systems that come into play deep in a long brevet but one does not get bored out of one's mind as is the case for a 2+h indoor sessions."
  

• If you only have 90 minutes, you only have 90 minutes.  But if you have more time, then you might as well try to get the 3 hour sessions because the benefits are pretty great.  I'll generally read a book, watch a movie, do work, or some combination of all 3.  Or i'll just enjoy my rides on zwift.
• Longer endurance rides (3-4+ hrs) are more effective for improving glycogen sparing, fat oxidation, and fatigue resistance (Holloszy, 1967. "Biochemical Adaptations in Muscle: Effects of Exercise on Mitochondrial Oxygen Uptake and Respiratory Enzyme Activity in Skeletal Muscle.").
• Shorter sessions (90 min) are useful for structured intervals (e.g., SST, VO2 max), but they don’t fully simulate ultra-endurance metabolic demands.
• In the past, I experimented with Fasted Training and I realized there was no point - its a sufferfest and the benefits are so minimal as to be neglible in my opinion.  It reduces your ability to recover (slows down muscle recovery), it can lead to chronic fatigue, and your rides just feel like crap.
  

  • Hawley & Burke, 2010. "Carbohydrate Availability and Training Adaptation."  actually goes into this a bit regarding training low carb vs. fasted where low-carb means being an induced state of low-carb vs. fasted.   GPT provided this on how to get to a low-carb state:

    1️⃣ Train Low (Deplete Glycogen Smartly)

    • Do a glycogen-depleting workout (SST, threshold, endurance) in the morning.
    • Limit carbohydrate intake before the next session but still consume protein & fat for recovery.
    • Do a second session in a low-glucose state, but NOT completely fasted.

    2️⃣ Use Overnight Carb Restriction

    • Do an endurance session in the evening with limited carbs afterward.
    • Train the next morning in a low-glucose state, but consume protein beforehand.
    • This enhances fat oxidation without completely compromising glycogen availability.

    3️⃣ Use Fasted Training Sparingly (1x per week MAX)

    • ONLY for Z2 endurance rides (not for intervals or long race simulations).
    • Keep it under 90 minutes to avoid excessive muscle breakdown.
    • Always consume protein post-ride to minimize muscle loss.

"There is growing evidence that training in the heat mimics some of the benefits of altitude training."

• Heat training increases plasma volume, improving cardiovascular efficiency and sweat response, but does not increase red blood cell production (EPO) like altitude training does (Racinais et al., 2015. "Heat Acclimation for Better Performance in Hot Conditions.").
• Altitude training stimulates erythropoiesis (EPO release), increasing oxygen-carrying capacity. Heat training does not do this.
• Some crossover effects exist (e.g., cardiovascular strain adaptation), but they are NOT equivalent.
• Heat training without a fan can improve heat adaptation and should be included in training (Pryor et al., 2019. "Application of Evidence-Based Recommendations for Heat Acclimation: Individual and Team Sport Perspectives.").
  
• Caution: Heat training increases cardiovascular strain and core temp quickly, so limit it to specific sessions (e.g., 1-2x per week, not every ride).
• I only do heat training during the summer and generally haven't done the full thing of wearing a poncho/rain suit.  I usually do z2, maybe an hour and a half if I'm specifically targeting heat training.

Hopefully that's helpful with the citations as you requested.