On the first Saturday of June, at seven in the morning, Marsl rolled out for the Erztaler Radmarathon: 200 kilometres in one sitting. He came home seven hours and seventeen minutes later with 433 TSS on the day, the single biggest training load I have seen cross the platform this month. Then he took one rest day and was back on over-unders by Tuesday.
What made me want to write this one is the goal behind it. Marsl does not have a podium ambition or a points chase. His coaching instructions read like an engineer's spec sheet: an FTP of 350 watts, a VO2max of 70, and a hard ceiling of 15 training hours per week. The radmarathon was a waypoint, not the destination. That is a rare kind of athlete: the race is real, the suffering is real, but the project is the engine itself.
The block that paid for it
The work that made a seven-hour day absorbable happened in May. His weeks ran 459 and 428 TSS back to back in early May, built the pyramidal way: a wide Z2 base on the weekends, capped by one or two quality days. The quality ladder is easy to read in his calendar. A VO2max session of decreasing-duration blocks in the first week. Sweet spot 4x15 minutes the next. Threshold 4x10 at 102% of FTP the week after, then 4x12 at the same intensity, his biggest threshold day of the block at 120 TSS.
Then the final ten days turned into a dress rehearsal. A 3h52 ride at 205 TSS. A sweet spot 4x12 two days later. A 5h15, 281 TSS ride the following Saturday, his last long day before the race. A sharp VO2max opener on the Tuesday. And then the race itself, where the long blocks at threshold held together over seven hours because they had been rehearsed for six weeks.
What the score caught
| Date | Total | Fitness Base |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-10 | 72 | 84 |
| 2026-05-17 | 77 | 85 |
| 2026-05-24 | 82 | 87 |
| 2026-06-07 | 75 | 89 |
The Total peaked at 82 two weeks before race day, then eased off as he shed fatigue into the start line. That is what a controlled run-in looks like. The number I keep coming back to is the other column: Fitness Base climbed through the entire block and kept climbing through the race itself, 84 to 89 in a month. His Load Management subscore sat at 95 on every single snapshot. A 433 TSS day lands very differently on a rider who spent six weeks earning it.
The summer project
The race is done; the spec sheet is not. His calendar now reads like the next chapter: a recovery week first (which, knowing him, included threshold over-unders by day three), then a build phase running through late August. Threshold, VO2max, race preparation. The 350-watt target is still out there, and with a CTL in the low 80s and a Fitness Base of 89, the foundation under that number is the strongest it has been all year.
Most riders celebrate a 200 km finish by closing the season. Marsl filed it as a data point and went back to work.
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