Cycling training plan for endurance: 10-week plan to help you go the distance

This fitness cycling plan is for riders looking to build up their stamina for a long-distance sportive, bigger weekend rides of five hours or more or multiple days of back-to-back riding.

The 10-week training plan will build your aerobic base, starting with muscular strength and a focus on cycling cadence, which will boost your resistance to fatigue. The second half of the programme uses longer endurance rides at a low-intensity to improve your body’s ability to use fat as a power source, and then higher aerobic efforts to improve overall conditioning.

What do I need to get started?

Effective training requires a gradual increase in stimulus, and this needs to be measurable. The training plan offers three options to assess how hard you’re working: via power, measured with a power meter, heart rate or RPE – rate of perceived exertion. Whilst using power and/or heart rate takes away any subjectivity, you can complete the plan using RPE at zero cost.