8 Week Training Program – Page 2

SPEED RIDE: Those riders that love the distance, often skip the speed workouts thinking that they need more and more miles to prepare, not speed.  Au contraire my friends.  Speed work will actually help your endurance by raising your lactate threshold, the point at which your legs burn so bad they are screaming for you to stop.  When you raise that threshold, you can peddle longer, harder, and faster before your body gives up.  The goal with speed rides is to do 4 to 6 very hard or maximum effort intervals (a 10 on the 1 to 10 scale) for 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  After you’ve given that maximum effort, recover by doing an easy spin for twice the amount of time as the difficult interval.  As you progress over the weeks, you can add more difficulty by doing these into a headwind or up hills, because let’s face it, no century is completely flat with no wind (ahhh man!).

If you aren’t quite ready for 100 miles, and instead are choosing 20, 40, or 60 miles, the schedule stays the same, just adjust the amount of time and/or miles on the bike.  You’ll still want to complete the three different training rides weekly, simply cut the time and  distance according to the charts on the next page. On the other 4 days, you can choose what works best for you, but it’s always good to rest and cross-train.  You can even do an active recovery on your rest days by adding in a yoga or core class.  Cross-training could include running, swimming, strength training, or anything else you’d enjoy (Zumba anyone?)

Bottom line when it comes to training for a century is to increase your overall mileage week by week.  This will help you avoid injury, burnout, or fatigue.  You will also be able to detect any issues with your bike or other equipment that you would like to change before the big day.  Now, enough talk, let’s get out and ride!

*To figure out your maximum heart rate, take 220 minus your age.  That is your predicted heart rate maximum.  Then take that number and multipy it by the various percentages, i.e. 70% or 80%, etc.  That is the goal for your heart rate for the specific training day.

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