The Team EF Coaching Rapha Festive 500 training plan returns for 2023.

As winter approaches there's only one thing on many cyclist's minds - the Rapha Festive 500.

The annual event has become something of a fixture in the cycling calendar with over 200,000 participants and remains one of the toughest challenges to complete. Riding 500km in the space between Christmas and New Year is no easy feat, even if you are lucky enough to be participating somewhere warm and dry. That's why we've worked with Rapha to produce an exclusive training plan that builds your fitness to the perfect level to complete, and even enjoy the Festive 500, sending you into the new year as fit as ever on the bike.

This is our third year running the Rapha Festive 500 training plan and we're pleased to report that we had a 70% completion rate from 2022 participants, compared to around 21% completion for those who didn't use the training plan.

We've made some updates to the plan, adding some fresh workouts and enabling you to choose how many hours training you can commit to, plus we've added it to our Foundations Training Plan which means you'll have access to a whole library of video content, a premium Today's Plan account and much more.

This all adds up to make the Team EF Coaching training plan the best way to prepare and conquer the Rapha Festive 500.

The Rapha Festive 500 training plan is delivered through our Foundations Training Plan, a dynamic training tool using the Today's Plan app to schedule a calendar of workouts which can sync to your Wahoo or Garmin head unit and even Zwift. These adapt to your level of fitness and available training time, making sure you get the best workouts and results.

In order to access the Rapha Festive 500 training plan please subscribe to the Foundations Training Plan, which at $19.95 a month with no minimum subscription, works out as saving of $59 on previous training plans*.

Find out more about our Foundations Training Plan here.

The full Festive 500 training plan is five weeks long and starts on the 20th of November.

It also includes a plan for covering the 500km comfortably in the festive period.

You can join the training plan after it has started, and thanks to the Foundations Training Plan system, it will adapt to your fitness however close to the main event you are (though we'd suggest it's best to start as soon as possible).

We've split the training plans into four workloads depending on how much time you have available each week, you can swap between these if you find yourself with more or less time but suggest starting on the one that is closest to your availability in the first week of the training.

Once you've signed up, or if you are already a Foundations Training Plan user, the links to the four Rapha Festive 500 workloads will be in your My Coaching hub on the Team EF Coaching website or in the Training Plans dropdown in Today's Plan and will load directly into your calendar from November 20th.

Best of luck with the Rapha Festive 500 challenge this year, we look forward to seeing all of your finisher badges on Strava!

*based on subscription of two months compared to 2021 price of $99 for standalone training plan.