Sportive Training Plan

Overview

This plan is for cyclists who can already ride 100km comfortably and want to race a sportive or gran fondo competitively. Over 12 weeks, you'll build fitness through structured intervals, targeted hill work, and strategic periodisation — peaking on race day.

You'll train 4–5 times per week with a mix of intensity, endurance, and recovery. A power meter or heart rate monitor is strongly recommended to keep your sessions precise.

Golden Rule: Hard days hard, easy days easy. The biggest mistake experienced cyclists make is riding too hard on recovery days and too easy on interval days. Polarise your training (keep most rides genuinely easy and make the hard sessions genuinely hard — avoid the "grey zone" in between).

What You'll Need

• A well-fitted road bike in top mechanical condition
• A power meter (pedal, crank, or hub-based) or reliable heart rate monitor
• A turbo trainer or smart trainer for structured indoor sessions
• Cycling computer with data fields for power, heart rate, and cadence
• Race-day nutrition tested in training — never try anything new on the day
• A training log or app (TrainingPeaks, Strava, or similar)

Power Zones

All sessions in this plan reference the zones below, based on your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) — the maximum power (measured in watts) you can sustain for roughly one hour. It's the cycling equivalent of your lactate threshold. If you don't know your FTP, do a 20-minute all-out effort and multiply the average power by 0.95.

Zone	Name	% of FTP	Sensation	Purpose
Z1	Active Recovery	< 55%	Barely turning the pedals	Recovery rides
Z2	Endurance	56–75%	Comfortable, all-day pace	Aerobic base, long rides
Z3	Tempo	76–90%	Comfortably hard, breathing notable	Sustained efforts, sportive pace
Z4	Threshold	91–105%	Hard, conversation very difficult	10–30 min efforts, climbing
Z5	VO2max	106–120%	Very hard, gasping	3–8 min intervals
Z6	Anaerobic	121–150%	Maximum, burning legs	30 sec–2 min efforts