Training for a 150km cycle event.

If your longest distance to date is 50 km, then you're well on your way.

Next weekend go for 55 km.

The following week go for 60 km.

Then 65 km.

Then maybe ease back for a week and get a bit extra rest.

Then 60 km ... 65 km ... 70 km ... 75 km ... and rest.

And just keep doing something like that. Before you know it you'll be there!

In fact, once you get to 100 km, you're ready to ride a 150 km, but you might feel better if you do a few 100 kms (you've got the time!) and a 120 km.

Those are your long rides each week.

During the week focus on intervals, hill climbs, recovery rides, and medium distances.


Diet ...

If you're riding less than 2 hours, bring a granola bar or something just in case.

Between 2 and 4 hours, aim for 100 cal/hour while riding.

Over 4 hours, aim for 200 cal/hour.

YMMV on this, but if you start with that, you can make adjustments.


Hydration ...

Drink one 750 ml bottle of water every 1 - 1.5 hours. More if it is hot, humid, windy.


Electrolytes ...

If you're riding easy and if it isn't too hot, consume some foods with electrolytes as part of your calories. Salted almonds are probably your best choice but potato chips aren't bad either.

If you're riding hard and it is warm, you might want to take in some electrolyte tablets.

Good Advice,

As for your bike, a road bike, even a low end one would be ideal but if you're going to ride your Giant switch out your tires to slick road tires and pump them up high. Also, some bar-end grips are cheap and give you more hand positions.

What everyone else said. Six months is more than enough time to get ready for your 150km ride. There are plenty of 100 mile plans out there but it essentially boils down to what Machka9 said above, in terms of distance. Do try to do rides on a similar elevation profile of the 150km ride and ride multiple days a week. Also get a handle of your nutrition strategy now, both in terms of frequency but to a greater extent what you plan on eating. Trying new things the day of is a bad plan.

In terms of pace, you'll soon realize that cyclists don't use pace but mi/km per hour. That said, worry about the length of your rides more than your speed. Also make sure that you're relatively comfortable on your bike. If you're hurting 50km and it's not a case of not being used to riding then you're going to be in a world of unnecessary hurt at 150km.

I did my first century ride in June after having done multiple metric centuries (100km) and under less than ideal preparation conditions. If I were to do it again (and I'm sure I will) I would give myself more time to prepare (I didn't have a choice - injuries and surgery are good at getting in the way of that), done more hill training, used the same nutrition strategy (I ate a small amount every half an hour and drank either electrolytes or water at least once every half an hour), and brought someone along with me who wanted and was able to do a century (company is your friend).

aokoye wrote: »

I did my first century ride in June after having done multiple metric centuries (100km) and under less than ideal preparation conditions. If I were to do it again (and I'm sure I will) I would give myself more time to prepare (I didn't have a choice - injuries and surgery are good at getting in the way of that), done more hill training, used the same nutrition strategy (I ate a small amount every half an hour and drank either electrolytes or water at least once every half an hour), and brought someone along with me who wanted and was able to do a century (company is your friend).

My first century, in 1994, wasn't brilliant. In fact, I vowed I'd never do another one.

Then in 1997, I did 2 ... and then more followed ... and before I knew it, I had done 190 of them.

Echoing sijomial's advice on need to increase your time in saddle. Extrapolating your current pace, you need to be comfortable staying on the bike for ~8 hours for the event. If you are time limited, try pushing two consecutive longer rides per week (e.g. Sat & Sun, pushing 4/3 the week prior at the same intensity both days or just slightly lower on day 2). Keep an eye out for fatigue. Test and nail down your nutritional strategy before the event (try holding off eating/sugar drinks for rides under three hours). Have some Tums on hand in case of cramps (and a few ibuprofen just in case). Be rested the week of the event but don't over do it. Keep the weekday workout at same intensity but scale the number of sessions and duration back.

Ben_Likes_Beer wrote: »

I have six months up my sleeve to train to be able to do the distance and increase my pace (is 2m30s asking too much?)

How do you suggest I go about training? (and diet?)

Increase in pace? Yes, no, maybe. Six weeks is pretty short but you could gain significant improvement by increasing your intensity but at the cost, fatigue. If you do make sure to start topping of glycogen reserves right after the workouts (you want to do this on your long weekend rides). Given the time frame, I would focus replicating the demand of the event. On shorter weekly rides, try pushing at a pace faster than target and hold it as long as possible. On the long weekly rides, try riding similar courses as the event. Push on the rollers and hills before defaulting to your ideal or current pace and holding that as long as you can. Keep the breaks at a minimum, fill up the water bottle and keep trucking, especially if the ride is under 3-4 hours. You might want to reexamine your carbohydrate intake if you been on a low carb diet.

Ben_Likes_Beer wrote: »

My bike is fairly low end, a 2016 Giant ATX2, but my budget won't allow an upgrade before the event.

Make sure the bike is tuned and oiled before the big event.

aokoye wrote: »

The OP has six months, not six weeks.

Ops. Unless the ride cited is on a hilly/technical single track, the recommendation still holds: building up the aerobic base is paramount, speed will come eventually. After 12-16 weeks of solid base work then reevaluate and focus on the demands of the event. And note, base work is not just leisure endurance ride. Long steady distance not long slow distance. On each ride, push out time in zone (TiZ) at tempo and especially upper tempo (or sweet spot) for climbs as long as you can and gradually increasing the time in saddle (in total with focus on pushing one or two signature ride out the most, i.e. Saturday LSD). There's plenty of guideline on distance, rule of thumbs is a total of 5-10% increase in distance per week. I track TiZ and overall duration, distance is just "nice" to know.

When I restarted cycling after 23 years away, my workout looked something like this:
Mon - rest
Tue through Thurs - 45-60 min with minimum of 30 min at tempo, rest endurance/spin
Fri - rest
Sat - 1.5-2 hours free ride mainly in endurance with periodic burst to tempo/threshold/+ on climbs
Sun - 1.5-2 hours free ride, spin or endurance

Each week, I increase both time in tempo as well as total duration. Week days moved to 1.5-2 hours, Sat to 3-4 hours, and Sun stable at 2. Every fourth week, I took Thurs & Sun off. After the first year, I substituted sweet spot for some of the tempo work. I finished my first century on year three and 7 total for the year. I was going to focus more on threshold and VO2 Max last year but got injured and had family obligations which sidelined me for 9 months. Here's my current core base work:

Mon - rest
Tue - sweet spot w/bursts or threshold
Wed - sweet spot or crisscross tempo/sweet spot
Thur - tempo or endurance
Fri - rest
Sat - sweet spot group rides (moderate hills 50-80 ft/mi)
Sun - tempo/endurance

Every fourth week I add Tue and Sun to off days, and switch Thur to Fri. If I'm indoors, bulk of my rides are simulating climbs. My workouts are mostly structured, time interval based but not that's essential. Key is TiZ and pushing that farther each session/week. If you have a HRM, use it to track TiZ, else base on perceived rate of exertion. Use your the lactate threshold HR not max HR to set the zones. (LTHR test, after a good warmup, go as hard as you can for 30 minutes. You should be completely exhausted after the 30 minutes. Your average HR for the last 20 minutes is the LTHR. Test at least twice but space it out a few weeks. When the number is stable, you'll not need to test it again. Just -1 beat each year as you age unless you enjoy the pain.)

I started with 5-6 hours a week and now I'm averaging 10 and pushing 15 on hard weeks. Only did one century this year so far but plan for one in October. I'm targeting a double in May next year. After that I'll start adding more intense workouts focusing on the upper end. Ignore Seiler's polarized training mantra; building a hemi, not fine tuning a F1 race engine. Even when I was racing collegiate, I never trained enough where Seiler's advice mattered.

As far as mimicking the demands of the event, I breakdown the route into it's major legs. I have a power meter which makes this analysis a bit easier but you can do it without. If your not on Strava, sign up. It's virtual power estimator is pretty good for climbs and you'll need that piece of information. Ride a sustained climb and review the Strava data (https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216919427-How-to-Get-Power-for-Your-Rides). Next plug-in the info on http://www.cyclingpowerlab.com/PowerSpeedScenarios.aspx for the climbing portion of the event. On flats, use your current pace and estimate time required for flat section of the event. Add it all up and you'll have estimate of your average pace based on current abilities. Use that as the basis to formula you event specific training for each leg. Focus on the climb because that the majority of the time sink. Hold the flat legs at your target pace and adjust pace for the climbing leg to meet up. Don't forget to discount for the descents. Hit the hills and train to ride comfortably at that target pace over the distance (hill repeats if you can't mimic the distance). Part two of the training is to mimic the flats. Get to a point where you can ride comfortably at above your target pace for the longest continues flat portion of the route. Space out the mixing the two with the week prior as the final dish. It should be shorter in distance than the actual. The best would be to ride the entire course before the event. If you can do something in the neighborhood of 70-80%, you should do fine. I had roughly 6 months train and complete my first century+ of the year, 124 miles at 115ft/mile. My longest ride during the training period was only 68 miles at 70ft/mile but I have a few back to back weekend of 4+ hours on the saddle. Biggest week was 5/4. My ride ended up to be a 12 hour crawl but I finished. Tums was instrumental in keeping the cramps at bay the last three hours. I had eight tabs but wish I carried more.

Ben_Likes_Beer wrote: »

Hey, thanks for all the response guys, I'm taking it all on board and it will be helpful.
I will post updates here as my training progresses and let you all know how I'm getting on.

Here is the course profile.

The elevation profile doesn't appear too scary but I would suggest trying to get some regular hilly rides in advance of the ride. With 6 months you should be fine and a target pace of 24 km/h is attainable (definitely would swap out the tires for something with lower rolling resistance)

Ben_Likes_Beer wrote: »

The most uncomfortable thing so far is the butt pain from the saddle (whoever designed these things must have been a saddist) so padded shorts are going to be on my shopping list at some point.

I just posted a similar thing on bikeforums.net (lots of great info over there by the way), but if you live somewhere that has an bike shop that allows you to try out saddles before you buy them do opt for that option. There's no way that I would have been able to get through my century ride had I been using either of my previous saddles, they were just that uncomfortable for me. Also know that while everyone has an opinion on what the most comfortable saddle is, it is also extremely individual.

kcjchang your comments lead me to a Wikipedia article about glcogen. Does this mean I shouldn't be eating at all during my 3 hour rides:...

I'll typically eat on rides that are at least around 3 hours and don't really worry about how much I'm eating after. Unless you are an elite athlete or have medical issues that involve needing to make sure you are eating enough of specific types of food (diabetes for instance) I don't know that it's worth worrying much about how much or little you eat during a ride vs how much you eat after until it becomes an issue. Yes make sure you're eating and drinking enough, but it's really not that complicated unless other issues are at play (at which point it can become very complicated. Just pay attention to your body. I typically eat a five miles into a ride that will be at least 2:45. Some people may think that's too early but it works for me. I don't do anything particularly special afterword. Depending on where I am riding I'll probably get a few arepas (with no cheese because I don't like most dairy products) but yeah - nothing special.

I've done long rides four weekends in a row now so wondering if I should have a rest next weekend.

If I were to take a rest week in your position, I would be more inclined to not decrease the length of the long ride, but rather the shorter ones. If anything I would be more inclined to just increase decrease the intensity.

Here's the link to the training plans......
https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/events/training-zone/cycling-training-zone/cycling-training-schedule

Worth scanning the various parts of the cycle event section of their website as they organise a lot of mass participation events and have good support from British Cycling.

Other bits and pieces....

• Yes you should be eating on 3hr rides, don't wait until you are fatigued. Sports drinks are not surprisingly very appropriate during long duration exercise (hydration, energy & electrolytes).
• Your long ride is the most important ride of your training week, it's the last thing I would drop.
• Padded shorts should be very high on your priorities. Getting sore is very demotivating and ruins what should be an enjoyable part of your week.

Ben_Likes_Beer wrote: »

160 days might sound like a lot but it's only 22 weekends, or 22 long training rides until the event

For what it's worth, at least some of us that are saying or implying that 5+ months is more than enough time are people who have ridden at least one century (as in 100mi, not a metric century) and in some cases nearly 200.