How to Build an Ultra-Endurance Cycling Plan

If you’re starting out in ultra-endurance cycling, there’s one thing you need to understand.

The secret to building a successful and lasting ultra-endurance cycling plan is consistency.

Consistency week upon week, month over month, and year over year.

Note I didn’t say volume was the secret.

Volume is, of course, important, but volume only counts if it’s done consistently and with purpose.

Without consistency or purpose, volume simply leads to fatigue, illness and injury.

So, the first question to ask yourself before you build an ultra-endurance cycling plan is:

“On a bad week, how many hours of training can I realistically commit to?”

What are you going to do with the time you’ve got?

Regardless of whether you’ve got six, twelve or twenty hours a week to train, making sure those hours are the right kinds of hours to move you forward is paramount.

Ultra-cycling requires you to sustain output over distance and time.

That means developing your ability to produce energy efficiently, maintain an appropriate pace or intensity for long periods and keep doing it when fatigue starts to build.

If you’re considering ultra-cycling, you’ve probably been riding for a while, so it’s likely your cardiorespiratory system is already reasonably well developed.

But how developed is it?

And, more importantly, what are the training intensities or zones that will give you the biggest return for the time you have available?

This is where understanding your training zones becomes useful.

You can get very precise information through laboratory testing, including measurements of VO₂max, lactate and fat oxidation. This data can help you establish appropriate training zones.

But you don’t have to start there.

A well-conducted functional threshold power test, combined with your training history, heart-rate data and an understanding of how you perform on the bike, can give you enough information to start building a training plan with purpose.

What about the mix of high intensity and volume?

There is no doubt that moving into ultra-cycling means a shift towards volume.

But that doesn’t mean abandoning intensity.

The key is making your intensity purposeful.

Rather than chasing big watts for the sake of it, the goal is to increase the amount of power you can sustain efficiently and for longer. That means consistent, purposeful interval work that challenges you without leaving you so fatigued that it compromises the rest of your training.

I tend to schedule my athletes’ most intense sessions, which are often the shortest, early in the week.

Essentially, I’m decreasing intensity while increasing duration as the week progresses, with one, if not two, rest days built into the schedule.

Of course, that all depends on the athlete, their training history and what their life allows.

Volume work may be at lower heart rates, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to recover from.

Long hours on the bike create their own training load, which is why managing your overall stress load across the week, and the month, becomes increasingly important as volume increases.

I also tend to schedule one de-load week each month, reducing the overall training load to make sure recovery keeps pace with the work being done.

The aim isn’t to see how much training you can survive.

It’s to find the amount of training you can consistently absorb, recover from and adapt to.

What about strength training?

The short answer – it’s vital.

Ultra-cycling requires you to be in the saddle for extended periods of time. This inevitably places load on your back, neck and shoulders.

It’s often the case that, for people moving into ultra-distances, their muscular infrastructure will fatigue and become the limiting factor before their cardiorespiratory system reaches its limits.

It’s possible, and expected, to ride through fatigue and sleep deprivation, but it’s not possible, and not wise, to ride through constant pain caused by muscular weakness.

‘Toughing it out’ is simply risking injury, and that isn’t a goal of the sport.

If time is a challenge, a 20–30-minute core strength programme done at home can be incredibly effective.

That’s exactly what I do.

What about nutrition?

I often say that distance will expose all the cracks in your ultra-cycling plan.

Nutrition, fuelling and proper recovery are things that can, and should, be addressed early in the process.

Your everyday nutrition should account for total energy intake, protein, quality carbohydrate and fibre, and healthy fats.

If body composition is a focus, total energy intake becomes more nuanced. You don’t want to sacrifice performance for weight loss; both can co-exist comfortably with a solid plan.

On-bike fuelling levels also need to be considered carefully. They will vary according to power output, duration and type of training, and your current ability to use different fuel sources.

Given the demands of the sport, many cyclists can benefit from developing their ability to use fat as a fuel source, particularly at lower intensities. This requires careful calibration of fuel levels for different types of training session rather than simply trying to ride with less fuel.

Recovery nutrition is often overlooked, but it shouldn’t be.

It’s worth remembering that training simply provides the load. Adaptation to that load happens during recovery, and nutrition plays a significant role in that process.

It’s smart to talk to an experienced sports nutritionist early in your ultra-training.

If you’re putting in the effort and have goals, you’ll want your nutrition and fuelling to help you progress as efficiently as possible.

What about equipment?

You already know what works for you over the distances you’ve been covering. But as distance increases, comfort becomes incredibly important.

You must be able to stay on the bike and continue to produce power.

That means looking after your contact points first – your feet, hands and bum. Think about the amount of road vibration you’re going to have to absorb over the hours of training and racing.

Your ultra position may also be a little different from a mainstream cycling position.

Aerodynamics are important, but they have to be balanced with comfort. There’s little benefit in being beautifully aerodynamic if you can’t maintain that position for hundreds of miles.

Talk to a bike fitter who has experience with ultra-cycling.

And pay particular attention to your feet. Hot feet are a common and very painful problem for ultra-cyclists, often centred around the ball of the foot. Shoe fit and cleat position are both worth investigating before you start putting in serious ultra mileage.

Gear choice also deserves some thought.

If you’re racing over hundreds of miles, you have to account for the impact of fatigue. The same hill at 75 miles feels totally different at 300 miles.

That means choosing gearing that allows you to keep turning the pedals efficiently when your legs are tired, rather than simply choosing the gearing that works for you when you’re fresh.

The further you go, the more the small decisions matter.

What about choosing supported or unsupported ultra-distance categories?

Most events offer both supported and unsupported categories these days.

The fundamental training principles remain the same, but your race preparation will differ depending on whether you have a team supporting you or you’re riding completely solo.

As an unsupported rider, your planning skills need to be top notch.

Where can you refuel, refill and rest?

What are you going to carry, and what can you access along the route?

You also need to think about the practical details that can become critical over a long race.

How reflective is your bike and clothing? How good are your lights? What happens if you’re riding through the night, in poor weather or on unfamiliar roads?

Most events will provide checklists and guidelines for their supported and unsupported categories.

Read them carefully.

The rules aren’t just there to tell you what you can and can’t do. They help you understand what you’re responsible for when the race gets long.

Rome wasn’t built in a day

Whether you’re choosing to participate in ultra-cycling as a supported or unsupported athlete, it’s a sport with events across a huge range of distances and durations.

You can ride a 6-, 12- or 24-hour time trial, or take on a 500- to 3,000-mile race.

But I go back to the key to it all – consistency.

You don’t have to go from zero to 3,000 miles in a year. In fact, you shouldn’t.

Ultra-cycling physiology takes time and consistency to build. So do the skills of ultra-racing, from pacing and fuelling to managing fatigue and sleep deprivation.

There is also a fair amount of experimentation.

What works for one rider may not work for you. And what works for you over 12 hours may not work over 24 hours, or 3,000 miles.

You have to learn your own physiology, your own strengths and weaknesses, and what allows you to keep moving forward when the race gets long.

That takes time.

Final thoughts

If you love wild places, tough terrain and testing yourself, ultra-cycling has a lot to offer.

You’ll find a whole community of people ready to welcome you to the start line and share the trials and tribulations of getting to the finish.

There are many pieces to the ultra-cycling puzzle.

Some of them you have to figure out for yourself. Many others can be passed along by an experienced coach.

Think of it as a shortcut to the long road ahead.

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If you’d like to talk about your own ultra-cycling goals, check out my services and drop me an email at joe@barrultra.com.