Prudential RideLondon Training With Dani Rowe: Week 5

About this Series

Welsh-born Dani Rowe is a former pro road cyclist and three-time world champion and Olympic gold medallist in the women’s team pursuit with Great Britain.

Each week she is sharing her story preparing for the 2019 Prudential RideLondon 100 using the “Prudential RideLondon 100” Zwift Training Plan.  See her full list of stories, or learn more about Zwift’s Prudential RideLondon Training Plans.

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1 month complete! I don’t know about you but I can’t believe we are already a month into our PRL training – the time flies, but I type this safe in the knowledge that I have banked a great month of training.

As you know from my last blog I spent a few days in Yorkshire last week commentating for the Tour of Yorkshire. I really enjoyed it but they were super long days and with 6 hours of travel to get back home I was tired come Monday morning.

When I’m feeling tired the endurance free rides slot perfectly into my training week. Although I love structure, being tired makes it hard to motivate myself to complete a session I know is going to put more strain on my body. The free rides are a perfect way to still train but not have to do any efforts.

I also sometimes surprise myself and after warming up feel much better than I thought I would. If this happens then I use the session as fartlek training which just means “speed play”, making it fun and totally up to me in terms of what the content looks like.

After getting over the initial tiredness at the start of the week, I completed my favourite session, “Power Surges 2”–I enjoy the commitment of having to produce high power and digging deep. Analysing the session afterward it’s amazing to see how many quality efforts you get done within the session. The 10-minute block of Z2 to finish the session off after the multiple 15-second efforts really helps to push on your fitness as you ride on tired legs.

Training on tired legs is a great way to build up fatigue and help train for a long distance event on limited volume. We all want to be smart and efficient with not only our efforts but also our time, which I’m sure many of you are limited on!

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