lungimsam

Do Randonneurs initially train up to a certain distance, and then just ride brevets frequently enough for the rest of the year so that the brevets are training in themselves and just float throughout the year that way? Or does one need to be in serious training all the time to maintain an endurance level for those long distances?

If you do the former:
What is a good distance to train up to initially?

If you do the latter:
How many miles a week training do you do?

just4tehhalibut

Most of the local Audaxers down this way are fairly active riders, the calendar Audax rides are only once a fortnight and a mixed bag of ride types and distance so hardly of use for training. Many however ride 'permanents', we have a list of courses that riders can choose from but starting from 200km and up (as 200km is considered 'long distance', not 100 or 150km) and so far most like doing just the 200kmers. It helps that we also have a club Year Round award that is popular, for which you need to do a 200km Audax at least once every calendar month for our Audax year. I should mention that the nearest other capital city (and Audax club branch with 'perms') is over 2000km away so we're fairly locked into our own rides.

I think that spiking your normal training with the occasional, perhaps fortnightly, 200km Audax helps keep you up with long distance rides. You don't need to go 400 or 600km to remember how to pace yourself, test your water-carrying and sun protection setups for the heat, find out if your bike is that comfortable on the varied chipseal out in the countryside, learn what to carry or not next time. Training for randonnees isn't all about the muscles and a 200km ride can be quality enough.

Can't say what my average mileage is, can vary from 100 to 1000km. Most new riders here come into Audaxing when already active riders and do 200 to 300km a week, riding to work being the bulk of that and on generally flat roads with good, fast cycle paths to commute into the city, sometimes up to 60km away car-free. So the training and getting the distance out of town can be easier. Maybe not the same out your way?

lungimsam

Its mostly rolling terrain where I live.
Just hard to figure out how much training to do for my first 200k, if I ever do one.

Does commuting 30 miles a day round trip count with doing a metric century on Saturdays? Or does one have to work up to weekly, full 175k training rides to pull off a 200k?

I have heard some say commutes don't count because they are a certain distance broken into two separate rides, and not one long one. But I feel commuting does add greatly to cycling fitness, though.

But I do know the value of long rides on the weekends, for the reasons you stated above, and also to train your body to sit on a bike for extended periods. Gotta build up the muscles to last that long in a pretty set position for hours at a time.

znomit

I heard the comment recently "training is cheating".

It all depends if you're riding or racing. If you're riding your commute is plenty of distance.

Carbonfiberboy 

The Rule is that you can ride a distance in one day equal to what you've recently ridden during an average week. This works up until you're riding 150-200 miles/week. After that, you can ride any distance, you just have to work up to it in a SR series. Another rule is that you can ride 3 times the length of your usual weekend ride, as long as that's a hard ride, at your limit. When you do a 200k, you'll think, that's it, can't do any more than that. But 2 weeks later, you'll be able to do 300k. Etc. During the season, some people ride a lot of perms, others train and just ride the occasional perm or brevet. I know a woman who just rode a 200k every weekend and that was it. I don't think that's optimal, though.

Weatherby

Randonneurs come in all shapes, sizes, and have a variety of objectives.

My rule of thumb is you should be able to do a ride at 2/3 the distance in training to have an easy day of the Brevet. For a 200k ride, if you can muster an 80 mile training ride two weeks prior to the Brevet, it will be relatively straight forward if you drink and eat properly. Personally, I think a 40 miler under your belt with be a bit meager to attempt a 200k. Sometimes, it is more what is in your heart than your legs. Just go slow, eat, and drink properly can take you a long distance.

I recently returned to cycling after stopping for over 15 years and recently did a 200k with just 5 weeks of winter training with my longest ride being only 67 miles despite having a goal of that 80 miler. Don't know if that helps.

rando_couche

I find that once I can ride 100 miles comfortably, any distance is doable. Just need to stay fueled and hydrated. So I train up to 100 mi before the first 200k of the year and use each brevet as training for the next. If the gap between is more than 3 weeks, then I'll throw in a 100+ miler just for insurance. All of my other training is commuting (26 mi rt) and the odd trainer session. Also, as I get older (just hit the big six-oh) I find that the number of days a week I ride gets more important: no more of this "two or three rides during the week and a big ride on the weekend" slacking. Gotta ride 5 days a week minimum.

SP
OC, OR

Coluber42

A lot of us don't use the "T" word at all. I think that after a certain point, if you're in decent general cycling shape, you'll do fine on longer rides. Fitness is only one aspect, but if you are decently fit for a century at a moderate to fast pace, you probably have the fitness to finish any length brevet within the time limit. After that, it's more about knowing how to pace yourself, eat and drink, knowing what to expect and how your body will react to being on the bike that long.
The only thing is, if you're new to long distances, you don't necessarily know those things. You don't necessarily know what ergonomic issues you'll run into after 20 hours that aren't much of an issue after 6 hours.

But more or less, a brevet series is set up so that each ride becomes training for the next one. If you can do a 200k, you can do a 300k a few weeks later. If you can do a 300k, you can do a 400k a few weeks later. Etc.

lhbernhardt

You do NOT need to train for 600 km or longer rides, unless you intend on racing those distances as ultramarathons with minimal sleep. The longest ride you really need to train for is about 350 km, or just over a double (Imperial) century.

Why is this? On a typical 1200-km brevet, the controls are set up in such a way that if the ride starts at 6 am, the control at km 350 or 400 will usually not close until about 5 to 8:30 am the next day. If you can cover 350 to 400 km in a day (14 to 16 hours at a 25 kmh average), you can sleep at a control, and then start again early the next morning before the control closes. Each successive day gets easier, but you do need good enough recovery to be able to repeat 300km days. This was my strategy for riding PBP in 2011; I started at 5 am with the 84-hour group and did basically three 400-km days. For LEL, it was a much easier schedule of one 350km day followed by successive sub-300km days. This way you get to see the countryside while it's light (mostly), so it makes for a much more enjoyable ride. Getting five or more hours sleep each night is also quite a bonus.

Luis

Chris Pringle

This is my biggest worry for the very long brevets: not being able to sleep enough (for good recovery) to repeat the same feat the next day. Just curious, how much sleep on average do you get each night when you do the PBP? Or do you prefer to take short naps throughout the day? I would love one day to do the PBP or some other 1200 Km brevet but sleep deprivation worries me.

Carbonfiberboy 

If you want to sleep halfway reasonably during a 1200, it helps to be fast enough so that you can cover the ground on Luis' schedule while staying in zone 2. Not pushing it, never burning your legs. A wide gear range helps as does being fast through controls. Then it's just being able to do rides on successive days, which you'll encounter in your training. People who finish these comfortably have trained hard to get fast . . . or are talented. Intervals, speed work, pass repeats, long hard efforts. Then when you dial it back you have lots of headroom.

Weatherby

I agree with what Luis wrote. My example of being able to ride 2/3 the distance in training was solely about doing a 200k or 300k. Once you get a 300k under the belt and do the next Brevet in the series sevearl weeks later, strategy and sto some extent personal preferences rather than training come into play. For a 600k starting at 4am, getting to a logical resting point in at 400k distance well before midnight and the drunk driving hour makes sense to me. Sleeping in until 7am can make for a brisk ride in the morning but you can still finish under the time.......although trust me on that, it is no fun time trialing the first two hours in the morning to make the control especially without coffee. If a faster rider can complete the first 400k by 11 pm (4 am start) and then get back on the bike at 4 am, the drunks are pretty much off the road and they should be rested and the big benefit, they have a full 16 hours to complete the remaining 200k. I also agree with CFboy that some quality work can up the speed while keeping you in the proper heart rate zone. It surprises me how few riders seem to use a HRM. How else does one know whether they are burning up their glycogen too quickly or simply going to hard for the distance. For me, an important part of training is coming to know how hard that you can ride without outracing your body's ability to replace the energy stores and even more importantly the fluid and electrolye balances.....there is lots of research and personal experiences out there to help learn these limits the easy way. I try to keep it to less than 65% of my VO2 max using the HRR estimations which equates to about less than 50/50% fat/glycogen burning and that is sustainable for me with good eating while riding. A simple way to test my pace is if I can chat on the flats, then my effort is fine. Hills are the only place that I push it. Everyone is different. Part of training during shorter brevets is learning these personal limits. Or, just ride slow and take a lot of pictures. GL!

Hughes advice seems pretty basic but solid. I think if a new rider followed the rather conservative advice in his book, it would be almost impossible not to successfully complete the distances. His plans give you lot of rest iand builds you up slowly.

Coach Hughes: Training for Cycling Brevets, pt.1

skiffrun

As suggested earlier, randonneurs come in all shapes and sizes and plans. I did my first brevet confident that I would finish because I had done an informal group/club 200k the previous October and because a 95-miler the week before had been fun and easy; on the other hand, I was a little concerned because the week before the easy 95-miler, I had labored the last 30-miles of a 100-miler; I was also concerned because I had no idea what the group dynamics would be (I did most of the last half of the ride solo.

On the other end of the spectrum (?), my fellow NC-2010-rando-rookie Ian (who is half my age, now) showed up for that same brevet, never having ridden more than 70-miles in a single ride. Ian occasionally goes 7-weeks between Permanents or brevets, then rides several weekends in a row to get in shape for a 1000 or a 1200. That works for him, but he is not yet 29-years old, is strong as an ox, mentally as well as physically, and perhaps always has a certain angel named Adrian riding on his shoulder.

Adrian famously arrived on his bicycle for a brevet having forgotten to bring his water bottles. I wasn't there, but the story is that when the lack of bottles was pointed out, Adrian responded, "that's okay; I'll find water somewhere." BTW, Adrian could ride fast when he needed to or wanted to; however, my friend Byron, who rode quite a few brevets with Adrian, probably mostly pre-RUSA, told me a week or so ago, that Adrian was always looking to get his full money's worth / full time allowed on a brevet.

Adrian also famously rode 300-miles to get home from the terminus of a Fleche because he hadn't bothered to inquire / arrange a ride home from the Fleche terminus, and all the vehicles were already filled to or beyond capacity.
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Your question refers to "brevets," which term I use to reference only ACP brevets and/or RUSA brevets. But from context, I think you might also mean what I would refer to as "Permanents" (organizing entities around the globe use slightly differing terms, e.g., I recall that Audax Australia uses the term "brevets permanent," but I didn't verify that at this time).

I've typically, but not always, ridden more than one 200+ km rando ride each month. I've ridden back to back 200's on several occasions. But these days, due to "life," I'm having to squeeze one 200+ ride in a month. I can easily fit 100k rides in, but 200's take all day, and currently "all day" is seldom available.
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All the above blah, blah, blah is leading me to is this: once you've done a few 200+ rides, and as long as you're not completely out of shape, completing the next 200 is a question of the stuff between your ears. If you ride intelligently, starting conservatively, your head should get your legs through the ride.

On the other hand, if you let yourself get carried away, and don't let up soon enough, you could be in for a long, hard, painful, unenjoyable slog.

I claim that I don't train, but instead just ride. However, I have been known to put in some long, hot-intervals (such as 15 or 20 miles). I will also vary how I ride up a climb: some I will grind, some I will stand, most I will sit-and-spin. I ignore all the written materials (such as John Hughes) because I find that stuff is written for high-level athletes / fast-folks, usually fast-folks intent on being FASTER-folks.

contango 

My experience is limited having only done a few 200s and nothing longer. That said...

My first Audax was a 100km at a leisurely pace (I was riding with my wife and the speed threshold was 10kph because it was a Populaire). Prior to that I'd covered 75+ miles in a day on a few occasions on my mountain bike so the distance wasn't an issue. Then I did a 150, then attempted a 200. I did a few silly things for my first 200 - I'd adjusted the saddle position shortly before the ride and hadn't fully bedded it in so I had to lower the saddle to prevent - er - masculine discomfort. I was also using SPD shoes and pedals in anger for the first time. I got through the ride, but had to adjust my cleats several times along the way.

Most of the time my riding is in the 30-50 mile range in the course of an afternoon. In early March I hadn't done anything more than 40 miles since about October due to holidays and appalling weather but entered a 120k ride that was about 30k from home, and rode there and back. The main reason for it was to see how much fitness I had retained from the previous year. I covered the total of 180km in about 10 hours, including slack time getting to the start with a bit in hand, chatting after the organised part of the ride, standing in a long line for an ice cream etc.

If you're doing 30 miles a day and 60 miles at the weekend then assuming you're not dawdling the chances are you can do a 200 easily enough. The idea of an audax isn't to race around, as long as you can maintain 15kph you're good. So if you're regularly doing 150 miles in a week I'd be surprised if you're not ready to enter a 200. The main thing you'll most likely find is that what you need is mental strength, especially if the route goes near a means of getting back to the start easily. I've sometimes found on longer rides, especially when I'm riding solo, that every single railway station is a temptation to just take the easy option to get back. The great thing about the 180km I did a few weeks back is that once I'd got to the furthest point the only sensible option was to get back to the start, and train fares in the UK are high enough that I wouldn't pay them unless it really was the absolute last resort.

unterhausen

Riding 200k's is good training for me, and that is one of my motivations for designing permanents. I have trouble training during the week, especially during the winter. The classic randonneuring distance is 400k, but I am not sure that can be considered training, it's probably the opposite. I'm putting together a 300k perm, we'll see if that's good for training or not. The geography around here makes designing a 200k a little difficult.

thebulls

Once you have bike fit dialed in so that you can be comfortable on a 200km, your commuting is probably enough training by itself, as long as the route is not too easy relative to the brevet. You can do a lot of interval training on your commute. Ride super-hard intervals one day, then ride super-easy commutes until you have recovered, then repeat. When I was training for PBP in 2011, I rode the SR series and then after the SR series, I just did commute training plus metric centuries on Saturdays and one 200km a month in both July and August. As you mention, a certain amount of long-distance is necessary to keep your ability to sit a bike for many hours. Core exercises are also good in that regard. If you don't have bike fit dialed in, then doing progressively longer rides can be helpful in finding out where the fit is not correct. Something that is bearable for a century can become agony for the last 15 miles of a 200km. So you need to find a fit that is comfortable for a century before you're going to move up to a 200km.

Nick

thebulls

In all fairness, I think you might mention that you finished PBP in 64h41m, putting you in probably the fastest 5 percent of riders. Even if I were able to ride with precisely zero sleep, I would have finished in roughly 78 hours. For most PBP riders, your description of how to ride a grand randonnee is what they might hope to be able to do if performance enhancing drugs could make them superhuman :-)

On PBP in 2011, based on where I stopped for "long sleeps" my ride turned out to break up into 450km, 414km, 229km, 73km, and 69km. At the end of each of those intervals I slept for at least 1-1/4 hours. The final snooze at Dreux was somewhat gratuitous--I could have pressed on and made it to the end a little earlier, but for safety's sake, I opted for more sleep and a dawn departure from Dreux. In those five intervals, my average speed was respectively 10.8mph, 9.2mph, 10.7mph, 11.1mph, and 10.8mph. I am not including the long sleeps at the end of those intervals, but there were a few roadside naps, particularly in the second interval. So if you are riding your intervals at a 25km/hr average speed, then you are 40 percent faster than me.

Nick

StephenH

I don't ever "train", I just ride.
The last three years or so, I've been pretty much riding 200k or more every weekend. The last couple of years, I've been trying to maintain 1,000 miles a month, including daily rides and weekend perms and brevets.
The main "training" I did when I first started was just riding enough to lose some weight.

Carbonfiberboy 

In fairness to Luis, he says he started with the 84 hour group. If one rode 3-400k segments, thus sleeping twice for 6 hours each, one needs to ride each 400 in 24 hours. This is not an impossible goal. In my early 60's I rode a 15 hour relatively easy 400 and a mountainous 18.5 hour 400. My genetics are so crappy that I had trouble running an 8 minute mile to pass the PCPT and graduate from Basic Training back in '65, even though I was in excellent physical condition. So I tell 'ya, it's training, training, training. Training is the hammer. Work hard, use online resources, get a Garmin, save your workouts in TrainingPeaks Premium, read Friel, set up an annual training plan, nail your nutrition, and research instead of training when you're having a day off.

That said, there are people who aren't suited for this pursuit. If you train hard for several years and still can't ride a 10 hour 200, perhaps 1200k brevets aren't your thing.

lungimsam

Thanks for the info.

I am not looking to train, as in, for racing or really fast times.

I am just looking for fun, long rides that I will have the endurance for.

Sounds like for that, I just need to commute and do long rides on weekends.

How far the training distance needs to be for a given ride sounds like is different for different people.

I can do a comfortable century. So I guess a 200 is not far off.

I am training for a century now. Maybe if I can find a 200k to go on within a coupla weeks after the century, then the century can be my last training ride for the 200k, so to speak.
I will have to check the local Rando club schedule.

contango 

I'm too fat to race so for me training is more about endurance. Truth be told cycling is more about the enjoyment of it all but as my distances increase and I look to cover longer distances at a slightly higher average pace so my endurance rises.

If you can do a century chances are you can do a 200. I don't know how things work in the US but if they are like here then a 200k brevet allows 13 hours and 20 minutes to complete. If you can complete your century in 10-11 hours or less you should be fine.

thebulls

I'm not sure it matters which group he or I started with. If he had started with the 90-hour group, wouldn't he have finished in the same time? If I had started with the 80-hour group, I'd have possibly finished faster than I did because after getting dropped by the pack in the first ten miles, I would have come in to emptier controls. But I'd still most likely have finished in around 87 hours.

As to training, Friel, Garmin, etc: Been there, done that. FWIW, I'm an Ultra Randonneur, Mondial, Randonneur 5000, BMB-finisher, and April will be my 99th consecutive month of R-12 rides. I think it's up to me to decide to continue in randonneuring and riding grand randonees despite the fact that I'm seldom riding a route that's easy enough to finish a 200km in 10 hours (or a 1200km in less than 88 or 89 hours). Though I'll freely admit that if I lost more weight I would complete the long rides faster (or get more sleep during them). A perpetual project.

The point of my post to Luis is that if you are an unusually strong (i.e. top 10 percent of randonneurs) then your advice might benefit from being tempered by the consideration that the other 90 percent of randonneurs may find it of potentially limited usefulness because it just doesn't apply to them. In fact, it may make people think there's something wrong with them because they're riding a 600km but only getting two hours of sleep and still finishing in 37 hours. So then they conclude that they can never ride a grand randonnee and give up.

To help provide some information about finishing times on events of various durations, we've posted histograms and percentiles on the DC Randonneurs website: DC Randonneurs: Rando 101: Information About Randonneuring

So for instance, looking at the 200, on DC Randonneur's events 10 hours is almost exactly the average finishing time--half the finishers are slower than that. For the 400, nationwide if you are finishing an "average" 400 in 18.5 hours, then you are in the top 25th percentile of all US randonneurs who complete 400's. Looking at 1200's, nationwide if you are finishing an "average" 1200 in less than 76 hours you are in the top 25th percentile of all US randonneurs who finish 1200's. If you are finishing in less than 65 hours then you are in the top 12 percent. Put the other way, of riders who successfully complete 1200's, fully a quarter of them come in after 86 hours. I don't know what the stats are for PBP alone, though I'm sure it is published.

We are already a fraction of a fraction of bicyclists, I see no need to say that if you're not in the top 50 percent of randonneurs (finishing 200's faster than 10 hours) then maybe you shouldn't ride a 1200.

In my experience from observing many DCR riders over the years, riders who can ride one of the DC Randonneurs 600's in 36 hours or less is pretty likely to be able to finish a 1200 within the time limit; riders taking more than 38 hours are likely to have serious difficulty unless there are extenuating circumstance or unless they get much faster over the summer. Anyone who wants to can look up and see that I'm in between these thresholds, with finishing times more like 37 or 38 hours in years where I rode grand randonnees :-)

Best regards, and have a great season!

Nick Bull

ronocnikral

or....as Jan says, learn to ride and work with a group. Charly Miller - here I come!

or....my father said, if we can ride 400k in 18 hours, we can get more sleep. c'est vrai mon pere!

we've all got our own baggage. I'm attempting to train on a SR series and 100k's (perms which I own and can go out and ride whenever I want). I'll make it through my 600k this summer. And I'll make it through PBP again in '15. Will it be pretty? Probably not. Will I want to do PBP '19? Most likely.

Carbonfiberboy 

Thanks, Nick! So far, so good. My wife and I did our first ACP 200k on our tandem in 10:46. We were 78th and 79th out of 96 finishers. My wife isn't interested in doing longer brevets.

I thought it was past time that someone took exception to my post. I should have pointed out that PBP is about 57' of climbing/mile, and that our local brevets try to stay in that range. Thus my time quotes are predicated on similar difficulty.

My personal observation is that among my riding buddies who finished Grand Randonnees in good spirits, I was among the slowest riders. I understand that we want to be positive and encourage riders to get into this sport. Still, people fall asleep on their bikes, get into serious health issues and never ride another brevet. As you point out, the longer the brevet, the more we see finishers clustering close to the time limit because of sleeping for safety and comfort.

As brevets get longer, the population changes to a larger percentage of faster riders, at least in our club. Graphs of finishing times don't take this into account. Those who come in later than we did on our 200 will probably not ride a 400, and judging by their faces, probably should not. IME riding time for average 200k starters, i.e. those who aren't lollygagging, increases as the distance increases. I add ~17% time going from a 200 to a 400 and finish in about the same percentile, so a 10 hour 200k finisher becomes a 23 hour 400k finisher and a 38 hour 600k finisher with maybe 3 hours sleep, and a 7 hour 200k finisher will take 25-26 hours on a 600 with no sleep. I think that's about right and in line with your data.

The point of my post was to say that even a slower rider like myself, with good training, can learn to ride fast enough to get decent sleep on a long brevet. By encouraging training, I would hope to encourage safer and less painful riding and continued participation in the sport. You are a good case in point. I suspect that you are not a 13 hour 200k finisher on 57'/mile courses, even though you finish 1200k close to the time limit.

Coluber42

My own experience has been that if I sleep 1.5-3 hours per night, and maybe snag a short nap here and there when necessary, I feel pretty good. I'm not saying I spend 20 hours on the bike, then wake up after two hours, and feel like nothing happened, but the legs feel fine to keep riding. I've done a few 600k's in Europe with no sleep stops other than a nap for 20 minutes in a corner in the wee hours, and basically felt fine once the sun came up and I got some coffee. Genrally when I'm getting sleepy, it's my head that's affected, not my legs.

And for what it's worth, I am definitely not one of those people who's good at all-nighters in general. I can do it on a bike, but that's pretty much the only way I can do it. I didn't even manage it in college, the few times I tried it.

The best way I have found to stay awake is to have someone to talk to. I think it may actually be easier if it's someone you don't know very well, because you don't have to work as hard to come up with topics of conversation that you haven't exhausted yet. If you're alone, talk to yourself. I keep a mental collection of things to recite out loud if I'm getting sleepy and don't have anyone to talk to.
Another good way is to eat.

In many cases, even on many 1200's (and definitely on PBP) if you sleep a couple of hours per night and finish in more than 85 hours, you are still in good company. Same goes for 600k's - sleep a couple hours and finish in 39 hours and you probably won't be alone.