There’s one particular question cyclists worry more about since the invention of endurance cycling events than things like their nutrition or HIT sessions, for example. This question is “How long should my longest ride be?”
And with the rapidly growing popularity of ultra-endurance events like the Unbound 200 Gravel, for example, that question raises even more worries. The first problem with this question, however, is that cyclists usually don’t ask themselves why they need a long ride in the first place. Let alone a super-long ride.
Yet, there’s some conventional wisdom floating among cyclists that you might’ve come across as well already. Number 1 the extra-long ride is a single determinant for the event itself. Number 2 the longest ride builds some magic fitness that other training is unable to produce. And number 3, it’s universal for everyone.
The truth, though, looks a little different: There’s no magic ride time that will qualify you for any specific cycling event. Take Ian Boswell for example. He won the 2021 Unbound 200 Gravel edition in a time of 10h21m beating Laurens Ten Dam in a two up sprint. And he did that with his longest ride before the event only lasting 5h33m 4 weeks out from Unbound.
Now, you can argue that Boswell is a former WorldTour pro and highly gifted individual, and for sure he is, but he still had to challenge at least 100 other highly gifted individuals and still came out as the winner.
This isn’t a claim to say very long rides are overrated as they’re not. I mean, in general, long rides build durability, aerobic capacity, reinforce your muscle fiber framework, and increase fat oxidation. On top of that, they offer a dry run for other important factors for your cycling performance like your race day nutrition.
But you know what? All these areas improve through all your training, not just the extra long rides. To be honest, you shouldn’t even do a long ride for some narrow, specific physiological adaptations. Physiology simply doesn’t work that way. You accomplish those adaptations through the entirety of your training. They don’t result from a few extra long rides. Otherwise, all you had to do is long rides on the weekend, skipp training during the work week and still line up for Unbound 200 set and ready. But this isn’t reality.
So how do you find out when long is long enough? Let’s talk about that now.
We Are Just a Bit Too Much in Love With Numbers (Sometimes)
From my experience, cyclists put too much emphasis on their single longest ride. They only see the duration and distance in that particular moment without the bigger picture. This focus on single rides or weeks is rooted in the way our brains work. Our brain has a tendency to prioritize the present moment. Therefore, we overestimate the importance of our single-longest ride and underestimate our total training time before entering a big event like Unbound 200, for example.
So if you plan to complete the Unbound 200 Gravel course in 13-14 hours, you might think you need at least a 10 hour long ride in advance of it. But from a physiological standpoint that long ride matters very little. On the one hand, that’s partly due to the little amount of training you can do in one day and on the other hand, the way your body adapts to training stress. Adaptation is a process that takes weeks, months, and years to happen.
Even a really big day is just a tiny fraction of your whole training preparation.
Let’s continue with the Unbound example. You did an unstructured offseason in November and December (which will also contribute to your Unbound performance already) and you started serious training in January. With 5 months of prep and a weekly average training volume of 10 hours you would enter Unbound with 200 hours of training in the bank. As a result, your 10-hour ride would only represent 5% of your serious preparation or 10/200ths.
Now, 5% might sound like a lot but consider that you would do a 5 hour ride or so that day anyway. This brings down the 10-hour ride to only 2.5% of total contribution. However, the relative fatigue you would accumulate with a 10 hour compared to a 5 hour ride might upset next week’s training, resulting in lower overall training and less quality. Simply because you need a couple more days to recover from a really big day.
Numbers are great but they shouldn’t come at the cost of the bigger picture.
Race Fitness is a Process Not an Event
As I’ve said already: From a physiological standpoint your longest long ride matters little. Instead, if you’ve done everything right, you would enter your dream event with hundreds of hours of training. Whether your longest ride differs in a couple hours won’t make a difference.
Instead of setting an arbitrary goal of a long-ride time, you should look at your current fitness and align your long rides with where you are right now.
Getting Race Ready is Like Building a Bridge
Enough bashing about the over-fixation on your longest ride. Let’s look at the benefits of doing long rides and a way to figure out the sweet spot of your long ride length.
Essentially, training is like building a bridge. On one side, you have your current fitness, aerobic capacity, and durability to ride hard for a very long time without fatigue. On the other side, is your goal event with all its physical and mental challenges.
Your job during training is to get from where you are right now to where you need to be on race day. Basically, building a bridge that will get you from A to B. And what’s the most important part of a bridge? Its foundations. Your current foundation will determine how much load you can handle. On the other hand, building confidence and race day fueling practice, for example, are the final touches of your bridge.
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Why You Need Long Rides
As already mentioned, long rides achieve specific adaptations that are harder to get with shorter or more intense rides. On the one hand, long rides work primarily your type 1 muscle fibers for a very long time, which are the most aerobic fibers that drive lactate clearance capacity, fatigue resistance, and fat oxidation. On the other hand, long rides fatigue these exact fibers and pass work over to less efficient type 2a fibers that by training adaptation work more like type 1 fibers.
This is because strain increases with time. I think I don’t need to tell you that the longer you ride, the more stress each additional minute of time contains. 60 minutes at the end of a 4 hour ride is far more stressful than 60 minutes when you are fresh.
Similar to block periodisation, where training load is concentrated in a short time with back-to-back interval sessions, a long ride is a concentrated load. So spending that extra time you have for a long ride will be more beneficial than distributing that extra time more evenly throughout the week. Drawing on the Unbound 200 example, if you train 10 hours weekly you could do 2 hours daily for 5 days. But on the other hand, you could increase the training load on certain days by training 3×1 hours during work week, and then completing a 3 and 4 hour ride on the weekend. I think the latter distribution would give you a higher return for your invested time.
But as we already explored, to get better we need to put in the reps.
Frequency Beats Duration
There is limited data in the literature around long rides and their effects on cycling performance. However, a recent observational study from Tønnessen et al. surveyed Norwegian world-class coaches on training session models and found that top coaches prescribe low-intensity sessions between 3-7 hours long. I agree with this. A long ride for me starts at 3 hours and ends at 7 hours.
Why 3 hours? Because a study from Seiler and colleagues found that neither a 1 hour nor a 2 hour ride disrupted autonomic nervous system recovery but there is data out there to suggest that many cyclists show a stronger heart rate drift from hour 3 on. On the other end, after more than 6-7 hours, perceived fatigue usually exceeds the induced stress. Juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze anymore. A longer ride would lead to a level of fatigue a rider needs more time than usual to recover from.
And that’s the key here. You want to find the duration you can repeat long rides on a weekly basis without influence on the rest of your week. That’s right. Absolute duration is secondary. But the frequency of your long rides is where the magic happens. How many long rides can you get in from the start or your training toward the start of Unbound 200?
So for example, if you find 4 hours to be the sweet spot of fatigue and recovery build up on that during the block with slight weekly increases in the long ride of 5%. By the end of the block you might have established a 4.5 hour ride. You let that sink in with a recovery week. Afterwards, you build upon that 4.5h ride and apply 5% increases again.
This is a rather simple and conservative approach to increase your long ride time. But you know what? You don’t even need to increase your long ride from week to week. You can’t increase it forever anyways as you’ll reach the point of diminishing returns. So if anything, consistency is more important for long rides than progression.
Things Only Your Longest Ride Gets You
As mentioned earlier, your longest ride also includes some benefits that are harder to get with other types of training. The most important ones are:
1. Race Day Fueling Practice
2. Building confidence
3. Riding your bike and position fatigued
So if you plan to consume 90 g/h carbs, a 6 hour big ride would be a great option to test the gels, bars, and powders at 90 g/h you will use on race day. There is convincing evidence to suggest that gut training helps you to get used to utilizing high amounts of carbs at a lower risk of gastrointestinal distress. This is crucial nowadays. Testing your nutrition plan in the weeks leading up to your main event is non-negotiable.
Furthermore, it’s totally fine to validate your own abilities beyond performance tests and tune-up races. If that 200 km ride is what you associate with mental readiness, this is a fair option to go for it.
And lastly, what I find very important is testing how you feel on your bike setup and position, when fatigued and mentally exhausted. You should still feel rather comfortable and able to produce power. Otherwise, it’s time for a change. Plan for that in advance.
The Long Ride–Now What?
That was a lot of information. To freshen up your memory, here is what you should take at home if anything:
- Absolute duration matters very little: No matter how long Unbound 200 will take you, but you won’t need a 10 hour long ride to prepare.
- Turn to Norwegian world-class cycling coaches: Top coaches prescribe long rides of 3-7 hours long. Somewhere in between is your sweet spot. Find it. Nourish it. Grow it.
- Frequency beats duration: As overrated the extra-long ride, as underrated is long ride frequency. Work on getting at least one weekly long ride in. On repeat.
- Reap those long ride benefits: Test your race day nutrition, build confidence, and test your race setup and position. Thank yourself later.
I hope this article helped you realize not only how long your long ride and longest long ride should be, but why you should be doing them in the first place.
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Studies Used in This Article
- Training Session Models in Endurance Sports: A Norwegian Perspective on Best Practice Recommendations
- What is Best Practice for Training Intensity and Duration Distribution in Endurance Athletes?
- What is the Best Way to Train to Become a Star Endurance Athlete?
- The Training Characteristics of World-Class Distance Runners: An Integration of Scientific Literature and Results-Proven Practice
- Critical power is positively related to skeletal muscle capillarity and type I muscle fibers in endurance-trained individuals
- Training Fast-Twitch Muscle Fibers: Why and How
- Influence of Interval Training Frequency on Time-Trial Performance in Elite Endurance Athletes
- Effects of 12 weeks of block periodization on performance and performance indices in well-trained cyclists
- Autonomic recovery after exercise in trained athletes: intensity and duration effects
- A Scientific Approach to Improve Physiological Capacity of an Elite Cyclist
- Training the Gut for Athletes