STP Training advice

[noombs]

This will be my first year riding STP. I plan to do it in 2 days.

So far I have been trying to follow the training milage recommendations listed here: http://www.cascade.org/EandR/stp/stp_mileage.cfm and I've been doing the CTS rides.

I've been doing ok with keeping to the schudule, not perfect, but ok. But I'm realizing that I really don't want to be spending what essentially amounts to all day both Sat and Sunday riding. (With stops/rests I only average about 10 miles an hour.)

I'm wondering if I up the milage I'm doing during the week if I could do less riding at least one day of the weekend. For example instead of doing two 70 mile rides over the weekend do one 70 and one 40 mile but add in more miles during the week.

any advice or thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

[lauraelmore1033]

Yeah, I've been reluctant to do the back to back 50-70 mile rides. This will be my third STP and I have yet to get in the kind of mileage they suggest. I think you'll be fine if you are doing the cts rides as well as covering some miles during the week.
But...
be prepaired to dig deep on day two--and I think the cts rides do give you the resources to do that. I felt like total crud on day two last year (the year before too, for that matter) for the first 20 miles or so. I was actually swearing I would never ever ever ever ride my bike again! But I kept slogging on and was feeling human again soon enough. I suppose I would have felt felt much better if I had done those back to back long training rides, but I think I would have been totally burned out on biking by the time the stp rolled around (instead of having a few moments of feeling burned out during the ride, which were replaced with feeling of elation for having broken through them...)