Hi everyone!
Firstly, I’m overwhelmed to be the right side of £2000 donations already, still with a month left to go before the hurting starts :D Thank you all so very much for your part in improving young lives and saving lives that are hanging in the balance.
I’ve had a few questions about what kind training is required for an event like this. I can’t say I’m a total expert, but I do feel I’ve learned a lot over the last 3 years of serious road riding (mostly the hard way...) and I’ll set out how I’m approaching this.
The first thing to say is that the training for this event started over two years ago. Some people say it takes a rider 7 years to reach peak performance... it’s probably true. The human body is fascinating and brilliant, but there does seem to be an upper boundary above which simply doing ‘more’ training achieves nothing other than breaking your morale...and you can even go backwards (either through injury or “over training”). It’s taken me two years to reach a speed and endurance baseline fitness where I can consider trying this distance. I say trying because I genuinely can’t be sure I’ll make it in the planned way (but make it I will, even if I have to sleep by the roadside – that’s what the survival foil bag and insect repellent is for...).
The next thing to say is whilst you can train for a year, there are miniature ‘cells’ of training within that year, and that’s what I’ll talk about in the bulk of this blog. Finally, I’d say that it’s well accepted that training has to be *specific* to the event you are training for. Speed and power training makes you fast and powerful over short distances. Long slow rides make you good at long slow rides. But my training plan has been based on combining the two so that I can maximise my speed over a long distance.
So here goes. My training cells break down into a scheduled mixture of the following categories:
1. Power/lactate tolerance
2. Distance habituation/endurance
3. Off the bike – core strength
4. Rest & Recovery
5. Equipment maintenance and development
But now, a cliff hanger (I’ve run out of time for now...) check back in soon for the details. Tomorrow I’m putting in 130 miles around the old 18th/19th century tea smuggling territories of Kent and Sussex:
