I generally do not train as the word train is commonly used, as in building up muscles, etc. But I try to do some longer rides to get my bum more accustomed to long consecutive days in the saddle. This year I did a 200k brevet a month before my five week tour, I think that helped me mentally deal with long days in the saddle on the tour.
If I am going somewhere with some exceptional hill climbing I might do a couple hours on a stair master at the health club during the month before i go, so maybe I do a little bit of training. But i did not do that before my tour this year. I am more likely to do the stair master thing before a backpacking trip than I am a biking trip.
I do not plan contingency stops, but I do try to set reasonable goals for how far I want to go each day. I am retired, thus I do not have the constraints of having to get back home in time to get back to work. Thus, I can be flexible in how far I want to go each day, sometimes it might be 30 miles and sometimes closer to a hundred. I almost always will set my distance goal each day based on where I want to spend that night which is almost always a campground. I set that goal based in part on the weather, expected traffic (I am more likely to avoid busy times of day in tourist areas on weekends), elevation gain during the day, possible scheduling issues (avoid popular campgrounds on weekends when they might be full), etc. On my long trips I tried to put the campgrounds into a mapping app on my tablet so I could plan each day by looking at the map of places to stay and often am thinking a couple days ahead when I formulate a plan for that day.
I almost never stop early on a tour by cutting my distance short for a day, but when I toured Iceland there were two days I stopped early because the winds were just too horrendous, one of those days I quit at 10:30am. And there also were two days where I had such a strong tail wind that I hated to waste, that I decided to keep going for hours after I reached my planned destination to take advantage of the tail wind.
I almost never take a day off to recover from a long day. I do however recall at the end of a very tough 14 hour day taking the next day off to recover but that one day is the only recovery day that I can remember taking without planning in advance to take off. If I take a day off, it is much more likely to be because the weather would be really bad for riding that day. On my last tour of 34 days I took four days off due to heavy forecast rain and three days off due to forecast strong headwinds. Thus, took about one and a half days off each week due to adverse weather. Of those four rain days I took off, one was the first day of the trip and the forecast was for over 5 cm or rain, two of the days were in the middle of five consecutive days of rain, and the fourth rain day also had a forecast of over 5 cm of rain. I rode on enough rainy days on that tour, I was happy to take those additional four rain days off.
The windy day when I quit at 10:30 am, I took the photo below of the wind blowing the water stream to the side in the outdoor sink at the campground. That was a really windy day.
I am assuming that in part you are asking these questions:
Originally Posted by
KC8QVO
How do you build up on the go?
Do you have a mileage range that you try to maintain?
How do you plan stops and what contingency plans might you have in mind if you cant make your stops?
Do you have a "stopping point" with how your legs, joints, body, what ever, feel that you know when you're there its a mandatory shut-down?
Do you put mileage on then lay low for a day or two to recuperate or keep the mileage manageable as per some of the above answers that lets you keep moving every day?
because you had to quit early on a long day recently.
Maybe your nutrition plan for that day did not work out so well. A long day has to have a nutrition plan designed to keep you going all day. I try to average about 200 to 250 calories per hour, most of that is carbs with some fats thrown in too but I never want over half of my calories to be from fats. I think french fries, ice cream, etc., are great things to keep you going during the day. And within a half hour after quitting for the day, have some protein, maybe a protein bar with 20 grams of protein to aid muscle recovery for the next day.