Hey all, first time posting here so apologies if this has been asked before. Im going to be doing a 50 mile 5K of climbing gravel ride in a month (Nov. 2) and wanted to know which if any Zwift plans might work for that? I haven’t done a whole lot as far as Zwift training so I am unfamiliar with most of them. I will be getting outside once a week on weekends but weekdays I need to be home on the trainer.
Well any advice would be appreciated.
Happy pedaling all!
Jim
how long are the climbs? we talking 2-5 minutes or 20-30 minutes long? I would say that most the training plans aren’t great on Zwift, and with only a month to train, you are starting pretty late…
Oct 2nd? In a month? Looking at my calendar, am I observing time dilation?
If it’s Oct 2nd than no training will have much effect in that short time.
Oh not sure, not long as we have inclines but no mountains here. Yeah I hear ya, I might just stick to what I have been doing which is riding a lot on weekends.
Gotcha, I should have mentioned I ride a good amount now, I was really just looking for something to give me a little extra, not going from 0 at this time. Thanks for the reply!
Oct 2nd is 5 days away!
Do you mean Nov?
Assuming you are talking about November, one month realistically gives you 3 training weeks before you need to back off a bit, so I would call that tuning up and probably not adding significant training load. If you already feel fairly well prepared, and the climbs are short, you could consider adding some interval workouts that are sort of like the climb efforts you expect. The decision also depends on the nature of your current riding and what your weaknesses are in relation to the event. Like if your biggest weakness is bike handling then go outdoors for sure.
(I am not a coach)
To give event best shot, week before should be really easy, like zone 1 heart and power easy IMO. Even if you then do similar duration in final week, you should freshen up for the event.
At this late stage, specificity is king.
Do some longish rides with at least some intensity and dial in:
Nutrition
Hydration
Comfort
Bike fit
Course recon
Trying to get a fitness bump now is likely to do more harm than good. If you must, do 2 or 3 sweetspot workouts per week progressing time in zone for 2 or 3 weeks. Start with 3 × 10 at 90% of FTP and extend it out to 3 × 40 or similar. Add easy riding around it to the extent that you can recover. Then taper into your event and smash it.
With only 4 weeks to go, now is not the time for a training plan—I would dedicate 80% of your time to threshold/tempo work: plenty of climb portals with ample recovery in between, and once or twice ride the Pretzel. Forget all of the nonsense zone 1/zone 2. If you want to enjoy your ride, you better start suffering now lol
Thank all for the comments and suggestions everyone! And my apologies I did mean November 2nd… 
Lots of great info!!! Should be a great ride!
Given the time limitations I wouldn’t bother with too much extra training beyond your normal riding you do now. The extra training load/effort might tip you over the edge into injury which is the last thing you need. If anything, you might just be adding a bit more elevation and distance to your existing rides.
On other things:
Bike fit: Don’t change that at this late stage, it’s just inviting problems such as discomfort, saddle sores or even injury, especially if you are okay now with it. Changes to the fit often end up with you using leg muscles differently which could end up in pain for those muscles that are now being used more than they were before.
Nutrition: Don’t change anything from your existing standards - and particularly not any different gels you aren’t used to, they can be a recipe for stomach upsets.
Assuming your FTP is accurate, take your normal TSS from a similar intensity ride and then with some mathematics get a rough estimation of what it will be for your target event. Put that event in something like TrainingPeaks which will then let you work out the tapering needed from your existing normal riding.
The workouts on Zwift that I find best are things like 70.3 endurance and some of the longer 3x20min steady state workouts.
You can also do your own workouts with a simple ramped warmup then simple blocks of effort such as 3x10min, 4x10min, even 5x10min with 85-90%. If they feel fine then you can reduce the recovery time between each block. This is what I do when I’m preparing to ride on mountains overseas (because I have none in my own location).
If your climb is going to be 40min, then 4x10min is 40 minutes, approximately. It’s just a matter of the percentage of FTP that you use and the cadence. This I would do if you can’t do your outdoors riding.
But that’s just my thoughts, someone else with less fitness and less riding experience will probably dispute all of that.
Assuming you cycle a reasonable amount anyway, i.e I’m assuming you can ride most of the distance I’d suggest just doing a few of the climb portals - maybe set the trainer difficulty so they feel like climbs.
Note that 4 weeks really isn’t too short. A training plan for “first 100 mile ride” is about 8 weeks long of 3 or 4 rides a week. You can find these training plans with google on many cycling websites - can’t put links here. I see a few at 8 weeks, some have 12 weeks.
So, sure you might train for longer if you had the time, but assuming you’re really just looking to complete the distance and finish rather than win anything, you only need 8 weeks to do 100 mile ride and by the power of dividing by 2, 4 weeks must be enough for 50 miles.
First question is how far you can cycle now. You only really need to train to about 70% of the event distance in any case. So if you’ve ridden 70 miles you can do a century and if you can ride 35 miles you can do 50.
Assuming you started at riding week 1 for about an hour though, and you averaged about 15 miles an hour, well week 1 for you is 15 miles. And you’d add 30 minutes each week to the ‘long ride’ and obviously by week 4 your long ride is 2.5 hours and you’ve done over 70%. If you already ride for longer than an hour, well you’re not even starting at week 1.
Cycling a long way slowly is easy and the training is easy - you just cycle a shorter distance slowly and increase the distance each week. Make your other 2 rides proportionately shorter ones and, if you like, push a bit harder on one of those - maybe find some hills.
The only other question is the hills. If it’s very hilly and you haven’t done a lot of climbing that may well stymie your completion. As such I’d suggest you use zwift’s climbing portal feature with, as I said, trainer difficulty set so it feels like a climb. But you can do a long ride on it too.
Try to avoid tapering on your home trainer because you are targeting different muscle groups. This is especially crucial for gravel rides, where you face lateral forces that engage your core and require a different pedal technique. You have about a week to keep your training unchanged, but after that, I recommend reducing your training load by 40%-60% in the final 21 days leading up to the race, while still maintaining the intensity. The type of intensity and frequency will depend on your metabolic profile and fatigue resistance. If you are a glycolytic athlete, your intensity will be different from that of an endurance time trialist. Just keep in mind that the main goal of tapering is to eliminate accumulated fatigue without sacrificing your fitness.
Note: I am not a coach, I am a sports lab expert.