What does this plan do?

This is an 8-week plan designed to build key fitness attributes needed for success in sportives and gran fondos, as well as other similar events such as Audax and Randonnee events. As well as helping build key fitness attributes, the plan also includes prompts to work on bike-handling, mental preparedness and race nutrition strategies, and culminates in a taper period, leading into your target event.

The plan includes two options for your final taper week, depending on whether your event falls on a Saturday or a Sunday. This is why the plan has 9-weeks, but is only an 8-week plan.

Who is this plan for?

This plan is for moderate level cyclists, who have already spent at least 2-3 months working on their aerobic base fitness. Any of our 'autumn/winter', 'endurance' or 'threshold' plans would be particularly good precursors to this plan.

The plan is geared towards road events that last between roughly 4-8 hours. If you're targeting an event that's longer than this, or includes multiple stages, we recommend following one of our ultra-endurance plans.

Key Features

We believe our plans stand our from the crowd. We’ve done our very best to provide an experience that’s as close as possible to having on-hand coach support, with ample guidance on how to get the most out of our plans, and clear information on what we’re trying to achieve both session-by-session and week-by-week to keep you motivated. Our plans are grounded in science and supported by over a decade of full-time coaching experience.

This plan includes:

• A comprehensive PDF user guide, providing information on how to implement the workouts correctly and how to adapt the plan if necessary


• Structured sessions, meaning all sessions can be automatically exported to your headunit or synced to training platforms like Zwift or TrainerRoad and are ridable in ERG mode


• FTP testing to help set training intensity zones, using a methodology we’ve refined for improved accuracy through working with 100s of athletes


• Each workout’s purpose and key adaptations clearly communicated, including references to scientific papers


• Notes summarising the week's training and key sessions, so that you always know where your training is heading