Amy's Gran Fondo 2024 - first qualifier for UCI World GranFondo championships

Flying over the Amy's Gran Fondo QOM

Some sources tell me that it’s easy to qualify for a spot at the World Championships, however, I have found in my own experience, this could not be further from the truth! Read on to see what it took!

I’ve recently returned from Lorne, where I undertook Amy’s Gran Fondo with the view to qualifying for the UCI World Gran Fondo Championships which are to be held on the same course in 2025.

The top 25% of riders within an age group automatically qualify for the race. Therefore if you have 200 in your race, the first 50 qualify and so forth.

The degree in difficulty in qualifying comes down to many factors - does your physiology match the parcours? How many riders are in your age group? What is the history of those riders and their palmares? And so it goes. I lined up for the Women’s 55-59 category which happened to be one of the most competitive on the day - sporting ex Olympian and Commonwealth Games participants as well as several past and present Masters National Road Champions.

The Lorne course is an interesting mixture of two long climbs with plenty of rolling terrain in between. There are some punchy climbs dotted along the 40km run back to base. There’s plenty of different terrain to work with for most riders, though with the nature of the hills, the course will tend to favour those riders that can climb well. In addition to the terrain, we had to deal with unseasonally cold weather - the day before we were huddled up in our accommodation marvelling at the sleet on the roads. Correct clothing selection was going to be critical.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I set about prepping for Amy’s. I knew that to be competitive, I was going to have to improve my FTP and potentially my body composition to have any chance of making the cut.

Starting Stats:

October 2023: FTP at 2.75 watts/kg

April 2024: FTP at 3.3 watts/kg (Post Tour De Brisbane event)

August 2024: FTP at 3.65 watts/kg

September 2024: FTP at 3.7 watts/kg

The Amy’s Gran Fondo course starts with a 10km climb, after a supposedly “neutral” start, which was far from neutral! This meant that to find a good position for the climb, you had to start hard - I saw my second best 5 minute power for the year just to get to the official “start line”!

I knew that it would be imperative to execute the first climb well in order to be with a competent bunch for the rolling terrain in between the first climb and the second long climb, which was spread out over about 15km. This meant riding at my FTP or a little bit above. I ended up riding that first climb on an IF of 1.06 and posting my equal first all time best 20 minute power. (IF = Intensity Factor - ratio of Normalised Power to FTP)

Although I did not realise how much work I had done at the time, I was humbled by how many women were in front of me on that first climb! I thought I’d done a great job, yet was wondering if I could actually make the top 25%.

It is during these times of self doubt, that I turn my focus inwards - I leant into the work required, with some degree of measure. For me, that is deliberately staying calm and then picking the right group to work with. I’m pleased to say that luck was with me and I ended up in a fast moving peloton and gained a significant amount of ground on my competitors. I managed to conserve energy where I needed to and despite the big initial first effort felt like I was climbing strongly within the group. It was nice to see some of the women who had left me on the first climb - I was back in touch!

Being longer and more variable in gradients, I knew the collection of climbs that made up the second 15km overall “climb” was going to require every bit of power I could push out of my pedals - - my fatigue resistance training served me well here and I was able to hold an IF of 0.91 for that section of road.

Even after the QOM, it felt like we were still climbing for quite some time. The descent to Skene’s Creek was a delight, even if I had to “gently” move someone out of the way and still the type of descent where you really had to push the pedals hard - it was not a free ride by any means!

Happily I turned the corner onto the Great Ocean Road for the run back to Lorne. It was nice to feel a little tailwind at my back and as I was starting to feel fatigued, took a measured approach to finding the right group and then concentrated on hanging in there for the homeward journey.

Even as my quads were beginning to cramp, I willed myself not to give in and as my group sprinted away from me within 2km of the finish line, I put my head down and do what I do best - a solo time trial to the end. Crossing the finish line, I stopped and allowed my legs to buckle underneath me. Suffice to say there was nothing left in the tank!

I was elated to finish 10th in my age group and qualify for the UCI Masters World Gran Fondo championships.

Final Stats:

122km Gran Fondo - Finish time - 3:51:12 (31.66km/hr)

10th place out of 56 (Age Group)

79th place out of 397 (Women)

Performance Stats:

IF (Intensity Factor) Whole Race: 0.87

Peak 5 minute power IF: 1.13

Peak 20minute power IF: 1.06

TSS (Training Stress Score): 300

Preparation Notes and Tips - How Best to Raise FTP?

As mentioned above, it was very clear that improving watts/kg was going to be key in executing that first climb. I was exactly 5 minutes’ faster than my effort in 2022 and part of the contribution of the improved watts per kilogram was an increased FTP - about 20 watts higher. For women, who don’t ride in the same range of power as men do, this was a big improvement.

There’s plenty of literature out there about how to improve FTP, and how best to do this depends on your current level of fitness, training history and so forth. It’s well documented though that accumulating plenty of volume of training under threshold, particularly in the tempo and sweet spot ranges is beneficial.

Knowing that I’d be riding around Europe for three months and improving both my strength and endurance with long days in the mountain, I nibbled away at accumulating what we describe as this “time in zone” in a typically unstructured way. I would have days of endurance riding , interspersed with deliberate tempo and sometimes sweet spot efforts up the climbs.

During my time away, I could feel my fitness improving rapidly. Towards the end of my trip, the gains started slowing down. This coincided with my arrival back to Australia. It was, as my work colleague and fellow sports scientist, Deb would say, “time to blow the roof off”. This meant accumulating time above threshold, both in structured (efforts) and unstructured (spicy group ride) scenarios. To be honest, those first few VO sessions felt like I was wading through mud. Yet, knowing that the benefit of these would manifest after the training block was done, kept me on the straight and narrow.

Body Composition Change - the other part of the puzzle

To improve the watts to kilogram ratio, I also knew that body composition was going to play a role. I am not built like a typical climber and physically I’m more of a bear than a ballerina! For me, improving body composition is about making myself the most powerful and strongest athlete I can be, rather than be light and thin at all costs - and for me that looks like year round strength and conditioning at the gym and blocks of time where I focus on reducing body fat, but not year round. I’d much rather maintain a consistent bodyweight and change the ratio of muscle to fat (body composition improvements ) - always worth remembering that muscle drives power, so dieting yourself into oblivion doesn’t work in the long term.

In the lead up to the event I trained in the gym four days per week and modified that training in the week leading up to the event to allow myself to freshen the legs and the lungs up. As I have written about previously, I have taken up powerlifting, which centres around the deadlift, squat and bench press. These movements and the accessory exercises that power them, have huge benefits for cyclists. This includes particularly being able to be strong through a wide range of hip flexion and extension. Combined with the endurance training, the strength work gave me a steely resilience to muscle fatigue, cramping and the like when I placed under pressure during the race.

Other things to read/consider

Within our coaching group, we prepared fifteen athletes for the event. Deb has written an excellent article about the experience and what we learned as coaches. We are looking forward to taking this experience to help our athletes prepare for Worlds next year. Check it out here for more in depth analysis. One aspect of the prep we consider we did well was fatigue resistance work - in a nutshell, after expending a certain number of kilojoules worth of energy, can the athlete still produce good power - critical for that second climb!

Conclusion.

This was a well thought out, and executed preparation for me, which included blocks of unstructured and structured training. This worked well for me psychologically, as I enjoy unstructured training where I’m loosely focused on what I need to do, but not tied down to doing it. It’s important to consider the psychological make up of the athlete when recommending the exercise prescription - one reason that we work individually with athletes to provide bespoke training that takes considerations such as psychology, physiology, work/family balance etc into account!

Overall, this was a fabulous experience - tough, but worth it. Enjoying some down time now, but looking forward to competing in Worlds in 2025.