John discusses how to plan for a season of ultra-endurance events based on years of experience in helping people take part in events such as the Paris-Brest-Paris, London-Edinburgh-London, The Transcontinental Race, Marathon des Sables, Grand Raid de la Réunion and helping Jenny Graham become the fastest female to cycle round the world.
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Hello again the weather might be miserable outside but at this time of year we can spend a lot of time planning and it can be quite an exciting time and after Christmas the days start getting longer we’ve got more Daylight and we can sort of focus on on what’s Happening
We’ve got all these perhaps New Year’s resolutions or at least New Year’s plans and exciting events over the summer but how do you schedule those events so that you get the most out of yourself and you don’t end up exhausted and uh not enjoying yourself or stale or
Overtrained I find that two or three big events is in nor in a year and that’s pretty much the same whether they training towards a a fast short event or longer events like multi-day events or multi-day bike packing events two to three events a year is a nice level to
Work on what I mean by a big event is a big event relative to you so 100 kilometers might be a big event for one person whereas the Transcontinental race taking a couple of weeks of maybe 15 hours of of riding a day is a big event
For somebody else else well it’s a big event for everybody isn’t it but you see what I mean it’s what’s big for you what’s making that progression for you is what’s challenging you if you’ve got a couple events close together like certainly one person I’m working with he’s got he’s entered a thousand
Kilometer event and he’s entered the um All Points North race in the UK and the reason he’s done that is because he’s not sure if he’s going to get an entry for All Points North but if you want to do both events close together then you
Should treat them as one event so folks so that might be two 1,000 kilm events within a short space of time and obviously you’re not going to be able to recover completely between the two so you’s a train for both do one and the first one should be your priority event
Because you never know what’s going to happen in the second one so if you if you’ve got two events close together and your second event is the one you want to do the best in then you should really consider whether it’s sensible to do the first one because it’s going to
Compromise your performance in the second one hopefully that makes sense so once you’ve got your two to three big events hope hopefully they’re quite nicely spaced so might be one in March or April one in June July and one in September sort of time August September then put them into your calendar if
You’re training for London edra London in 2025 then it would be a good idea to this year do a super Randa Nur Series so that’s four events 200 300 400 and 600 km but if you’re able to do 600 km then it should be the case that you’re
Probably not having a lot of trouble with the 200 so you would count the 300 400 and 600 is your biggest events and and plan them and then the 200 you would expect to do as a stepping stone towards your your 300 or your 400 so you’ve got
Your big three events in the calendar you’re going to have to plan some recovery after those and you’re building up your training volume towards those events and you and you’re going to be working on your strengths and weaknesses and you build up to those and that’s not really the details of the
Training plan which we’ve talked about in previous videos so I won’t be covering that here and to be successful in your big event you need to learn certain things so you’ve got some sort of skills to develop and you’ve got some Fitness to develop is the distance of the event the
Duration the amount of time you’re going to have to be spending on your bike or on your feet the challenge for you or is it the speed are you limited by how fast you can go and that’s meaning that you can’t have enough breaks or you’re
Struggling to meet a time limit so there are certain things you’ve got to learn and certain things you’ve got to improve both physically and mentally and skills wise and the best way to work on those I find is to have some sort of practice event or smaller events that are still
Challenging where you learn from your mistakes and build Fitness and endurance As you move on to the next stepping stone so the next thing to do is put these stepping stone events into your calendar and it might be that you only want to put them in up to your first big
Event so that you can plan the next stage to your second big event after you’ve learned from the first phase of your training block or first phase of your year that’s one of the reasons I’m not a fan of a big plan a big overall detail plan I like to have an overall
Framework and then learn from each phase and improve the next phase so what I would do is have the have the big events in place in the calendar but then have the stepping stone practice type events up to the first big event learn from the big event learn your strengths and
Weaknesses from the big event what went well what didn’t go so well learn from your practice events as you’re going along as you’re going towards your first big event and then when you do your next phase of training you’ve got to recover spend more time recovering than you
Think you might need it’s always better to be on the safe side and then you can build up to your next event take the fitness from the step into an events the big event the recovery and you build up to be a bit stronger in the next event
And then same again for your final event don’t be too ambitious in your plans for this year or next year take each year as a step towards the next as you build your Fitness and do more and more adventurous and exciting things so for instance if you wanted to do London Ed
London in 2025 then you should really be aiming to do a super andur Series this year by this year I mean in 2024 and then you you’ve got the fitness to take into doing L and that is something that I found when I when I coached a number of people towards Paris
Press Paris the ones who struggled with PBP were uh were the ones who hadn’t managed to do a super R another year before so a long-term process building Fitness for these super long events so similarly if you’re training for a long bik packing event do some shorter Events
First so a good example of that is Jenny Graham like Jenny Graham rode around the world and brought around the world record self-supported but before she did that she’d done some shorter events and Jenny had built up with events starting with a a couple of days or a long one day ride
Then a couple of days and then longer and longer events until she got to that point that she could sustain a lot of riding day after day and that’s what took it to the long around the world event so it takes years to build up that endurance Fitness and you should start
Now if you want to do London Ed London in 2025 and also start thinking about the next PPP if that’s your next goal so what we found is doing a Grand rander Event a 1200 kilm event in what in your first year of long distance cycling is very diff difficult
To do it’s not impossible but it’s very difficult and similarly doing the 3-we bike packing event would be quite challenging in the first year of bike packing it’s better to start with a two-day event and build things up like a really good one actually if you live in
Europe is the around the Netherlands race which is about 1,000 kilometers fairly flat or pick your own and choose your own events and build up that way which is what I’m doing with my uh rander around the year uh project which you might like to see in the other
Stream of videos so hope that’s useful if you’ve got any questions get in touch make a comment and answer all the comments and uh I’ll see you in the next video bye