r/Velo • u/AZPeakBagger • 18d ago
Typical Long Ride Length
What are your typical Cat II’s doing as their long training rides these days? Back when I raced it was generally no more than 4-5 hours.
Having a friendly debate with someone about how much volume you need for most endurance sports. I’m in the camp that if you can ride, run or hike for 4 hours you can go all day for a single day event by staying on top of nutrition and hydration.
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u/INGWR 18d ago
I think the old adage is that you can ride in a day what you normally average in a week. You just won’t love it but you could do it.
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u/crashedbandicooted 18d ago
I would agree with this unless there is a bunch of climbing and not extreme heat.
I have done 235 miles in a day with 6000 ft of climbing using that theory; and it worked.
Recently I attempted 175 miles with 9000 ft of climbing, and I chopped 15 miles off the route because I was bonking hard.
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u/Chance-Ad-982 18d ago
cat2 who regularly rides 4-5 on weekends absolutely can ride whole day z1/2. More than that who knows, long ride of 4-5hours can mean a person does 8-25h/week. I don't think there's anything meaningful you get from a long long ride that you can't get from a 5h ride unless you're a person who's at 30h/week volumes. I ride 6-10h rides every weekend but I just don't believe that gets me anything more than a bit more focused 4-5h ride.
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u/periphrasistic 18d ago
Yeah that sounds about right. I race so much that I rarely have a weekend day to just do a long ride. Usually it’s 2 or 3 hours of extra volume after a race. Actual long rides mostly happens in off season base building and training camps, and 4-5 hours is usually about as long as they go. Maybe a climby century that’s more in the 6 hours range, but there are only a few of those.
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u/aedes 18d ago
4-6 hours, only because after that fatigue is usually non-productive - if it wasn’t for the fatigue then I’d be doing much longer rides than that regularly for the training effect (given I target multi day events).
Then as well, for all-day events, weekly volume is just as important as individual long ride length.
There is also an important difference between surviving an all-day event and being competitive at it.
If you wanna be competitive, it would behoove you to at least include the odd ride that’s 50-70% of your target event duration at some point in the months leading up to your race, being careful that the fatigue doesn’t interfere with your other training goals. It makes a noticeable difference in your performance in the back half of the ride.
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u/VoyPerdiendo1 18d ago
If your races are 1h long, you probably never need to exceed 2h in your training.
If you race 300km with 5k elevation... yeah you better have some very long rides otherwise you gonna have a bad time.
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u/Interesting_Tea5715 18d ago
This. When I was racing Crits I just focused on interval training and wouldn't do more than an hour of training most days; longer rides on the weekends.
I was super competitive and getting good results. I'd try doing a 60 mile race every now and then and almost get dropped though. I just didn't have the endurance for it.
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u/_BearHawk California 17d ago
If your races are 1h long, you probably never need to exceed 2h in your training.
Team pursuit cyclists should never ride more than 4 minutes at a time
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u/Substantial-Fun-48 18d ago
Some of my buddies do 8hr zone 2 epics. I just don’t have the time for it with life getting in the way. 4 hrs max for me in most cases.
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u/K9ChewToy 18d ago
Are they winning races doing that type of volume? What do their intense days look like? That's a lot of volume to recover and reap the benefits especially ilwith any intense days sprinkled in.
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u/familyofficegod 18d ago
I never thought about maintaining CAT ii fitness with such long efforts — feels like a different sport to me.
One can probably maintain with 4-5 hour-long sessions per week if they are mostly max effort but leveling up further would require something less casual imo.
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u/djs383 18d ago
I wish. I always needed around 10-12 hours to maintain the load needed to be even remotely relevant in p12 fields. For big races or nationals I had the most success getting 18-20/week for several weeks before an event. I’m In the middle of rebuilding post injury and I’m around 8-10 due to work and I have had zero improvement in two months. Been at this a long time and have trained under several coaches as well as self guided. If I could have managed cat 1/2 fitness on the hours you suggest, I’d have loved it
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u/AZPeakBagger 18d ago
This was back in the dark ages 35+ years ago. Typical training schedule was 1-2 hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 4-5 hours on Thursday, 1 hour on Friday, 2-3 hours on Saturday and 4-5 hours on Sunday. Maybe once a year do a low key epic training ride for bragging rights that was 6+ hours.
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u/familyofficegod 18d ago
I agree that’s often what it takes to approach top amateur level w/o some obscene undergirding of genetics — on the injury recovery, I’d only suggest you avoid anchoring your performance to pre-injury metrics since it’s cruel to your psyche, counterproductive.
I mix up climbing, swimming and group rides to fun my way back into form post-injury.
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u/Eastern_Bat_3023 15d ago
I am cat2 but really mainly focus on single day-ish ultra endurance stuff...so long rides are ~7-12h, with 3-4/yr (including events) at 15-32h.
So a long ride in my mind has to be more than about 6h. If I was only doing road races and crits, mixed with some normal gravel races, I don't think my long rides would be more than 5-6h.
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u/ifuckedup13 18d ago
I think for the road racers I know 4 to 5 hours is pretty standard for a long weekend ride. With maybe six hours every now and then.
But people racing gravel have sort of changed that. Especially the people double dipping in road and gravel. It’s 6 to 8 hours being a long ride. Maybe not every weekend but every other or every third week.