Training for First Century

[Deborajen]

My husband and I are wanting to do a century. I've been doing a little reading and research about training and have a couple of questions.

First, should we be putting on some mileage during the week or is weekend-only training enough? I know that with running, you have to build up base miles plus some intervals during the week to prepare for distance and I'm assuming that a long bike ride like a century requires that as well. We've both done some 50-mile group rides with mostly weekend training rides, but I've noticed that when we've done longer weekend rides, say 65 miles, it gets harder - like some sort of line is crossed.

Second, my husband wants to do some club rides (to build up to the century) that sound a little out of our range of preparation. He says, "It's sagged, so if we can't finish they'll pick us up." I thought the idea of a SAG was that support would be provided (ie., extra water and maybe snacks would be carried and they'd carry things like a tire pump and patches and tools, etc.), but we shouldn't ride unless we were prepared to complete the whole thing. And since SAG support is from volunteers, the amount of support might vary from a lot to zero - and I assume that on an organized century ride there's more likely to be SAG support in place, but we still need to be well prepared for the full ride.

Anyway, just wondered what the experience was on these boards.

Deb

[TrekTheKaty]

Congrats on deciding to do a century! If you've ridden 65 miles, you're there. I'll also say that there isn't a lot written about century training--at least not as much detail as running marathons.

I train to 65 miles-ish or a metric century (just like the longest run for a marathon is 20 of the 26.2) then go for it. The adrenaline of the crowd will carry you through. You're in the preparation stage. I would try to get a few short rides during the week, if possible. If you don't normally ride a lot of hills, try to find some hillier routes for practice. You need to focus on hydration and nutrition at this point (ie. fatigue at 65 is you running out of fuel!). What clothing will be comfortable and setting up your bike to carry enough tubes, tires, snacks and water to get you to the rest stops.

I received a lot of good advice on this thread a few years ago:http://forums.teamestrogen.com/showt...hamair+century

Team Estrogen also has an article here:
http://www.teamestrogen.com/content/community

And SAG will take you back to the start line (when they can. It may be a long ride--I've heard). I never plan to bail, but it's nice to know they are there if you can't finish. Maybe call ahead and ask how they feel about it.

I will say, my BIL did the century with me and his longest ride was 40. I don't recommend and it wasn't planned that way. However, at the time he was riding 1-1.5 hours a day so he had a good base.

Here was our ride report:
http://forums.teamestrogen.com/showt...ailnet+century

[Miranda]

I own this book and think it was helpful in training for a century...

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-.../dp/1579541992

[Deborajen]

Thanks for the information. Trek, thanks for the links (and the ride report!). I agree there is much more written about training for running marathons than about riding centuries. We kept an issue of Bicycling magazine that had an article about training for a century but it was geared towards a good performance (not just finishing), and I've also read a few short articles that basically say that if you're a "fit cyclist" (?) you can ride a century most any time. I'd just like to finish and not be miserable, but I'm not worried about a time goal. And I run, ride (not a lot of mileage), and strength train so I consider myself to be fit, but we went on a 35-mile ride yesterday and it pretty well whipped me. It did have a long, gradual, uphill stretch going straight into the wind that was worse than the whole rest of the ride. My husband said the hill was hard but it didn't take anywhere near as much out of him as it did me. I'm sure part of that is difference between men and women, but he's basically a couch potato so the fitness thing is a little hard to measure.

Deb

[CamsShel]

My husband printed this one out for me...

http://www.bicycling.com/freedownloa...INING_PLAN.pdf

And I found this one while looking at freewheel stuff...

http://www.kanbike.org/pages/training.php

He's training to do an MS ride in Sept...and I have a 4 month old, so I won't be using them for a while, but they look like good resources. I think there's a 100-day training shedule somewhere out there but I have too many bookmarks to find it.

:-)
Michelle in OK