This training plan has been put together by Dr Garry Palmer, and uses the training principles in his book Elite Performance Cycling: Successful Sportives.

The training plan uses a focus of heart rate based sessions (however for sportive riders who use power, the sessions can easily be switched to power based efforts), and assumes the rider has a good level of fitness (possibly having completed our phase 2 of our Base training plan) or has been consistently riding for at least 4-6 weeks for an average of 4-8 hours per week.

The plan varies between 7 to 12 hours per week and has 1 or 2 REST days per week with longer rides at the weekend.

The objectives of this plan are in increase endurance fitness, raise training volumes, and indirectly improved FTP. The plan follows a simple principle of using at least 2 rest days in a week, and has only one session per day. There are also infrequent threshold and unstructured rides to add variety to the week.