Advice needed - training programs

[NeilB2020]

Morning folks - First time poster.

Looks like I have been talked into doing LEJOG this August - the plan is to complete the Deloitte route (Roughly) in 8 days.

Struggling to find any advise on the amount of training that would be needed for this.

Does anyone have an advise? spreadsheets etc that could be tailored?

All help gratefully appreciated!

Neil

[thatsnotmyname]

Some useful further info is required, I think. What is your starting point for training? How long have you been riding? How regularly? How far? How fast?

[Mick F]

My advice is to ride your bike. Ride it as often as you can.

Eight days End2End is about 100miles a day for each and every one of the eight days.

Ride your bike and find a 50mile destination, have lunch, then cycle home.
Next day, do similarly, and repeat.
If you can do that for a few days on the trot, you're ready.

There's no substitute for riding your bike.

[NeilB2020]

Thanks for the comments so far.

Starting point for training - Now - I used to ride a lot but have done virtually nothing other than some irregular mountain biking over the last 2 years or so! Previously i completed a number of long distance races - 3 x Ironman finisher as an example.

Just wondered if anyone did anything structured, rather than just getting out and riding.

If its ride ride ride... all good, keeps it simple!

[Marcus Aurelius]

The thing about the RAB, is that it’s repeated 100 mile efforts for over a week. There are plenty of training plan resources available on line, that get riders ready for a 100 mile effort, then the issue becomes being able to repeat the trick, over and over again. So I’d say look at the training plans available from British Cycling, the Ride London 100 people, and various charity outfits, for getting to a comfortable 100 miler. In the mean time, get used to the mental chew involved, by doing repeated efforts of up to about 75-80 miles, on consecutive days. Physically speaking, it is what it is, if you are physically capable of doing an endurance length ride, your pretty much okay, make sure you get into a habitual feeding regime as well. Getting yourself mentally prepared is more tricky, and that really just comes down to riding as much as you can, in varying conditions.

[Jamesh]

I didn't do any back to back rides before my lejog.

Just a max of 130 mile day ride.

Eating was probably the bigger issue and being patient enough to stop and eat properly. I skipped a proper lunch in Newquay and paid for it later that day! Back road to oakhampton was torture!!

Cheers James

[rareposter]

RAB / Deloitte publish several training plans on their rider hub, you might be able to find some of them? It'll stand you in good stead for following their route in about the same time.

Depends a lot on your current level (in terms of fitness, experience of back-to-back rides, all-weather rides etc) as to what training you need to do. The advantage is that you know the full route, the daily distances and so on well in advance.

[mjr]

Do the Lap of Anglia. That's four 100 mile days back to back. Day 3 clipping the Chilterns is especially chewy. Might not happen soon enough for your sates, though.

[Jamesh]

Break the day down into 4 x 25 mile rides.

That way you not daunted by 100miles rather you have all day and evening to do the miles and take in the scenery.

I found it good sometimes to have evening meal at say 80miles at 5pm and do the last 20 after tea. That way you don't go to bed and not sleep on a full stomach!!

Cheers James

[shadwellrhino]

I got plenty of miles in and made sure I could ride 3 successive days of 60+ miles (my expected daily mileage), and that I was “happy” riding in strong wind and heavy rain. I included lots of hill work and regular trips to the gym to strengthen my suspect back. When I arrived at the start I knew that my fitness would not let me down, and this was good psychological preparation.

[PhilD28]

I used to do lots of long multi day rides (still do), including 16 consecutive 130 mile days loaded with camping gear in hilly terrain, I was in my early 50’s when I completed that.
My main training consisted of a hilly 20 mile loop with panniers every night after work and one 100 miler on a weekend. I did this for 4 months prior to that trip. The main aim was to condition my body to recover overnight and be able to repeat the effort. Month one was tough even from a good race fitness base. I used panniers as a way of reducing the time needed to ride but also to become conditioned to climbing fully loaded on consecutive days.
During the hilly loop which consisted of 5 climbs I would treat the climbs as intervals and the flats as steady state recovery.
The 100 miler is important for a lot of reasons, not least getting the body used to the contact points on the bike.

For many years I have done fasted rides twice a week, this is a useful method of encouraging your body to burn fat as a fuel and can be usefully integrated into your training regime, a good way of loosing a bit of weight too.

You obviously have the athletic ability, just need to get on and put some miles in. If you have competed at ironman level, you don’t need much advice, I would think your biggest challenge will be overnight recovery if your previous focus has been one off events. Riding every day, within fitness limits is key and building up the milage and effort slowly. You’ll be fine lots of people do this.

Good luck.

[PH]

The Long Distance Cyclists Handbook is worth a read and can be picked up cheaply, loads of useful information and several training plans.

[dim]

this is very good (for starters, and will give you legs fand stamina for longer rides):

https://www.verywellfit.com/bicycling-a-double-century-training-schedule-3119434

key here is to not ride too fast and to try and stay in zone 2 (using a powermeter, or if you don't have one, use your heart rate monitor)

[scottg]

Simple plans are best.....

[mattheus]

One of the all-time great quotes, from (possibly) The all-time great!

There's a lot of truth in it - a mixture of hard, easy, long, short, plus rest is common to most effective programs; riders that do this without really planning to, often turn out very well trained and successful!

My little Pet Theory:
this idea of training for recovery - typically by back-to-back* long/or/hard days - doesn't make sense to me. I haven't seen any internal process by which our bodies would adapt to this, and I haven't seen any papers on it. So there's a challenge for our training science geeks - prove me wrong!

*EDIT: what I mean here is deliberately training on a day when you're still recovering from a hard day. The classic example in Audax circles is to suggest 2x200km days; this is claimed to "train you to recover overnight". Which of course would be beneficial if riding 200km day-after-day - or indeed 300km each day as many Audaxers do!


I'm suggesting that doing 2 hard 200km days with perhaps 2 days rest in between is just as beneficial. Of course most working drones don't have that option anyway, so its perhaps a moot point ...