I remember when I was 13, going on a cycle holiday with a friend to Lofthouse. One day, we rode 75 miles on mountain bikes, including Greenhow hill and Trapping Hill in Nidderdale (which seemed like mountains at the time). The furthest we had been before was about 20 miles. It was an epic ride and for about four days after, we couldn’t walk properly. It was kind of an interesting experience to do something so far out of my comfort zone and capacity. In the whole of my cycling career, I have never been so shattered or literally crawled into a sleeping bag after a long bike ride. Perhaps because of this chastening experience, I’ve always prepared carefully for long distance riding  – making sure I’m sufficiently trained before making a big jump in mileage. In a nutshell, you can always try and do long distances untrained, but it’s a lot more pleasant if you can make sufficient training to get used to the long distance.

Training for long distance sportives

Quite a few people ask about advice for doing a big ride, perhaps a hilly 100 mile sportive. There is no particular set training plan you need to follow, but as a few guiding principles, I would suggest.

If you’re starting from no training at all, any cycling is going to help build up fitness. The first thing is just to go out on the bike, increase the distance each time and get used to being in the saddle for a longer time. If you start off with a 30 mile ride, each week try to add another 10 miles on.

Long rides. For a sportive that might take 6-7 hours, if you can manage to do training rides of 3-4 hours, you will be a long way to getting ready for the endurance. If possible, try and do a few 5 hour rides. The more you can do the better, but a weekly long ride of 3-4 hours will be reasonable preparation.

Decent intensity. If you are time pressed and struggling to find time for a long ride, to some extent, you can make up for the lack of miles, by increasing the intensity of cycling. For some of the training rides, try and maintain a good pace – just below your threshold. This maybe around 18-20mph on a flatish course or 90% of FTP, 80-85% max heart rate.  Some call it sweet spot training. You may find that you can only maintain this level for an hour, then you start to slow down. Training at this higher level has a bigger training benefit, but has the added benefit of not being as tiring like full on intervals.

Mix up training. If you are able to get some base fitness from riding for a couple of months, it will then be helpful to mix up the training – not just plodding along at same effort all the time. You can start to do some hill intervals. You don’t have to go at 100% all out pace, but it will be good practise for the hills on the big ride.

Stress and recovery. The basic principle of training is stress and recovery. You stress muscles by doing more than before – recovery then allows your muscles to become stronger. If you are tired from training too much, rest and recovery will be the biggest help. It depends how many hours you have to train. If it is only a small number, you are unlikely to be over-training.

How long to prepare?

The longer you can prepare, the better. For a 100 mile sportive, you could just about get ready in a couple of months. But, if you can have some base fitness over winter, then you will be in a much better position, rather than having to start from scratch in April.

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A good question is whether racing makes good training or whether to be in the best form for races, you should do less racing and more training. And the other thing is what to do when you haven’t got any races.

Often when watching Eurosport you will hear people talk about riders lacking race fitness. For example, you can spend four weeks on a training camp, but it is only doing actual races that really brings about top form. For example, Chris Froome came to the Tour of Catalunya after a big training block in South Africa, but compared to his usual form, looked a little off the pace. However, at other times, riders like Quintana have come out of training in Columbia and gone straight into good racing form in races.

The other school of thought is that too much racing can interfere with gaining peak performance. For example, in Graeme Obree’s training book – he talks about the need to cut back on racing so that it doesn’t interfere with his training schedule. But, Obree had a really unique approach to training – go all out for an hour then spend 2-4 days recovering.

I’m thinking about this issue because my next race won’t be for a month, which is quite a long time at this stage in the season.

Advantages of racing as training

• You can guarantee in a race, you will have the best motivation to go as hard as you can for the race duration. I sometimes do private time trials where I ride around roads and measure my time. But, I never seem to go as hard as in a race. Often in these private time trials, I even give up after 75% of the imagined course. There’s no one there to make you get to the finish.
• A key element of getting to peak performance is stretching yourself and making more effort than previously. To get this new peak, a race can be an excellent way of getting more out of yourself.
• Technical aspects of racing. Whether time trials or road racing, a big component is the technical aspect – tactics and pacing. If you rely on training, these other aspects can become rusty. Racing a course like Buxton yesterday, forces you to think about pacing (wrong again), and technical aspects of cornering. It is also a test for things like equipment, clothes and pre-race strategy. These things can take more practise than you might imagine. As an amateur with no one to hand clothes, I’m often fumbling around in the back of the car with 20 minutes to go looking for some item of clothing e.t.c.

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