Cycling UK has a good post on how to train for a 100Km charity cycle ride, like, just to pull a random example from nowhere, the Bangor Coastal Challenge. It comes from a reader’s question:
…I have decided to get back into cycling and have entered the London to Southend Charity Bike Ride (100Km). I started training at the end of March and now do 3 x 10 miles rides in the week and I’m up to 30 miles at the weekend…
I’m in more or less the same situation. The training plan I devised for myself had me cycling 3 x 20 commuting miles during the week with longer rides at the weekends, recently breaking the 50 mile barrier. The advice given is that if you’re regularly doing 60-70% of the event distance you should be fine on the day.
According to that, I’ll survive Bangor alright. Given that this time last year I couldn’t cycle 5 miles without medical intervention, I’m very pleased that I’m now staring down a 60+ mile ride fully confident of finishing.
My ultimate target (this year) however is the 150Km Lap The Lough challenge. 60% of this distance works out at around 55 miles, which I have only just achieved during my weekend rides and I won’t say is yet easy enough to call “regular”. Cycling 50 miles is still a big deal! I’d really like to add another 10 or 15 miles on to that distance, regularly, before the end of August.
I still have a way to go, but it makes me feel so much better having someone else (who knows what they’re talking about) confirm what I’d cobbled together for myself from various advice sites and forums.
Keep eating and drinking and the miles will soon fly by.
By the sounds of it you’ll easily manage a 100km ride.
It’s also worth making sure you’re riding simular terrain to the ‘big day’. If the 100km ride is hilly then you need to make sure some of your training rides are too!
Eating and drinking are where I fail, I don’t do enough of either!
The 100Km ride I’ve entered is reasonably flat – 1200ft climbing over 62 miles – but I’ve been training in the hills with 50-100% more climbing than I can expect on the day.
Stop thinking of it as 100km but more of the mileage equivalent and it psychologically isn’t as bad John.
As long as you have a great day out, the rain stays away (unlike last years) and if you get tired jump on someones wheel!
We’re of to Donegal for Inishowen 100 that day which will be a bitch.
Yes, “100Km” sounds more impressive than “62.13 miles”!
Normally I do think of distance in miles – I’m old school like that – but the original article was in terms of kilometres, so I kept those units for consistency.