A century ride is a road cycling event of 100 miles (161km). Some people train simply to complete the event, whereas others will go into the event with time-goals. Either way, the best way to train for a century ride is to build up your cycling over a period of several months. There are no shortcuts or quick-wins. A good place to start is by getting a training plan. People who follow training plans have been shown to be twice as likely to succeed in reaching their goals.
You can either cycle outdoors in good weather, or indoors using a static bike or indoor trainer. Many indoor trainers let you wirelessly link to interactive cycling software like Zwift. This means you can ride with real people in a virtual environment – which makes it mentally easier to do long rides indoors. The workouts in our training plans can be exported to platforms such as Zwift, TrainerRoad and Garmin. However, it’s sensible to do at least some of your training outside on the bike you intend to use during your Century. This ensures you’re used to the feel and handling of your event-day bike.
Your training program should be built around two or three key rides each week. Any additional rides you do are advantageous, but not essential. The first key session is an endurance ride, where you slowly increase your ride duration over a period of months, from whatever is comfortable for you now, up to 85-90 miles. These rides should be done at chatting pace, ideally with friends, while you consume energy drinks and snacks every 30 minutes along the way.
Your second key ride is a speed session, designed to raise the ceiling of your current ability. By training your body to ride harder, it will then feel easier to maintain a given pace for longer. For example, ride 5 x 10 minutes at 90% of your 1-hour race pace effort, with three-minute recoveries (plus warm up and warm down). You should progress these rides over time, so your body keeps adapting to new stimulus.
If you have time, you should include another endurance ride each week, mostly done at an easy intensity. For this ride, build up from whatever duration is comfortable for you right now, up to 60-70 miles over a period of months. During this ride you could also throw in a few efforts, by riding hard up any hills.
Any additional rides you do should be 1 to 3 hours in duration, done mostly at an easy/steady intensity. It won’t do you any harm to throw in a few harder efforts during these rides but keep at least 80% of your riding at an easy intensity. Most importantly, you want to feel relatively fresh for your three key weekly rides.
Always be mindful of over training, road safety and avoiding injury. Your first goal is always to make the start-line of your target event. It’s not what you do in any one session that counts. It’s also important to include regular recovery periods, so you can train happily and consistently over a period many months.
There are normally two 40-minute strength and conditioning sessions per week with our Century cycling plans. Not everyone can fit them in around their busy lives, on top of their cycling, but it’s good if you can. These workouts improve your strength and flexibility, which leads to more efficient movement patterns and fewer injuries.
Online training plans are for athletes who don’t feel the need for a personal coach, but who still want the structure and planning of an expertly-written training program. Research has shown that you are twice as likely to reach your goals if you train with a structured plan.
As an athlete and parent, I know how challenging it can be to train effectively for endurance events. Being a certified coach with over 20 years’ experience, the biggest challenge is balancing my client’s training with their lifestyle…
And that’s why I started MyProCoach™ – to offer the world’s most comprehensive range of online training plans, all designed to help you enjoy the same success that my athletes and I have, while still making sure you have quality time for your family, friends and career (read 100+ detailed reviews here). You can also hear from me in a series of 6 short explainer videos below:
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Research-backed plans for any experience-level that fit around your lifestyle. From leading endurance coach Phil Mosley.
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MORE THAN JUST A TRAINING PLAN
We use TrainingPeaks to deliver your plan – the world’s most popular endurance coaching platform. Free to use, TrainingPeaks is an online calendar that lets you record, track and analyze your training sessions.
It has a host of great features allowing you to get as in-depth as you like, including the ability to export your workouts to your training devices (Garmin, TrainerRoad etc) and follow them in real time.
TrainingPeaks enables us to set you in-depth training plans in a way that other formats cannot. Phil Mosley is a Certified Coach and one of the best-selling coaches on the platform.
We want to provide an affordable and effective training solution, including email coach support for any questions you may have.
Our Certified coaching team are on hand to answer any questions during the first use of your plan, plus a bonus 3 months after its completion. During checkout, please also share your email so I can send you a series of 5 helpful emails to get you started.
As you can understand, some limits apply, like personalisation or analysis of your training, but for anything else relevant to your plan, we would love to help. You also have full access to our online help centre, with videos and articles to help you train effectively.
We have a huge range of plans that enables you to select one that best meets your goals, schedule and ability. If you’re not sure where to start, read on below for a quick overview.
What type?
Our Standard and Masters plans are designed to get you ready for your target event, while our Off-Season plans are designed to allow you to recover from a tough season whilst maintaining your well-earned fitness. Generally, Masters plans are designed for athletes over 40 years old, although plenty of younger athletes love them too. The workouts are just as tough as with our standard training plans, but with more scheduled recovery days. Some find it easy to carry on with a normal training load, while others need to change their approach to training.
What length?
For the best outcome, count back from your “A” target race date and simply choose a plan to fill that gap (you can still work in other, smaller races during your plan). Note that longer plans start easier and progress more gradually than shorter plans. The body responds best to constant, gradual progression with regular recovery periods, and that’s exactly what our plans are designed to give you!
What level?
Choosing the correct level will help you get the most out of your plan. Generally, if you’ve never done this event before or currently train up to a few times per week, you might consider a Beginner plan. Alternatively, if you’ve done this event many times before or currently train 5+ times a week, you might consider an Advanced plan.
But don’t worry too much – we also let you swap the level for free within 14 days of purchase, if you find it too easy/hard!
Visit the MyProCoach Help Center for further guidance and to contact our Certified coaching team.
Certainly! Our training plans allow you to easily swap a few days around each week to suit your availability. Or you can swap out a session, to attend a similar group workout instead. That’s fine. If you opt for TrainingPeaks Premium (from $9.92 per month) you can even drag & drop your workouts onto different days. We give a few recommendations on how to best do this in our help centre.
And you can also train for multiple events! Our training plans guide you up to your target “A” race, but it’s also good to include some “B or C” races along the way. Our help centre goes through the exact steps you should take to enable you to get full benefit, without detracting from your key focus
Over 40? Compare these with our Masters (40+) Century Ride/Gran Fondo plans ▸
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You can start our Off-Season (Fitness Maintenance) plans anytime you like.
They’re designed to help you maintain a good level of fitness when you’re not specifically targeting an event, such as, during the off-season, or anytime you’re taking a break from racing.
For the best outcome, input the date for your “A” target race and the tool will default to a plan that will fill that gap nicely. If you want, you can then adjust the plan length to start it on a different day.
Note that you can still work in other, smaller races during your plan too!
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, after 2 hugely successful years of our Unlimited Athlete subscription with over 1300 active members, we’ve decided to increase our prices for the first time on December 1st.
The feedback has been outstanding (rated 5.0 from 100’s of testimonials), and recently we’ve also added further personal coach time… For example, our coaches now check your personalised training zones are set up correctly, and also keep you accountable by getting in touch if you haven’t logged any training for 2 weeks.
So, to maintain this great customer service and to support our coaches, on Dec 1st we’re increasing both price options by $5 per month, or by $4 per month if you pay annually (but for all existing Unlimited Athletes, to give a fair warning, renewals will not increase in price until Feb 1st, 2022).
For Black Friday, we are also giving a bonus $20 off any new annual subscription! Our annual prices are going up by $4 per month, or $48 per year. This means if you sign up this week with our bonus $20 off, you’ll be saving $68 compared to our future annual pricing.
Which comes down to as little as $3.55 per week for unlimited training plans and ongoing certified coach support. We can’t thank everyone enough for all your support!
| Short | Medium | Long | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration | 4-12 weeks | 14-24 weeks | 27+ weeks |
| Required fitness level | Higher | Moderate | Lower |
| Training phases | 2~4 | 5~7 | 8+ |
| Fitness tests | 1~2 | 3~4 | 5+ |
| STANDARD | MASTERS | OFF-SEASON | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approx. age | Under 40 | Over 40 | Any |
| Recovery weeks | Every 4 weeks | Every 3 weeks | N/A |
| Strength sessions | 1-2 per week | 2 per week | 1-2 per week |
| Likely goal | Train for event | Train for event | Maintain fitness |
| BEGINNER | INTERMEDIATE | ADVANCED | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Experience | Little to none | 1-3 years | 3+ years |
| Time to train | Limited | Moderate | Ample |
| Likely goal | To finish | At least top half | Competitive |
| BUY | SUBSCRIBE | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $24 to $159 per plan | From $24.58 per mth |
| Flexible, structured training | | |
| TrainingPeaks training app | | |
| Coaching videos, articles & FAQs | | |
| Email coach support | During plan only | Anytime |
| Swap freely between all 900+ plans | | |
| Help setting up your training zones | | |
| Coach fortnightly engagement check | | |
| Discounted TrainingPeaks Premium (optional) | | |
| 30-day moneyback guarantee | | |
Please confirm your cancellation below and one of our team will process it as soon as possible (stopping all future payments). Your subscription will still continue until the end of your current billing cycle (your “next payment date”) and there is nothing else you need to do.
Don’t worry, you will always be able to access your completed workouts and your TrainingPeaks login credentials will stay the same. Also, if any payments happen to come out before we cancel your subscription, we’ll simply refund them.
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