Training for a three-figure ride, like the Cape Town Cycle Tour, is both daunting and exciting. The thrill of completing 100 km sends many cyclists diving headfirst into training, eager to push their limits and prepare for the challenge ahead.

However, even experienced and passionate cyclists can fall victim to common pitfalls that can hinder their progress and performance. Cyclists must navigate a delicate balance to prepare effectively for long-distance events. And as experts emphasise, understanding the nuances of training intensity and recovery is crucial for success.

To help you avoid pitfalls in training, seasoned cycling coaches share the century training mistakes they see most often, alongside practical solutions to help riders maximise their training efficiency and readiness.

1. Riding Easy Rides Too Fast

As is common among runners, cyclists also tend to perform their “easy” rides at paces that aren’t actually easy.

For most cyclists, zone 2 is going to be the most ideal intensity to focus on

“For most cyclists, depending on the duration of the long ride, zone 2 (the endurance zone) is going to be the most ideal intensity to focus on,” Pav Bryan, certified cycling coach with Humango, tells Bicycling. “This will improve fat oxidation—the body’s ability to use fat as a fuel source—and ensure that the ride doesn’t create so much stress that the body doesn’t actually recover and adapt from it.”

For various reasons, Bryan says riding too hard on easy days is one of the top mistakes he sees among cyclists training for an endurance event. One common reason behind that? Many cyclists like to do longer rides with groups, because it can be safer and it’s often more fun.

If you do your long rides with a group, it’s important to stick to your easy pace and stay in an endurance zone, so consider riding with others who prioritise pace grouping. This will eliminate the fear of being dropped and allow you to comfortably stay in your target zone.

2. Going Too Easy During Interval Sessions

On the other hand, it’s important to actually ride hard during your hard sessions.

“When preparing for a century, long rides do indeed hold an essential place in any training schedule as they allow for physiological adaptations that you will not gain from shorter rides, as well as familiarising the athlete with spending long hours in the saddle,” says Samuel Thompson, a level 3 certified cycling coach. “However, this must be balanced against practical matters and the need for rest and recovery.”

High-intensity intervals can be a time-efficient way to elicit relevant physiological adaptations for century rides, especially for those who also have a full-time job and limited time for training midweek, Thompson says. “Specific sessions will vary between cyclists, but an effective way of structuring the workouts is to employ intervals at an intensity of close to the aerobic capacity (VO2 max),” he says. This will induce improvements in the body’s ability to transport and utilize oxygenated blood in the working muscles, which is necessary for endurance.

Thompson says that this VO2 max training typically involves work periods of two to eight minutes at 90 percent or more of max heart rate, followed by half of that as recovery, with a total time at intensity of around 12 to 20 minutes. That’s an intense workout, so you need to push your effort to achieve results!

For any interval sessions, “the focus must be on quality, ensuring that athletes are entering the workout fresh to perform at their best and hit the intended outcome,” Thompson says.

As Bryan says, “make your easy days easy and your hard days hard.”

3. Not Accumulating Enough Endurance Hours

“One of the fundamental principles of training is specificity,” says Thompson. “At its most basic level, this implies that in order to get better at something one must practice doing that precise thing.” In other words, to get better at riding long distances, you have to ride long distances.

According to Bryan, “for most cyclists training for a century, the long ride is going to be the biggest limiter and will therefore be the most important training focus. This is especially true if you’ve left little time to train and the century is fast approaching.”

Accumulating hours and miles in the saddle is critical, and the only real fix to this problem is simply riding more (at the appropriate intensities). If you find yourself struggling to log hours on the road, consider riding your indoor trainer while doing something you might otherwise do anyway, like watching movies or listening to podcasts.

4. Obsessing Over FTP

Thompson says functional threshold power a.k.a. FTP is the “wrong threshold” to be concerned with while training for a century. “FTP is just ultimately a single metric with a slightly more nuanced definition than is commonly assumed,” he says.

In simple terms, FTP is approximately the maximum power you can sustain for one hour, and it’s probably not the best stat to assess your fitness for century training.

While Thompson says he appreciates the value of testing FTP as a means of setting training zones, “improving FTP does not guarantee performance gains over multiple hours during a century ride.”

This is because a century requires cyclists to spend most of their time riding at an intensity below or close to the first lactate turnpoint (LT1), also known as the aerobic threshold (as opposed to anaerobic threshold).

“The corresponding intensity is found roughly at the top end of zone 2 and can theoretically be maintained forever, given adequate fueling,” Thompson says. “So being able to ride at a consistently higher power around LT1 is far more important [for a century] than simply focusing on an approximate power that you can produce for roughly an hour.”

In other words, instead of focusing on improving your FTP, consider focusing on improving your LT1. Training to do this typically involves some intervals at high intensity, Thompson says, but much more time at lower to moderate intensities, including zones 2 and 3, plus low zone 4 (such as in over/under intervals).

5. Increasing Mileage Too Quickly

Another common pitfall among cyclist training for a century is doing too much, too soon. Progressing too quickly, Bryan says, may lead to excessive fatigue and/or soreness, and cause you to drop out of your training plan altogether.

A good generalisation is to not increase volume by more than 10 percent per week

“A good generalisation is to not increase volume by more than 10 percent per week,” Bryan says. “Focusing on mileage is easier, but more effective would be time or total load. Smaller increments allow for greater recovery and thus greater adaptations to the training.”

When you begin your century training plan, choose a metric and stick to it: Measure your weekly time, mileage, or load (a.k.a. training stress, calculated using training time and intensity), and set planned weekly increases. And don’t exceed them!

6. Failing to Fuel

Bryan points to nutrition—or lack thereof—as a major mistake among cyclists training for endurance events.

Athletes often believe they don’t need to eat on longer rides in training, he says, which might be because they are scared of gaining weight or are trying to force a greater adaptation for their body to use fat as a fuel.

But the gains made from this “train low” carbohydrate restriction “are insignificant if the cyclist bonks [which means they run out of usable glycogen stores] during the century,” Bryan points out. Additionally, “if cyclists aren’t eating enough, then the body won’t have enough micro and macronutrients to support sufficient recovery,” he says.

Bryan says he instructs his athletes to spend the last 12 weeks leading into the century dialing in nutrition and eating as they plan to eat during the century event.

“That might look like adapting the gut to eat 90 to 120 grams of carbs per hour, or it might be adapting the gut to eat the kind of food that will be available at aid stations,” he says. “This approach often brings greater improvements in performance than training low or fasted.”

7. Ignoring Recovery Needs

This is common among athletes of all disciplines, and the fact remains the same across all sports: Recovery is one of, if not the most important factors in training, says Bryan. “Adaptation only happens when the body is able to recover, so not allowing this process to happen will hinder the performance improvement process,” he explains.

Not only is it important to stick to planned recovery days and easy days, but when training for a long event like a century, it’s critical to be flexible in your training—especially if you have other stressors in life, as most people do, such as a job and a family.

Ignoring recovery needs tends to happen more often in highly motivated athletes who follow non-individualised plans, says Thompson. “A cyclist following such a plan may feel as if they must rigidly stick to it, no matter how much fatigue they are experiencing. Without recognising this, overtraining and potentially burnout are likely to arise,” he says.

If you’re prone to this type of thinking, working with a coach would likely benefit you. “Cyclists may feel that by not training, they are losing fitness. But this can soon become a dangerous negative spiral,” Thompson says. “A coach can recognise signs of fatigue and overtraining, offering an impartial view on when it is right to proceed with the plan or when the schedule needs to be adapted.”

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