I've been reading a great book called; The Complete Book of LONG-DISTANCE Cycling by Edmund R. Burke and Ed Pavelka. In there they have some really awesome advice for training. I'll break it up into different posts, but they have the following plan for a century ride for riders at our level (sucky to moderately pathetic)
To quickly sum up, these authors believe that a secret to training for these long rides is of course miles and time on your bike, but more importantly interval type training to increase the recovery of your muscles and train your body to use less glycogen and more fat and carbohydrate to fuel your muscles. We'll get into nutrition on another post, but basically your body only has about 2 hours of glycogen stored in the muscles and once that's used up you start to bonk as your muscles stop working and your brain cries for nutrients (glycogen is what keeps the brain working).
Anyway, here's what they say about training for the 100:
"This training [century] calls for additional hard efforts plus group rides. You need to become comfortable around other cyclists. You also need to experience riding in a pace line, a great way to conserve energy without losing speed (or even to gain some). if you follow this schedule for about 8 weeks, adding the magic 10% time/distance increase each week by extending the Saturday ride, you should be able to complete a century with strength to spare."
Sunday: Day off
Monday: 75 to 120 minutes in zone 2, expect for 30 to 45 minutes of sporadic high zone 3 efforts in the from of short time trials, hill jams, pushing into a headwind, and so on.
Tuesday: Day off
Wednesday: 60 to 90 minutes in zone 2, except for one 30 to 45 minute interval in the low end of zone 3.
Thursday: Day off
Friday: 2 to 3 hours with a small group on flat terrain, using a fast pace line. Ideally, you will be at the higher limit of zone 3 much of the time.
Saturday: 2 hours in the hills, climbing in high zone 2 with short periods (2 to 3 minutes) in high zone 3. Between climbs, ride in the lower portion of zone 2
This book really promotes training with a heart-rate monitor and that's where they're getting these "zone" numbers. But here's what they mean:
Zone 1: A leisurely ride for recovery, "easy"
Zone 2: Matching the speed you want to maintain during the century, "pace"
Zone 3: Riding faster than century speed, "brisk"
Zone 4: All out, "relaxed sprint"
Paul has also sent me a good link to a web page article that has a training program for a century. Follow this link if you're interested in this style.
http://bicycling.about.com/od/trainingandfitness/a/century.htm
Either way you go here, you need to be riding your bike to get ready for this.
1 comment:
That's great, but where do I find a hill in Kansas? Oh well, at least I got plenty of headwind;except eventually I'll just run right into the tornado. Seriously though, thanks for the tip.
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