Did my 300km audax this weekend

[loch eck steve]

I would love to try training up to a 300 Audex but if you work full time ( as I do ) how do you find the time to put the km ( miles ) in beforehand ?

[PH]

I would love to try training up to a 300 Audex but if you work full time ( as I do ) how do you find the time to put the km ( miles ) in beforehand ?

All miles are good miles, so whatever you can, commuting, shopping, an hour in the evening... there's plenty of Audax riders who don't do any other long rides. It all depends what you want from it, if you can be comfortable for the time on the bike you don't have to be particularly fit or fast to get round any distance you can do without sleeping. If you need to sleep then you have to be fast enough to make up the time slept. If you go looking for particularly hilly rides then you need to be prepared for them as well. Once you're comfortable it's as much mental as physical, don't fall into the trap of thinking because you're knackered after 100 km you can't ride 200, it doesn't work like that.

[loch eck steve]

Cheers for that , nice reply

[charliepolecat]

I would love to try training up to a 300 Audex but if you work full time ( as I do ) how do you find the time to put the km ( miles ) in beforehand

There are many audaxers who never go more than 100K, and some who are quite content to stay at 200K. Don't give up the sport just because you don't feel able to train to do longer rides.

For a 125 mile (200K) ride taken over 9 - 10 hours is quite long enough to get a good sense of what it would take to go longer and I've said often enough to riders I come across when I'm doing a 200K and they are doing a charity ride of up to 60 miles that (as PH says) it becomes more of a mental challenge to simply keep going. It is very easy to convince yourself that after a few hours riding hills, fighting traffic, battling head winds that you really do want to quit but overcoming that urge and finishing the distance will decide for yourself if you have what it takes to go further.

Very few audaxers actually ride the ultimate randonneuring distance - 1200K - and yet consider themselves randonneurs, so, ride any distance, enjoy the ride, challenge yourself to go further under all conditions and in all weathers and when you do meet the challenge you can justifyingly call yourself one of the chosen ones - a randonneur.

[pwa]

Build up. Start by doing 100s, then a 200. If and when 200 doesn't feel like it is enough, find a moderate 300. Go further than that if you like, but only if you like. Personally, on rides over 300 weariness became the dominant feeling, and that seemed pointless to me. But others thrive on longer rides. You find your own ideal distance.

[fossala]

I'm doing my Super Randonneur (200,300,400 and 600k) on a fixed this year. My training is largely commuting which is around 100miles a week and every two weeks I'm heading out at the weekend for long rides.

[djrikki]

I would love to try training up to a 300 Audex but if you work full time ( as I do ) how do you find the time to put the km ( miles ) in beforehand ?

For me I can tell you how I find the time in one word.

Single.

[loch eck steve]

Thanks all for the replies

[foxyrider]

I would love to try training up to a 300 Audex but if you work full time ( as I do ) how do you find the time to put the km ( miles ) in beforehand ?

For a good few years, because of work and other commitments, my 'training' was restricted to riding home from work, sometimes four times a week and between 1 and 3 hours. Ten weeks worth of these evening rides would comfortably get me around 200km. The longest of these rides was about 80km.

These days I do fewer rides but i'm lucky enough to have the time for longer rides but even so I rarely go much above 150km. Provided you can get some longer rides into the mix, saddle time is probably more important, getting your seating bits used to longer exposure to the saddle is really important for distance events/rides.

It's also useful to try to simulate the terrain, even in microcosm, of the event you are aiming the effort at. EG, my next event is 200km with a grand total of 500m ascent so whilst i'm still doing my usual Pennine rides, i'm slipping in some much flatter rides across terrain similar to that of the event. (they often end up a bit climb heavy but I have to climb back into the Pennines to get home!)

So pick an event and with a little bit of planning you can fit the training in.