Originally Posted by
GhostRider62
46 TSS ride the night before a long ride makes no sense to me for someone with a CTL of 50 doing a very early ride of 142 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing for a rider with a stressful career. The glycogen loss alone makes that session a waste. Openers are good for crits or short duration, high intensity races. They do nothing for a 7-10 hour endurance event like this one. A better question would be why is the coach allowing OP to do an event for which he/she is not prepared and then trying to train right into the event. My first thought was to fire that coach.
Yeah I agree the night before is too late. At that point you might as well just go to sleep. I do find Openers work for me though. If my event (usually a hard, fast century Sportive) is on a Sunday I will typically take Friday off and then do my Openers on Saturday morning. If I take 2 full days off I feel flat as a pancake when I get back on the bike. For a major event I will taper for the last week, with much reduced volume, but retain some intensity.