Alpharetta Century Ride Report
35
Member
68 days
The Dude posted 9 weeks ago.
Congrats on the ride! The only trick I know to doing better in longer rides is to do more riding. Your body will adapt rather quickly to doing longer rides as long as you stick with the training. If you want to get better at doing 60 mile rides on the weekend, then you probably want to do about 3 rides during the week of about 20-30 miles each. If you want to move up to a 100 miler on a weekend, I have found that doing 20-40 mile rides during the week and then doing longer charity rides on the weekends is a good strategy, at least if you live near a large metropolitan area where you usually can find a nearby charity ride every weekend (except in the winter). Lots of the rides have options for the distance that you want to ride, so you can use them as your long weekend ride and do longer ones as you feel up to it. Personally, I find it easier (at least mentally) to do a long ride with an organized group like that because they have lots of food and water along the way and the routes are usually safe (or safer).
-Tod
Had my first four plus hour endurance event on Saturday. It was a 64 mile ride and it was quite an experience. The ride started at 8AM. I finished at 4:18 with an average of 15.6 MPH. The elevation change through the North GA mountains was about 5200 feet from start to finish. There were breaks every 20 miles and I felt the best between mile 18-36. It was about 37 degrees at the start so the warm up was brutally long. From mile 50 to 64 I was riding (if that is what you could call it) with another fellow that my group picked up on the first 36 miles. It was just the two of us and we were suffering. I have heard this word used quite a bit around the cycling community but this weekend I finally understood what it meant. My average weekend ride is 36 miles but I have not been doing much interval work or hill work for that matter. This ride kicked my behind and gave me quite a bit of perspective. The half ironman is a year away so I have my work cut out for me. Learned quite a bit with this ride. I finished with 4 advil and came home to my little ones and played lets ice daddy's knees. After 30 minutes of ice and a tub soak I was good to go. Felt great in the evening and went out to dinner with friend feeling rock solid. Only moderate soreness today. The ride staff was great about nutrition and hydration. Would love to hear any input on Century riding....suffering and getting to 100 mile mark ready to run a marathon. Thanks people.
DK