crankarmbreaker

I am training for several long rides this summer including the Seattle-to-Portland one-day (200 mi) and the Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day (154 mi). I have a lottery bypass for RAMROD. I'm looking to improve my times on both.

People have told me about the "base" method of riding, that is, taking your mileage from the previous eight weeks of riding and dividing by eight, thus getting your "base" of what you could comfortably do in one day. Now my question is, would it be better to build your base with several centuries and gaps in between or shorter rides that occur every day?

I know the obvious answer to this question, BOTH centuries and little rides. But in real life when you have limited child care and your relatives get annoyed when you ask them to be on call to rescue you when you're 50 miles from home, you sometimes have to choose. If you say "I'm riding 140 miles today" and stick your wife with the child care for her entire day off, you don't get to ask for that again for a while.

So what's the training balance you strike?

For a little background, I weigh 360 pounds and am 6 feet 9 inches tall (I read a lot of things in the Clydesdale group). Last year, I got a custom-made bike with wide handlebars and 210mm crankarms from R&E cycling in Seattle. I have ridden STP-one-day several times before and last year managed to cross the finish line in the daylight for the first time. I've also done RAMROD seven times but have gotten six-mile boosts from the SAG wagon in recent years and would really love to finish it on my own this year. Also I really want to get my weight back down to a speedier level, but that's a different story. My total mileage last year was 3,300.

Wolfhaven

Going to follow this thread.

I'm doing a long 10 day, 1200 mile event in August. My plan as of now is to build a base by commuting to work a few days a week and a long weekend ride. My commute is 18 miles and I can add 3 more of gravel to work. I get off work much earlier then my wife so I plan on detouring and riding 30 - 40 miles home. Most of it will be on gravel and dirt roads. Hoping this eliminates some of the "your never home" angst that can build up.

Tony P.

I'm not sure I agree with your premise that your training regime must be influenced by your life situation. Instead, I suggest finding ways to incorporate training within those limits. For example, you can possibly get a stationary bike which will allow you to supplement your rides with additional training possibly without major lifestyle negative impacts.

Carbonfiberboy 

You have to do both. However you've done STP and RR, so you know what that's like. Most folks asking these questions haven't done their goal ride. Whole 'nother ballgame. You don't have to do 140 mile rides anymore. I've done 400k rides in the mountains and never anything over 60 miles is training that season, though I'd done 400s in previous years. Yes, you can smile now.

What's important for your goal rides is time at intensity. Do one hard weekend ride and you shouldn't do a ride of over 6 hours, 4 hours is better, because long rides limit intensity. You want to go hard on every hill on the ride. You want to ride 50'-70' of climbing per mile, so lay out courses like that in RidewithGPS. You want to be in high zone 2 or zone 3 between the hills. No zone 1 at all. I'm talking HR here. Power will be all over the place, but you want to be climbing in your sweet spot range, every climb. If you're going by HR, you should try to get an hour of zone 4 in 60 miles and your legs should be really tired at the end. You might not be able to do that now. I'm only doing 40-45 mile rides right now, but I'm 74. You should be able to do more now, I'm talking at that intensity. By the end of May for sure you ought to be able to do rides like I'm suggesting.

Then you have to recover. So during the week, mostly zone 2 rides, i.e. endurance rides, with a few short bumps for a little lactate generation. You might want to do hill sprints on 1 day, say 6 X 45" X 5'. Leg strength. But not too much during the week or you'll overdo it. Figure 1 to 1.5 hour weekday rides and 1-2 days off before your weekend hard ride. I have a set of resistance rollers and always do either one-legged pedaling or FastPedal on Tuesday (if I rode on Sunday) until my legs are trash. Doesn't take too long. You really need some sort of indoor training device to put your road bike on, so you don't have to miss a day due to weather. Consistency is very important.

I'm going to do 45' of zone 1 recovery today and 35' of FastPedal tomorrow, total an hour on the bike that day, both on my rollers. I can't do zone 1 outdoors. Any tiny hill puts me over.

Oh - you should never have to make the call of shame. Take what you might need with you and just ride it in. Pain doesn't matter. Your hams go out, pedal with your quads, one leg goes out, pedal with the other. Take a spare tire, etc. You don't die from rain riding as long as you're riding hard.

kingston 

I'm a randonneur just looking to finish events comfortably and balance that with the rest of my life. Everyone's different, but here's what works for me during the season on the weeks I don't have a brevet (which is about every third week or so). Sometimes I have to leave really early to get home in time for family or work commitments and sometimes I miss days. Every week is a little different.

• Saturday: 5-6 hours as hard as I can go and still finish my route without stopping for more than a few minutes to fill bottles once or twice
• Sunday: 3-4 hours at a moderate pace
• During the work-week: 2 rides of around 90 minutes. Intensity depends on how I'm feeling, but usually pretty hard.

So around 12 hours a week with most of it on the weekend. I wouldn't say that's the minimum, but much less than that and the long rides are going to hurt. The fast guys I know are probably closer to 18-20 hours a week with a lot of speed work.

CliffordK

I haven't done a lot of organized rides, but was putting in a lot of commuting miles until I started driving again last year, and my miles crashed. I'll be back on the bike shortly.

For me, my average daily RT commute was 30 to 40 miles. Not every day, but quite a few of them. Then a few long city to city commutes of 100 to 200 miles. Anyway, depending on where you are, those commuting & utility miles add up.

When I chose to go non-driving for a few years, I decided not to call friends and family for a pickup.
Be prepared. Pump, Tubes, Tools, etc. I got 23,500 miles in the last few years, and not a single "pickup". A few broken chains, broken spokes, many flats, one blowout (two if I count a trailer blowout), one broken skewer, etc. No pickups.

jpescatore

A good resource is "The Time Crunched Cyclist" by Chris Carmichael and Jim Rutberg. The experienced century rider workouts were what I focused on - most weeks I am not going to spend more than 6 hours on the bike, but could sneak in some shorter indoor training sessions.

I did the STP last year for the first time (2 days) and used the workouts in that book to augment my weekend long rides. I did 122 miles the first day (Winlock), and felt fine - I'd never done more than about 110 miles in a day before. if I hadn't had a hotel booked up in Tumwater, I would have kept going and easily made Kelso at 150 miles or so. I bike a lot (weigh 225 lbs) and the only difference was a bit of structured training from the book - mixing that in with my usual long weekend rides helped a good deal. I wasn't very religious about it - I put the workouts onto Zwift and did them indoors a few times each most weeks.

The Grandfondo site summarizes the Time Crunched Cyclist century rider workouts here if you don't want to buy the book, and other places like TrainingPeaks offer online versions of the workouts.