How to train for a 300km bike ride under 16 hours?? CYCLISTS ANSWER!!?
i am 16, currently unfit and love riding my bike. i live in melbourne in Australia, and my girlfriend lives in Wodonga, some 300km to the north east. I wish to one day this year ride my bike to Wodonga in one day, prefferably under 16 hours. At the moment i plan to ride my GIANT mountain bike, and bring a pump, spare tubes, water bottles and snacks. i plan to ride along the Hume Highway which is quite flat, but my route is undecided. i just wanted to know if i am being crazy by doing it on a mountain bike considering my time limit. how much training should i do? and what should be diet be? thank you
THIS YEAR - maybe not.
You will need to really seriously train. Not just take a 10 or 15km casual ride a few times a week. You will need to start with basic conditions, riding briskly 20 a day if you can, or what ever distance you can manage. Then start working up from there.
If you really want to do this, get started riding. You have a MTB - ride your MTB, but start training.
Just riding distance won't get you in shape fast enough. As soon as you are managing 15 miles in about 90 minutes or so, you need to step up the intensity part of the time. Start riding intervals - ride very fast and intensely for 1 to 2 km then spin freely for 2 km and repeat 10 times or so. Then start adding a day of hills. Ride a very hilly course, or ride up and down one hill repeatedly.
Within a month or so, you should start getting into a training pattern something like this:
Saturday: Long steady ride for 2 to 3 hours
Sunday: Mixed intensity ride for 2 to 3 hours with steady riding mixed with 2 sets of intervals (5 or 6 sprints per set) separated by some steady riding.
Monday: Interval ride 90 to 120 mins
Tuesday: Steady low intensity ride 60 to 90 mins
Wed: Ride with hills or ride with several sets of hill repeats in it.
Thursday: Steady low intensity ride 60 to 90 mins
Friday - off day
(once you get some real improvement start making some of those Sat. rides into 3 to 4 hour rides, and then 4 to 5 hour rides)
Some people will say you need more off days and maybe they are right, but I am working on the assumption that at least to start you aren't going to be training at anywhere near the intensity and exertion that is going to lead to problems. AND cycling - especially those shorter steady riding days - isn't really all that taxing.
Nutrition: You should work really hard to eat a very balanced and healthy diet to improve recovery and muscle building. Junk food will not fuel your training.
Now - it really is do able. 300 K or 192 miles isn't as impossible as it sounds to some people. The Milan - San Remo is a one day race of 298 KM and is typically finished in a time of around 6 1/2 hours or 7 hours. By the best of the best in the world of course, but still. I have ridden 170 miles in one day, two days in a row in about 12 to 13 hours including breaks for a two day total of 350 miles.
Even if you don't get into amateur racing shape going 300km in one day is going to be about determination more than speed. If you can ride about 100km in about 5 hours (very do able at 20kph or 13mph which is casual riding speed for a rider in good shape) then if you pace yourself, hydrate and get nutrition you can probably go 5 hours / break then 5 hours / break then 5 hours - but you will be pretty far spent by the end. You will feel a lot better if you can ride 100km in about 4 hours (25 kmh or 16mph) at the very least you need to be able to average about 25kmh for at least 50km on a regular basis. That would be my minimum goal.
Now you just aren't going to want to do all this riding on mountain bike. At least you need to get some decent high pressure slick tires for it, but besides being heavy, the riding position isn't aerodynamic. WORSE yet is that fat mountain bike bars only have one hand position, so on these long rides your hands are going to get numb and uncomfortable a lot more. You could put drop bars on the MTB, but better would be to look for or beg for a used road bike.
Also you aren't going to be comfortable doing all this riding in regular street clothes. I'm not a big advocate of expensive cycling clothing, but for hot and long rides cycling shorts and jerseys are far far more comfortable than anything else - although you can start in shorts and t-shirt until you acquire more things.
And on your 300km ride - you'll need more than snacks but you will also be loosing weight and digging deep into your bodies reserves - which is why you need to build up. You will be very tired the next day, but the better shape you are in, the better you will feel. You can't eat enough calories to fuel the ride - your body won't even digest them well when you are using all your blood for riding. You fuel up by training and teaching your muscles to story glycogen and by eating well in general an by eating a bit more than normal the 2 days before the ride. While you are doing this training, by the end, you may be eating 5000 calories a day or more just to maintain - your grocery bill will go up if you ride 2 hours a day!
Are you crazy -yes - but so what? It's your life - have fun - do things - challenge yourself. Don't listen to the pinhead. Yes you are crazy, but you can do this if you want to. Even on the MTB but much easier on a semi-decent road bike.
"Guitar Jam" Jose Feliciano, Carl Perkins Merle Travis
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