Are we there yet, Daddy?: TRAINING

I have been asked by a few people (OK, only two so far but both are living and over the age of five) to post some information on training for a cross country ride.

Since people deciding to undertake a cross country bicycle tour are obviously already cyclists they will usually have a training routine or at the very least already be riding a number of times a week for exercise. Since the trip is not a bicycle stage race, one's preparation should be geared towards comfort on the bike while riding long rides.

Hopping on your bike and doing 50-60 miles when all you have ever done is 20 miles is certainly do-able and usually easy enough for anyone. The problem is that you won't feel much like repeating that effort the next day and the next and the next. Your legs might be sore and your butt most certainly will.

Riding long distances daily, IE Bicycle Touring, needs you to be able to handle the effort of pedaling fifty to a hundred miles without discomfort day after day for weeks on end.

My normal daily/weekly training is not usually for trips. I try to ride a minimum of 100 miles a week and feel a lot less guilty (not to mention lighter) if I can do 140-150 a week just to stay in shape. I would like to ride six days a week but things come up and I find that I usually only manage five and some weeks less than that. Unless I have a trip coming up, my usual "training" is only for exercise with no specific distance, goal or dates in mind. I try to do two days of intervals (sprints), one really hard ride, two medium intensity rides, one easy day and a day off.

Training for the coast to coast ride will obviously be different. While I will still do at least one day of intervals I will add to my list at least one day a week (today being 9+ weeks to departure) with a ride of at least 50-60 miles and preferably 70-100. My "go to ride" for long distances here in South Florida is to head from my house up A1A on the beach to Palm Beach and back. Depending on how far I go before I turn around I can easily do a 70+ mile ride. My dilemma is that, right now, during South Florida's famous Snow Bird filled "season" the traffic on A1A is pretty, uh, "interesting." Or, as the Brits might say, "Sporting"....

So every week or two from now till the start of the trip I will try to ride one of the longer paved bike/Rail-to-Trails paths that we have here in Florida. By doing a round trips on the Pinellas, West Orange, Van Fleet, Suncoast etc trails I can do rides of any length on a paved trail with no cars. Great training and kinda like taking a bunch of mini vacations to train for my "real" vacation... Makes sense, right? Right??.

Time wise, my interval days are only an hour+, the hard and moderate rides will now increase from about 1:30 to 2 hours and the long ride will be about 4 hours longer than the Medium ride it replaces. So the hours a week I spend cycling won't change all that much, considering.

Also, since we have only a few tall bridges to train on in place of real hills and certainly no mountains in Florida, I have set up my old Bianchi on an indoor trainer, with the front wheel elevated and I'll play some good Tacx cycling videos of some of the hardest bike race climbs on Earth: Mt Ventoux, Alpe d'Huez, the Stelvio, etc on the 52" LCD TV in a silly attempt to get in at least some pretend climbing three or four times a week before I leave. Don't laugh! It actually works!!!

Obviously I want to do the ride from San Diego at an easy pace. There are group rides across the USA that will do the trip in FAR fewer days but those guys are doing back to back to back days of well over 100 miles and it is a "virtual" race to them. Personally I don't think I'd be able to see much of the country doing that.

Our slower paced trip will have sag stops every 20 miles or so where the staff will stop along our route and supply us with bottle refills and fruit etc. Our cue sheet for each day will also list good places to stop for lunch that might be along the route. We'll have a chance to get off the bike and stretch and sit. Lots easier than riding straight thru to anyplace in a hurry.

What am I doing in actual miles and training? Well today I just returned from a 31 mile ride at Pompano Airpark. It's a nice 4.42 mile long bike path that runs around the Pompano general aviation airport. 31 miles is 7 laps which can get a bit boring and tedious at times especially if the other path users are not knowledgeable about shared path use. But it gets the job done and keeps me out of the holiday traffic of South Florida. I can stay safely on the path or if I get really bored with the supposed 15MPH speed limit on the bike path (which happens with surprising frequency I admit) I can hop out onto the bike lane on Federal Highway then down 10th and crank it up to 25+ mph for a couple of miles to get it out of my system and I can do intervals that way and even long rides if I don't mind seeing the same sights over and over again...

Anyway, I'll post an abbreviated training log to this training page if there is any interest.

Here is where I'd LIKE to train!