The Maratona dles Dolomites is the densest climbing event in cycling. 138 kilometres. Seven Dolomite passes. 4,230 metres of vertical. That is 30 metres of climbing per kilometre — higher than La Marmotte, higher than the Étape, higher than any other event amateurs queue for in their thousands.
Here is the thing nobody tells you about that statistic. It does not feel hard at first. The opening passes — Campolongo, Pordoi, Sella — come early and steady, switchbacks at 6-7%, big crowds, golden Dolomite light. Most amateurs hit the third climb still feeling the sportive buzz. Then the route drops down through Gardena and into the Passo Giau, and the day shows you what it actually is.
Here is how to train for it across 14 weeks, with the right physical demand, the climbing-specific work, and the pacing discipline that turns the Giau from a survival climb into a controlled threshold effort.
Key Takeaways
- 14-week build is the working bar for a base of 7-9 hours/week
- Peak volume 11-13 hours/week with sustained climbs of 30-45 minutes weekly
- 3.0 W/kg minimum, 3.4-3.8 W/kg for a 7-9 hour finish, 4.2+ W/kg for sub-7
- Train climbs that match Giau duration: 30-50 minute sustained efforts, not 4-minute hill repeats
- 90-110g carbs/hour from the first climb — Giau has no useful feed
- Pace the first three passes at high Z2 even when they feel easy
- 34x32 minimum gearing, 34x34 sensible if you have it on the back
What the Maratona Actually Demands
Seven Dolomite passes, 138km, 4,230m of climbing. Most finishers ride between 7 and 11 hours. The closed-road format and the Italian aid station culture mean the support is exceptional — fresh bread, ham, espresso at the feeds, and a starting field of 9,000 riders. That part of the day is wonderful.
The route itself has a deceptive shape. The first three passes — Campolongo (km 5), Pordoi (km 25), Sella (km 50) — come fast. Each is 6-9km long at 7-8% average. Pordoi is the longest of the three at nearly an hour. Sella is the steepest at 7.9%. Together they take 90-150 minutes of climbing and feel like a manageable opener for riders coming off a winter of Mallorca camps and indoor structured work.
Then the route drops through Gardena and into the Passo Giau. 9.8 kilometres at 9.3%. The steepest sustained climb of the day, landing at km 80 on legs that have already done 2,500m of climbing and three full passes. The Giau is the day. Everything before it is the warm-up that decides whether the Giau is a 60-minute threshold effort or a 90-minute grind.
After the Giau there is still Falzarego — 13.8km at 5.9% — and a few rolling kilometres back to Corvara. Riders who paced the Giau correctly ride Falzarego steady. Riders who didn't, ride it in pieces.
The defining demand is climbing density. There is no flat section to recover on. There is no long descent to settle the heart rate properly. You climb, descend, climb, descend for seven hours. Train for that, or arrive at the Giau with no card left to play.
The Physical Bar: W/kg and Endurance Capacity
Three numbers tell you whether the Maratona is a realistic target this year.
FTP in W/kg. The floor is 3.0 W/kg with the right gearing — below that the Giau becomes a walk regardless of fitness. Mid-pack starts around 3.4-3.8 W/kg. Sub-7-hour finishes need 4.0+ W/kg. Use the W/kg calculator to get a real number, and the FTP zones tool to set the right training intensities.
Sustained climbing capacity. You need to be able to climb for 30-50 minutes at sub-threshold without it being a special occasion. The Giau is 50-70 minutes of climbing for most amateurs. If your longest sustained climb in training has been 15 minutes, the Giau will end your day. Build at least three sessions of 3x12-15 minutes at 85-90% FTP on real gradient before the taper.
Recovery capacity within a ride. The 12-minute descent off Pordoi onto Sella is recovery if you rode Pordoi correctly, and it is panic-eating if you rode Pordoi wrong. By peak block, your long ride should include at least three sustained climbs separated by short descents — train the shape of the day, not just the volume.
If those three boxes are ticked by week 11, the Maratona becomes a controllable day with a hard 60 minutes on the Giau. If they aren't, the day becomes a slow grind where every climb after Pordoi takes longer than it should.
The 14-Week Framework
Three blocks of base, build, peak, plus a 2-week taper. Volumes assume a starting base of 7-9 hours/week.
Weeks 1-4: Base
Volume: 8-10 hours/week.
Four to five rides, 80% in Zone 2. The aerobic engine that everything else sits on. Stephen Seiler's research on training intensity distribution is what underpins this — the easy stuff has to be genuinely easy, or it becomes the most expensive moderate-intensity work you'll ever do.
Anchor session: long Z2 ride building from 3 hours to 4.5 hours over the block, with at least 800m of climbing in the back half.
Weeks 5-8: Build
Volume: 10-12 hours/week.
Two quality sessions per week. One threshold (4x10 minutes at 95-100% FTP, building to 3x15 minutes by week 8). One sustained climbing block — 3-4x12 minutes at 85-92% FTP on a real climb. The Maratona's climbs are 50-70 minutes long for amateurs; a 12-minute hill repeat is the building block, not the destination.
John Wakefield prescribes low-cadence torque work for exactly this kind of event — 4-minute efforts on a climb at 40-60 RPM, RPE 7/10. One session per week through this block builds the muscular endurance the Giau asks for. Long ride climbs to 5 hours with 1,500-2,500m of climbing.
Weeks 9-11: Peak
Volume: 11-13 hours/week.
Sustained climbing volume goes up. Long ride includes 3 sustained climbs of 15-30 minutes, ideally in real terrain. By the end of week 10, you should have done one 5-6 hour ride with 2,500m of climbing — the closest single-day analogue to the Maratona's first 80km.
Quality sessions tighten to event specificity: one threshold session, one sustained climbing block of 2x25-30 minutes at 85-90% FTP. This is where the Giau-readiness is built.
Dan Lorang's athletes at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe ride this kind of block before Grand Tour stages with similar climbing density. The principle scales: protect the easy days fiercely, drop the volume on intensity days, and make the long ride climbing-specific.
Weeks 12-13: Specific + Taper
Week 12 is the final stacked weekend. Saturday: 5 hours with 2,000m of climbing including one 30-minute sustained climb at sub-threshold. Sunday: 3 hours rolling. Volume holds at 11-12 hours but quality work shifts to race-pace simulation.
Week 13 starts the taper. Volume drops 30%, intensity holds short and sharp. 3x5 minutes at threshold, 4x90 seconds at VO2 max, no more sustained efforts.
Week 14: Taper
Volume drops another 50%. Two short rides with 5-10 minute openers at threshold. Travel to Alta Badia 2-3 days early, ride one easy spin on the local roads to acclimatise, eat, sleep, hydrate. The fitness is in.
If you build your plan in TrainingPeaks, the structured workouts let you replicate the climbing-specific blocks precisely and the ATL/CTL tracking shows you when the Giau-specific work has landed.
Climb-Density Nutrition Strategy
The Maratona is short by ultra-event standards but its climbing density makes it feel longer. 7 hours of riding with 4,230m of vertical burns more carbs per kilometre than a flat 200km day.
On the bike. 90-110g carbohydrate per hour from the first climb. That's two gels and a bar each hour, or a 90g/hour drink mix paired with one solid item every 45 minutes. Asker Jeukendrup's research on multiple transportable carbohydrates is the foundation of the standard 2:1 glucose-fructose mix used by most riders — your gut handles higher carb rates when you blend the two sugars. Train your gut to 90g+ on at least three long rides before race week.
The Italian aid stations. Exceptional. Fresh bread, prosciutto, fruit, espresso, sweet pastries — by Italian standards a feed zone is a small banquet. Don't sit down. Refill bottles, grab a sandwich, take an espresso if you're a caffeine drinker, leave inside 5 minutes. The atmosphere is wonderful and the trap is real.
The Giau exception. The aid stations on the day are good, but there isn't a useful feed in the first 6km of the Giau. Come to its base with a full bottle, two gels in pockets, and a caffeine gel saved for the 2km marker. Eat on the descent off Gardena, not on the climb itself — the 9% gradient and the heart rate make eating mid-effort harder than you'd think.
Hydration. 600-750ml/hour through the day, climbing to 1L/hour if the day is hot. Dolomite UV at 2,000m is intense even in cooler weather; sunscreen at every aid station, electrolyte mix in every bottle, salt tabs in pockets if your sweat rate runs high.
Pre-race carb-loading. 8-10g/kg body weight in the 24-36 hours before the start. A 70kg rider eats 560-700g of carbs the day before. The Italian dinner before the Maratona — pasta, bread, gelato — is famously generous; lean into it.
For the underlying fuelling science, the carbs-per-hour guide covers gut training and absorption rates. For race-day timing, the race-day nutrition guide walks through the protocol.
Common Mistakes
Racing the first three passes because they feel easy. Campolongo, Pordoi, and Sella are the warm-up. Stay 5-8 bpm below your sportive threshold on every one of them. Riders who burn matches in the first 90 minutes are the ones grinding 6 km/h up the Giau two hours later. Pace on power, not on the riders flying past.
Treating the Giau like another climb. It is the race. Plan it like a 60-minute threshold test: full bottle at the base, two gels in your pockets, caffeine gel at the 2km marker, and a wattage ceiling you do not break regardless of who passes you. The summit is the win — pace to get there in one piece, not to outdrag your neighbour halfway up.
Underdressing for the descents. The Pordoi and Falzarego descents drop 800-1,000m at speed. Even in mid-July, you'll be at 6-8°C in the wind on the upper sections. A gilet stashed in the jersey is non-negotiable. A rain cape on a thunderstormy year has saved more days than aero socks ever will.
Under-gearing. The Giau is 9.3% average with sections at 14%. On legs that have already climbed 2,500m, the gradient that felt fine on a fresh-legs training ride feels different. 34x32 minimum, 34x34 if you have it. Test the gearing on a steep local climb at the end of a 4-hour ride, not on a 90-minute spin.
Skipping the climbing-specific training. The Maratona is 4,230m of vertical. Riders who train flat tempo for 12 weeks and arrive thinking general fitness will see them through find out on the Giau that climbing is a specific stimulus. Three 12-week blocks of sustained climbs of 20+ minutes is the bar.
Eating on the Giau instead of before it. 9% gradient and 90% FTP heart rate is not the moment to digest a sandwich. Eat at the bottom feed, eat on the Gardena descent, then ride the Giau on what you've already absorbed. The riders pulling gel wrappers out at the 5km mark with shaking hands are the ones the climb has already broken.
Kit, Gearing, and Logistics
Bike. A climbing-friendly road bike. Disc brakes if you have them — the Pordoi and Falzarego descents are 15-20 minute braking efforts on tired hands by the back half. Tubeless or quality clincher tyres with a spare and full repair kit.
Gearing. 34x32 minimum, 34x34 if your derailleur fits it. The Giau on day-of-event legs is the kind of climb where one extra cog buys you 10rpm and 15 minutes. Test on a 10% local hill at the end of a 4-hour ride — if you're at 50rpm in your easiest gear, change the cassette before flights are booked.
Clothing. Jersey plus arm warmers for the start (06:30 in Alta Badia in July is 8-12°C). Gilet stashed for descents. Light insulated jacket if the forecast is unsettled — Dolomite afternoon thunderstorms are weekly events above 2,000m and the Falzarego descent in cold rain is a cardiovascular event of its own. Long-finger gloves for the start, fingerless backup. Sun sleeves for the climbs once the day warms.
Recovery kit. Foam roller, compression sleeves, recovery shake powder, electrolyte tabs. Massage in Alta Badia on race-evening is widely available — book ahead because the village fills up.
Logistics. The Maratona ballot opens in November and closes in December for the following July. Entry rates are around 30%. If you draw a slot, your hotel and your training plan both need to start within a week. Most riders stay in Corvara, La Villa, or San Cassiano — all within easy ride distance of the start.
Free Plan Templates (Inside the Community)
Inside the Roadman Cycling community on Skool we host a free library of plan templates — sportive, road racing, gravel, base, build, VO2 max and FTP builder blocks. For the Maratona, stack a base block into a build block and overlay this article's climbing-specific peak block. Same structural templates we use as the starting point for paid coaching. Free to join.
How Roadman Coaches This
At Roadman Cycling we periodise the 14-week Maratona build around your starting fitness, your local terrain (climbing-specific work is the hardest to fake on flat ground), and the specific Giau-pacing strategy you're targeting. Generic plans break on this event — the climbing-density work needs to land in the right block, and the Giau preparation needs to be rehearsed as a single threshold effort, not assembled from 4-minute hill repeats.
Most of our coached athletes work through TrainingPeaks — structured workouts, daily metrics, and a coach who actually reads your data instead of pasting templates. Coaching tiers run from $175/month for structured plan oversight to $1,250/month for full one-to-one coaching. Learn more about our coaching or how we work with riders across the UK, Ireland, and the US.
If you want to see your projected finish times before you commit, the Maratona dles Dolomites event guide has the climb-by-climb breakdown, finish-time bands by W/kg, and links into the weeks-out plan for the right phase of training depending on where you are in the build.
The Maratona rewards riders who treat it like what it is: seven Dolomite passes packed into a single day, with the Giau as the entrance exam. Train climbing-specific. Pace the early passes on power. Show up to the Giau with a full bottle and two gels. The day is hard. It is also one of the great days in cycling, and the medal is yours.