I was only in a position to start serious training for LEJOG around 6 months before the planned start date, following a spot of surgery which kept me off the bike for the latter part of 2013. I used the time off the bike to have a think about what the aims of a training plan should be, and what I needed to do in terms of physical preparation in order to meet the challenge of LEJOG.
Key priorities
These were quite simple: time in the saddle, to lose weight, to learn to climb efficiently when seated, and to have stronger legs and core.
Training history
I am now in my mid-50's, and have been cycling since my early teens. I raced in my teens and early twenties, then took up running across a range of distances from 10k to marathon, mixed in with some mountain biking, until my late 30's when I started riding on the road again. In 2006 I took part in a charity ride from London to Paris over 4 days, and in 2007 I rode the cyclosportive which used the 120 mile route of the 1st road stage of the 2007 Tour de France from London to Canterbury. Getting round the latter made me think that riding the Etape du Tour on the other side of the Channel might be a challenge worth taking on at some point, so in late 2008 I signed up for the 2009 Etape which finished up the giant of Provence, the awesome Mont Ventoux. I put together a training plan based on the principles I had used when training for marathons in the past, and slogged away through the winter of 2008/9, which was one the coldest winters of recent years, and then rode a number of UK sportives during the spring and early summer as part of the plan.
Nothing can prepare you for Mont Ventoux; I suffered more than I thought was possible, a combination of heat, poor nutrition, and under-training. However, I got round, and decided that if I ever did anything similar again I would learn from the experience and apply the lessons learned to my preparation.
The training
Taking note from my Ventoux experience, I decided the key priorities for my plan (as above) and put together a plan on an Excel spreadsheet, my weapon of choice for this sort of exercise.
The plan is here in Dropbox:
Please contact me if you cannot access this and I will email it to you.
The plan was quite a simple one; ride my bike consistently for 6 months or so, and gradually increase the distance ridden until I could ride 2 back to back rides of 90 miles or so, based on the longest ride I expected to do on LEJOG of around 100 miles. This plan would be backed up by a diet, the goal of which was to lose around around 14 lbs/6 kg, plus off the bike exercises to build leg strength and maintain the core.
I did look at some training plans on the web, but they all seemed to require either riding to and from work or evening rides, which were simply not an option given my working patterns. Let me explain: I live in central London, around 4 miles from the office; we have no bike parking at work (none), and my job requires the sort of hours which means (a) I already get up at 6am (b) I don't get home in time to get out for a ride and (c) really do not want to ride in central London in the peak of the rush hour unless I have to, which I don't.
The other factors that I had to build in to the plan were (a) my social life, in the shape of concerts and dance performances, most of which had been booked a year in advance and (b) a number of work commitments which fell on weekends.
So, I was left with riding on Saturday and Sunday, putting in a mid-week turbo session, and doing daily exercises to develop leg and core strength. In terms of dietary adjustment, this took the form of substituting protein shakes for post-ride cakes and going out for dinner less.
What else? In order to create the illusion that I wasn't spending all my weekends cycling, we agreed that we should book in a few weekends away and I would cycle to and from the location, while my wife drove there and back.
All the above gave me a 6 month plan, which was built around known events on the calendar, and incorporated 3 rest weekends within the plan, plus a 2 week taper before the start of LEJOG.
The plan was monitored via a Garmin Edge 705, to give me mileage data plus practice at navigation using pre-planned routes, and heart rate information. The latter was important in that I planned to stick to a maximum heart rate of 136 bpm, which equates to the top end of my fat burning zone. My guru for this training was the ultradistance runner Stu Mittleman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Mittleman), whose writing contains much valuable insight for the long distance athlete.
Analysis
Key priorities
These were quite simple: time in the saddle, to lose weight, to learn to climb efficiently when seated, and to have stronger legs and core.
Training history
I am now in my mid-50's, and have been cycling since my early teens. I raced in my teens and early twenties, then took up running across a range of distances from 10k to marathon, mixed in with some mountain biking, until my late 30's when I started riding on the road again. In 2006 I took part in a charity ride from London to Paris over 4 days, and in 2007 I rode the cyclosportive which used the 120 mile route of the 1st road stage of the 2007 Tour de France from London to Canterbury. Getting round the latter made me think that riding the Etape du Tour on the other side of the Channel might be a challenge worth taking on at some point, so in late 2008 I signed up for the 2009 Etape which finished up the giant of Provence, the awesome Mont Ventoux. I put together a training plan based on the principles I had used when training for marathons in the past, and slogged away through the winter of 2008/9, which was one the coldest winters of recent years, and then rode a number of UK sportives during the spring and early summer as part of the plan.
Nothing can prepare you for Mont Ventoux; I suffered more than I thought was possible, a combination of heat, poor nutrition, and under-training. However, I got round, and decided that if I ever did anything similar again I would learn from the experience and apply the lessons learned to my preparation.
The training
Taking note from my Ventoux experience, I decided the key priorities for my plan (as above) and put together a plan on an Excel spreadsheet, my weapon of choice for this sort of exercise.
The plan is here in Dropbox:
Please contact me if you cannot access this and I will email it to you.
The plan was quite a simple one; ride my bike consistently for 6 months or so, and gradually increase the distance ridden until I could ride 2 back to back rides of 90 miles or so, based on the longest ride I expected to do on LEJOG of around 100 miles. This plan would be backed up by a diet, the goal of which was to lose around around 14 lbs/6 kg, plus off the bike exercises to build leg strength and maintain the core.
I did look at some training plans on the web, but they all seemed to require either riding to and from work or evening rides, which were simply not an option given my working patterns. Let me explain: I live in central London, around 4 miles from the office; we have no bike parking at work (none), and my job requires the sort of hours which means (a) I already get up at 6am (b) I don't get home in time to get out for a ride and (c) really do not want to ride in central London in the peak of the rush hour unless I have to, which I don't.
The other factors that I had to build in to the plan were (a) my social life, in the shape of concerts and dance performances, most of which had been booked a year in advance and (b) a number of work commitments which fell on weekends.
So, I was left with riding on Saturday and Sunday, putting in a mid-week turbo session, and doing daily exercises to develop leg and core strength. In terms of dietary adjustment, this took the form of substituting protein shakes for post-ride cakes and going out for dinner less.
What else? In order to create the illusion that I wasn't spending all my weekends cycling, we agreed that we should book in a few weekends away and I would cycle to and from the location, while my wife drove there and back.
All the above gave me a 6 month plan, which was built around known events on the calendar, and incorporated 3 rest weekends within the plan, plus a 2 week taper before the start of LEJOG.
The plan was monitored via a Garmin Edge 705, to give me mileage data plus practice at navigation using pre-planned routes, and heart rate information. The latter was important in that I planned to stick to a maximum heart rate of 136 bpm, which equates to the top end of my fat burning zone. My guru for this training was the ultradistance runner Stu Mittleman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Mittleman), whose writing contains much valuable insight for the long distance athlete.
My starting point for the plan was riding 100 miles in a weekend, stretching this goal gradually until I was able to ride for at least 70 miles on one of the days, then moving on to the point where I could manage 2 long ride of 70 miles plus on consecutive days. The reality was that I did not put 2 back to back long rides together until week 14, when I cycled to and from Harwich, and after that it was fairly hit and miss until week 20, or 6 weeks before the ride, when I finally got in some long rides.
So what went well?
The single biggest shock to me between training and the ride itself was sitting in the saddle for extended periods of time. Riding in central London with traffic, junctions, stop signs and the like means that my training rides were punctuated with frequent stops and getting out the saddle, so it was a huge shock to set off each day on LEJOG and not have to stop or get out of the saddle for 20 or 30 miles. This led to more soft tissue soreness from the saddle than I had experienced during similar length training rides, and was a problem toward the middle of LEJOG, after which it did ease off a little.
Conclusions
So did the plan work? Overall, yes, it did. I was able to cope with each day and the cumulative effects of the ride as well as I could have hoped. I was not absolutely destroyed at the end of any day nor at the finish.
The key factors were pacing, nutrition and a training plan.
So what went well?
- Having a plan was essential; without this, there would have been no sense of progression and it would have been very easy just to have an easy day or not go out if it was raining or cold.
- Sticking to a fat-burning zone also worked and had 2 clear benefits; firstly, I lost around 12lbs/5kg, and secondly I adapted to working at in that zone to the extent that average heart rate on most days of the ride was around 106-109 bpm.
- Over the course of the training, I learned to climb sitting down in a low gear, something which came in very useful when pacing my self up some of the long climbs on the route.
- I also learned how to pace myself during the course of each day so that I always finished with just a little bit left in the tank; this was a direct result of pacing all of my training rides so that "blowing up" was minimised.
- My daily exercise regime focusing on core and leg strength paid off, in that I was able to cope with both long and short climbs without going into the red for extended periods of time.
- The training plan gave me every opportunity to learn what worked in terms of nutrition on the bike, and meant that I knew exactly what to eat and drink and when. Practise made perfect in this case.
- With the benefit of hindsight, my training plan was a little ambitious in terms of getting in the long rides and maintaining any sort of ride/life balance. Top tip: forget about a social life.
- Stuck to my plan for a regular, mid-week, interval session on the turbo. It just didn't happen, and might have made a few of the more difficult times on the ride a little less difficult.
The single biggest shock to me between training and the ride itself was sitting in the saddle for extended periods of time. Riding in central London with traffic, junctions, stop signs and the like means that my training rides were punctuated with frequent stops and getting out the saddle, so it was a huge shock to set off each day on LEJOG and not have to stop or get out of the saddle for 20 or 30 miles. This led to more soft tissue soreness from the saddle than I had experienced during similar length training rides, and was a problem toward the middle of LEJOG, after which it did ease off a little.
Conclusions
So did the plan work? Overall, yes, it did. I was able to cope with each day and the cumulative effects of the ride as well as I could have hoped. I was not absolutely destroyed at the end of any day nor at the finish.
The key factors were pacing, nutrition and a training plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment