Robert A

Planning to ride my first Century, the Solvang Century in early March. What is a good training regimen, given that longer rides can only be on weekends? Currently, my maximum distance so far is 50-60 miles on mostly level ground, though there a steep climbing opportunities where I live.

I'm in decent physical shape, but not to the level needed for this ride.

Thank you.

johnny99

If you're regularly doing 60 mile rides right now, extending your distance to 100 miles on similar terrain shouldn't take too much training. Just remember to eat more to keep your energy levels up for the 100 miles.

If the ride you are training for is much hillier than what you are doing now, then some hill training will be very helpful. Most century rides these days have elevation profiles posted on their websites so you can see how much hillier their route is from what you are doing now. If you can do at least one climb every week between now and the century ride that is similar to the hardest climb on the century ride, you should be fine.

Robert A

datlas 

Sojodave

Make sure you work on your core. I had a serious accident last year and broke several bones in my leg. I had some surgeries this spring to remove some hardware and I only had 36 days to train for a 140 ride. The best thing I did was work on my core and strength on the bike. Try and do as many hill climbs as you can, that will help you more than long rides.

Maelochs

You are 2000 years too late.

Lazyass

If you're riding 60 miles solo (you didn't specify) then 100 in a group is no problem.

Athens80

Machka 

Some tips ...

https://www.bikeforums.net/long-dist...g-century.html


.

Teamprovicycle

" a century " is a loose term .

Is it 100 miles strait no stops no rests ?
Will there be rest stops or check ins ?
will you be with friends that act as team mates ?

Too many variables to give you a solid answer .

Some simple issues you might face are shoulder cramps or arm pains . foot numbness . if you can work on comfort and effeciency first, you will be able to be on the bike for a good long time .

You can bring at least 4 oatmeal based food bars and 8 gels 2 liters of water if it's cold to 4 liters if its hot . eat and drink at least every 25 miles .

One more thing that could help is a speed sensor . on the road you can get free speed from the wind and declines , so try to keep your average speed above 18 mph , but dont kill yourself trying to hold 25 plus let the road and wind keep your speed up so you dont burn out . unless you want to then thats on you .

Check the wind direction over the route and the time you will be on bike 4 to 6 hours .

caloso

downtube42

Your current fitness is likely fine, though more is always better.

No matter your fitness levels, keys are hydration, fueling, and pacing.

At 60 miles, you can get away with poor hydration habits. At 100 miles, it's more likely to get you into trouble. Stay on top of it. When you think about water, have a drink. When you see someone else drink, have a drink. When you think about stopping to pee, have a drink. When you think it's been a while since you had to pee, have a drink. When you see a water tower, have a drink. When you cross a creek, have a drink. You get the idea. If you're having to stop and pee frequently, that's great. When you're coming up on a SAG stop, finish off your water bottle.

Think in terms of calories consumed per hour, starting from the first hour. You don't want to go in the hole early. Between now and the start of the ride, work on figuring out what your stomach will tolerate while riding. I use maltodextrin powder as a supplement, rice crispy treats, bagels with peanut butter and honey, bananas, pastries. Later in the ride I'll mix in a bean burrito, potato wedges, french fries, milkshake, even a cheese burger - whatever looks good at the mini-mart. You don't really want to experiment with food on your first century, though. Figure that out on training rides.

Many people go out too hard, and suffer later. Don't be one of those. Go out easy, let them go. Some will come back to you later.

Do all that, and with 20 to go you'll be ready to put the hammer down when everyone else is fading.

canklecat

Core work -- upper body, arms, neck, shoulders, both strength and flexibility. You can do that at home. No special equipment needed. Check the Bowflex channel on YouTube for concise videos on exercises you can do at home or the office without weights or equipment. I use 'em a lot. They're particularly good for reinforcing good ergonomics and avoiding hyperextension and injuries.

If you can ride 60 miles you can ride 100. It's just pacing, hydration and eating appropriately. For me the hardest part beyond 50 miles is always the neck and shoulder pain due to old and new injuries. Training for longer rides by riding more miles was just reinforcing bad posture and chronic pain. When I got off the bike and worked on overall strengthening and conditioning I had less discomfort on longer rides.

Beyond that it's mostly mental. I enjoy the social aspect of longer group rides so I look for a friend or find someone riding about the same as I am to chatter with. Some folks prefer the solo Zen experience, or listen to music or other audio. Whatever helps get through those occasional bouts of doubts, boredom and nagging discomfort.

Racing Dan

In my opinion ppl tend to overthink and underestimate "nutrition" while on the bike, meaning over elaborate routines and not enough calories. What you need is easily absorbed calories and a lot of them. This means minimum digestion low/no fibre foods or "no digestion" drink mix. Like white bread with jam, rice cake, sugary sport drink, coca cola, boiled peeled potatoes. Im very much opposed to the idea of "slow burning" calories like oatmeal and peanut butter. All it does, is slow down your absorption and fills your stomach. This is unwanted because no matter what you do your energy expenditure is already much higher than your uptake. Why make the deficit even bigger on purpose.

Depending what calculator you use you are looking at at least 4000 kCal for the ride on top of your base metabolic expenditure. There is no way your uptake can keep up with this so your goal is to get in as much as possible without upsetting you stomach or get nauseated.

.

Lazyass

Eat whatever works for you, it doesn't have to be anything fancy. I would carry nothing but Snickers bars in my jersey if they didn't melt. Those oatmeal bars filled with cream are good, and you can fit a bunch of them in your pockets because they're thin. But organized century rides have rest stops with food and drink.

rm -rf

If a 60 mile ride is "just another weekend ride", then you can do 100 miles. But if that 60 miles is a stretch, an epic ride, it helps to get to where it's a somewhat comfortable 60 miles. I'd also do a few 75 mile rides, mostly for experience staying on the bike for a long time.

I think that event rides are a little easier, since they have lots of stocked rest stops. And riding with other riders seems to make the miles go by.

On most 100 mile rides I've done, I check the bike computer distance after riding for quite a while. It'll show 23 miles, 21, 24 or a similar distance. Woah! I still have 77 or 80 to go -- what have I gotten in to! But once I hit about 40 miles, I'm cruising along, and it all seems doable.

Do some hill riding to get an idea of your sustainable climbing pace. It's easy to get caught up with chasing faster climbers on the moderate sized hills on the Solvang route. I like to use a heart rate monitor, mostly to keep a good pace. It looks like there's some 10% grades on the climbs -- with my low 34F-32R gearing, I can stay seated on grades that steep, without "mashing" the pedals, just riding a slow mph and using moderate pedal pressure.

Orl Tiger

If you haven't experimented with food / gels / gu / bars yet on a ride, do it before your century. And I carry with me what I know my body likes. Nothing is worse than trying something for the first time on long ride and then cramping up or scrambling to find a bathroom because it didn't agree with you.

Mileage wise - I agree with the others. It's not as long of a stretch from 60 to 100 as most people think especially if you are just cruising through your 60 mile rides right now.

Finally, be prepared mentally. My first century, I just kept telling myself "I have nothing else to do today or no where else to be today except on my bike". You will meet people during the ride and some chatting with strangers during the ride can help break the monotony of all those hours on the saddle (plus give you a drafting partner to cut some air from time to time). Be prepared for a lot of people to start at the same time as well. If you have not done a group start or ridden in large groups - please hang in the back and let the masses sort themselves out. Nothing worst than trying to learn group skills in a mass start.

Have fun. Post the ride report!

NoWhammies

Agree with the other posters who commented that if you're doing 60 now, 100 shouldn't be an issue. Sounds like you have good fitness. You can start cranking up the mileage of your rides, so that when you do the 100 for the first time it isn't a total shock to the system.

For me, the hardest thing to learn was to eat properly. For the longest time I tried to get through centuries eating as little as possible. I didn't want to get caught out and need to use the facilities. But as I learned to fuel better the ride became better and better. No longer was I cracking and I found I was able to keep riding at pace longer. Many of the centuries I've done have good food stops too. Take advantage of them!

Have a great ride and share how it went.

Robert A

Would appreciate suggestions on strategies for building core strength. For instance, would I seek hard steep hills that I can tolerate for shorter distances, or not-so-steep hills, but for longer distances, or a mixture of both? Also, I plan to buy a bike computer with a HR monitor, so I can target percentages of maximum HR.

Sojodave

This is a great book on core strength exercises. Tom Danielson's Core Advantage: Core Strength for Cycling's Winning Edge

rm -rf

Heart rate
Years ago, I had a cheap Polar heart rate watch. It worked fine mounted on the bars with a short section of water pipe insulation from the hardware store. I couldn't easily see it if it was on my wrist.

I found, just from riding with it, that I could maintain about 140 heart rate for a long time. But higher than 150, I'd need to back off the effort after maybe 5 minutes or so. On a long, hard climb or fast road pace, I'd want to slow a bit if it got past 145. Of course, sometimes I'd need to go harder temporarily. (Now that I'm older, those numbers are lower.)

Core Advantage book
I got the book a few years ago. It's good, all you need is a mat for the floor exercises. (And a doorway or wall for some of the others.) The first part covers some theory of core muscles, then the second half explains the simple methods, and the reasons for them. There's different sets of reps that start with useful stretches and then target more than just abs -- the other core muscles are critical, too. I need start doing these again -- I just don't get around to doing most home exercises.

Check out these examples on Youtube, there's a playlist of ones from the book:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...vINuPTPnq620ij

daoswald

If you can ride 60 now, you can ride 100 now by managing your caloric intake and hydration more carefully, and by taking your time with the ride.

However, if you can ride 60 or 100 miles now, you may find that next to impossible in March if you take the winter off of training. So keep riding, and if you cannot keep riding outdoors, take it indoors. The hardest part of doing 100 miles is avoiding dehydration and avoiding bonking. The second hardest part is being accustomed to spending hours on the bike.

I've had to take it indoors now that snow and freezing temps have hit, so my off-season consists of 4x/week cycling indoors from one to two hours each time, using a mix of different bikes (recumbent, road-geometry, and hybrid-geometry), and doing a mix of different cycling workouts (intervals, moderate intensity 2h, high intensity 1h, as well as about an hour a week on stairs (stairs seem to get my hear up even faster than the bike). I also spend 2-3 hours a week doing weight training (65% legs and core, 35% everything else). And on the three days where I don't go to the gym, I'll still hit the treadmill at home a couple of those days to get my heart up into "the zone". This is the first year I've taken the off-season seriously, so we'll see if I'm ready for an early-season century when the weather warms up!

Dean V

Core strength is less of a priority if you have an generally active and diverse lifestyle/occupation.
If you sit at a desk all day and cycling is all you do for exercise, yeah give it some priority.

Seattle Forrest

Eat plenty of complex carbs. And then anything else you enjoy.

Jim from Boston

Training for first Century

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert A

Planning to ride my first Century, the Solvang Century in early March. What is a good training regimen, given that longer rides can only be on weekends?

Currently, my maximum distance so far is 50-60 miles on mostly level ground, though there a steep climbing opportunities where I live.

I'm in decent physical shape, but not to the level needed for this ride.

Thank you.

I do infrequent centuries, but I have posted:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

…I think that if training for a long ride, one has to toughen up down there where you sit, and I think that requires extended, continuous time in the saddle; I calI it…ahem...uh...“pounding the perineum.”