This year, I’m taking on the iconic Unbound 200—two hundred miles of gravel riding through the rolling hills of southeast Kansas. In this post, I’ll break down how I designed my training plan for the months ahead.
Whether you’re writing your own plan from scratch (try the free annual training plan template below), working with a coach, or following a pre-made program, understanding how to plan and structure your endurance training will help you get more from every session. I am targeting a gravel race early in the season and then gravel triathlon later in the season, but the principles here can translate directly to designing a training plan for triathlon, road cycling, mountain biking, or running.
Taking Stock: Start Where You Are
Before you jump into planning, take a step back and honestly assess where you’re starting from and where you want to go with these three questions:
- How much time before your race?
- What is your current fitness level?
- How much time do you have to train each week?
If you have low fitness today and only a short period of time before you want to race, that’s ok! Just set realistic expectations for the race distance you choose and your goal time. You might make a goal of just finishing the race. If you have lots of time to prepare, it might be realistic for you to set higher performance goals and to train for longer events.
Here’s a framework for evaluating your situation and the strategy that will most likely work for you:
Any fitness level + little time: Make sure the race demands are close to your current fitness levels and don’t overreach for an ultra-long distance race if you haven’t worked up to high volume training days (which needs to happen gradually to avoid injury). When you’ve aligned your choice of race to your current level of fitness, focus the rest of your preparation on race readiness. You’re not going to transform your aerobic capacity in eight weeks, but you can make meaningful improvements in your race execution (for example your nutrition plan, or improving a key bike skill), pacing strategy, and mental readiness.
Low fitness + lots of time: This is an opportunity to build a comprehensive plan and develop strong confidence. You have time to do this right, so take advantage of it.
High fitness + lots of time: Be strategic to avoid overtraining, injury, and burnout. If you’ve been training consistently for a long period of time, more isn’t always better. You’ll want to be intentional about the amount and type of training you do until race day. It may make sense to schedule in a transition period and “off-season” where you switch focus for a while, then get back to more serious training. The fitness will come back when you get back to focused training. It will likely come back even better than it was before, if you give yourself some rest and avoid injury from overtraining.
Ideally for a long distance endurance event, you would have 20 weeks to prepare for peak performance. It’s possible to race, and perform well, with less time but this planning guide is most useful if you have at least that amount of time.
Setting Goals to Drive Success
Before designing my training plan, I set goals for the season. Goals help provide focus and motivation. Without focus, it’s easy to get distracted by all the things I might want to accomplish which can lead to missing out on accomplishing what’s most important. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. When motivation wanes throughout the season and it gets tougher to get out of bed for early training sessions, well-defined goals help me get it done anyway. The three things I considered when I set this seasons goals are:
- Set goals that are authentic to you. Is the goal of high performance in this specific sport something that is genuinely meaningful to you? If it isn’t something you deeply value, it will become very difficult to remain committed throughout the season. If you’re here because you enjoy triathlon as a pastime and just want to stay healthy, that’s great. But maybe high performance goals aren’t appropriate for you. You can still set meaningful goals and achieve them—but focus instead on the aspect that give you purpose. If you truly want to achieve high performance in the sport – align that to a broader purpose. “I want to qualify for Kona so I can demonstrate to my kids that success is possible if you work diligently” is a powerful motivator.
- Set goals that are beyond reach, but only just. Goals that are too easy aren’t motivating. If your goal is just to finish a race but you are confident already that you can finish the race without much additional training – you likely won’t be all that motivated to train. If your goal is way beyond your reach, the mismatch between reality and expectations can be upsetting when you don’t achieve the goal.
Set outcome-oriented goals and process-oriented goals. Outcome-oriented goals are the main achievement you want to achieve in the season “I want to finish on the podium in my Ironman”. There’s a bit of this goal that is within your control and a lot that is totally out of your control. It’s still a good goal to set but it should be supported by process-oriented goals. Process-oriented goals are fully in your control. “I want to nail my race day nutrition plan during my ironman”.
Understanding Periodization: Base, Build, Peak, Race, and Recover
I organized my training plan by:
- Phases (made up of one or more mesocycles)
- Mesocycles (a 3 or 4 week period)
- Microcycles (a week)
- Individual sessions
There are five phases of my training plan: base, build, peak, race week, and recovery.
The base phase is where a lot of fitness can be gained through a high volume of easy aerobic endurance training. And, because my goal for later in the season is a long course triathlon, I’ll also mix in some easy running and swimming. The base phase is very long. I started conscientiously training for this race in September. So most of this period was loosely structured. I’ll get into the details of the base phase in my next post.
The build phase is where training becomes increasingly specific to my race. I will focus on two things: (i) gradually increase the duration of long endurance rides, and (ii) zone 3 (or threshold pace) efforts that gradually become longer, especially doing these as hills. My race demands a high zone 2 to low zone 3 effort for a long period of time. The principle of specificity means that when I start getting this close to race day, my training should start to look more and more like race day. This is where my longest single day sessions are planned.
The peak phase is where I start to taper off volume, allowing my body to shed much of the cumulative fatigue to come into race day feeling fresh. This looks like a two (or three) week period with a gradual reduction in volume and increased focus on race-like intensity. For my particular race, that intensity is a moderate zone 3, yours may be higher intensity for a shorter race). These sessions of race-like intensity will have a couple days of easy recovery efforts in between. The goal is a gradual reduction in volume, to limit the loss of fitness while still getting the benefit of improved freshness. I’ll aim for a 30-50% weekly reduction in volume off my highest volume week. The mix of intensity and extra rest should allow me to show up to race week in “peak” shape.
During race week, volume will be reduced even further. There will be a higher frequency of race-intensity intervals than in the peak phase, but each session will be of very short duration with only a handful of race-intensity efforts each.
Working backwards from race day, I scheduled out each phase as such:
- Race week: starts one week prior to race
- Peak: starts two or three weeks prior to taper period start date. Longer taper suggested for marathon or triathlon.
- Build: starts 8 weeks prior to peak phase start date. Divided into two mesocycles.
- Base: all my remaining time; divided into 5+ mesocycles
Recovery block:
After my race, I plan to take a short break to recover. I’ll take a handful of days completely off immediately following my race, enough for fatigue and soreness to subside, and then the rest of the time will be unstructured. This could be completing some short hikes, or lazy swimming. Whatever feels most enjoyable in the moment.
Building Monthly Training Blocks
Each mesocycle was organized into a four week period. During the first three weeks of the mesocycle, training volume and/or stress is gradually increased week over week. Then in the fourth week, training volume and stress is reduced significantly – roughly in half. This recovery week is where my body should make all the adaptations in response to the prior weeks of stress. In the later half of the recovery, I typically schedule an FTP test.
Decide if a three week or four week mesocycle is best for you. There are no hard and fast rules, but these general recommendations may help you decide:
In each mesocycle, I picked one or two things to focus on. For example, the first mesocycle of the build phase, my focus will be my weekend long endurance rides. So for that mesocycle, I will gradually step up the duration of those weekend rides for the first three weeks of the mesocycle. Another key workout I have planned in this phase is increasingly long threshold pace efforts. So if I start with 3×12 minute intervals, I will gradually increase that to 3×14 minute intervals over the first three weeks of the mesocycle.
I determined an average weekly training volume based on the amount of time I have available to train while also getting enough sleep and rest (8 hours of sleep per night), and keeping up with all other responsibilities. With an average weekly training volume in mind, I varied the volume in each week of my training plan to build steadily week over week through the end of the build phase. Intensity is higher in the late base period with slightly lower volume to offset the increased intensity. If you’re training for a shorter, higher intensity race, then your build period may be lower volume and higher intensity and the late base period may be higher volume and lower intensity. Given that the race I am training for is focused on much longer but lower intensity effort, I chose to reverse this periodization and have increasingly race-like workouts in the build phase.
There likely isn’t one answer to weekly volume that generates the best results with the amount of time you have available. It’s more important to focus on a plan that is manageable over the course of a long season, while also introducing enough training stress to produce continued physiological adaptations at your level of fitness. It’s also important to be flexible and use weekly volume as an estimate, not a rigid amount of training you must complete.
With the above elements in place, it was pretty easy to design a weekly schedule. I penciled in workouts that added up to the total target volume for each week. Consistency is important, so I planned training on six of the seven days and took one day completely off training each week to recover. The recovery day is usually planned for the day after my highest stress/volume session. I generally scheduled my weekly training to be one to two sessions per day (8 or 9 per week) early in the base 1 period and then move to one longer session per day as the season progresses. I scheduled higher intensity sessions, I scheduled them with 1 or 2 days of only aerobic training between them, to allow for recovery between these sessions.
Plan Your Own Training With the Free Template
The framework is set. Now comes the fun part: designing the actual workouts. Follow along as I break down how I’m planning sessions for each phase—starting with how I planned my base period.
Want to plan alongside me? Grab the free annual training plan template and start mapping your season: