Training for ACL5

[Nanci]

How long is the ride, when is it, and what is your comfortable long distance right now?

Nanci

[Bike Goddess]

ACG- Coming from experience, You are riding too much, my dear!!!!!!!! You can do this ride on 5 days a week. Given we are in the middle of March, I'd say you should be doing a long ride on say Saturday followed by a recovery ride on Sunday. What is the longest ride you are doing right now and what distances are you doing during the week? Are you doing any of the AIDS training rides?

I successfully completed this ride last year, so I'm happy to give you suggestions,(see what I said at the beginning of this thread) but we need more info!

[ACG]

I can only ride in the a.m. and because it is dark at 5 and cold. I ride on a trainer for one hour. I start off in an easy gear working towards harder gears, then spend 5 minutes on easy gears. I've only been able to go to the gym once a week for weight training. Every other week (wednesday) I'm skipping work and riding 35-45, hilly routes. Saturdays wind up being 50-60 (with lots of hills), Sundays wind up being 35-45. Trying to ride a century a month somewhere in all this too.

I think I'm not eating correctly either, but have recently made some changes that seem to help. Have missed some of the ALC training rides. But that is cuz the group I'm with seems to care more about the social aspects of fundraising that the training. I keep saying -balance ladies.

Now that I've reached my goal, I may cut back on the group fundraising. Maybe not the nicest thing to do. But maybe I should spend a few more days at the gym? Less on the trainer?

[Trek420]

what Bike Goddess sez, to say she "successfully completed this ride last year" is an understatement. It's a ride not a race but BG was one of the first ones in each day.

If you're doing the rough equivelant of back to back metric centuries now, you are doing fine!! If the ride started tomorrow, you could do this.

Listen to your body, get enough rest, nutrition, do some things for range of motion, yoga, stretching.

Nanci, the ride is 7 days, 585 miles and in June.

[Nanci]

So less than 100 miles a day. If it were me, I'd probably be doing something like a long ride Saturday, working up to the 60-80 range, and about half that Sunday, rest Monday, short 15-30's on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, (maybe one day a week of springing/speed work) rest Friday. I would gradually increase my Saturday long ride up to 115-125, if possible (I know that's a long day riding) just because it feels so good to have extra gas in the tank, so to speak. But only do that really long distance a couple times, with maybe three weeks in between. Then I wouldn't do that much of a taper, because like Tour de France, or anything, you don't want your body to get out of daily-riding mode, but I would cut back the long ride the weekend before to something like 60 or even 40.

Nanci

[liksani]

wow you're so good. makes me feel I should get that way. Been waiting for the rain to clear up before I can try commuting to work by bike and use that for mileage. Right now, I only do really one or two rides a week, usually a short 20-30 mile ride on Sat and a longer ALC training ride I do on Sundays that was up to 55ish miles as of this past Sunday. And I say boo for hills, boo. That's about all I do.. so I should probably bike more but I also do martial arts twice a week and run about twice a week.

[Trek420]

liksani, you are doing great!

Keep doing the MA, running's fine too. When it comes to training for this thing I say "do as I say not as I did"

On ALC 3-4 I tried to get 1 1/2 of training 6 days a week, not enough of that was on the bike but found ways to sneak time in.

Wushu is great, helps your range of motion so keep that up. Have you thought about doing a demo on talent night? Commute is a wonderful way to get miles in. I'd add a midweek killer spin class, hill repeats or jumps to build for those *&^% hills.

I'd stick with once a week for the climbing drills and keep up the long rides on the weekends.

What do y'all gals think? Is this a great group of riders or what?

[liksani]

hehe so bad, haven't been doing long rides. pesky rain. finally biked to work again since it wasn't raining today but it figures i would flat out. :P *grumble* i'm not sure how much biking i can get in during the week besides commuting on some days since i'm starting marathon training again... and now i know to carry a whole ton of CO2 cartridges or also bring along a small frame pump.. I'm quite thankful to the people who stopped to help me cuz they had pumps.