i’m “training” for a 600 mile +hella climbing bikepacking race in july. at this point not doing much other than hitting the trainer once or twice a week for shorter interval sessions and trying to get outside for longer, slower rides + climbing once or twice a week. also been trying to do yoga 5x a week to improve mobility + hip flexors
i’ve never trained for anything for real though and truly don’t know where to start. everyone has recommended hiring a coach but it’s a little outside the budget at the moment. do any of yall smart people have any suggestions?
Watch Dylan Johnson on YouTube. Basically do 2 very hard rides (includes zone 4+ intervals) and 3 easy rides (zone 2) a week. The hard rides are more important if you need to miss some days. Make every 4th week a rest week where you replace the hard days with very easy rides (zone 1). Week 1 should be easier than week 3 (most people do this by adding a little time — eg week1 10 hours total training, week2 12, week3 14). If you have a way to measure power, test your power after every rest week and reset your zones.
signing up for a platform like training peaks, today’s plan, etc might give you enough data to track your training without a coach. as petr said, you’ll want to slowly add volume. it’s easiest to track volume in TSS - so if you can at the very least train with HR, you can use that to track volume (assuming training peaks does HR TSS, I know today’s plan will).
i would suggest an off the shelf training plan, but most aren’t going to cater to your type of event. likely what’s going to help most is just to add some volume week by week - train in blocks so you schedule in rest weeks. then when you can, take some 3-day weekends to do back to back big miles to get your body adjusted to multi-day big miles. time in the saddle can be done on the weekends, but you need back to back ride days to figure out your fueling and pacing over that type of endurance event. pacing in a race is different than just a weekend bike pack with friends, so the increase intensity means you need to eat a lot more and i suspect that simulating that on training rides will be pretty crucial.
how many days do you expect to be riding for the 600 miles?
me, personally? i only weigh about 125 soaking wet. i’m 5’8” and i don’t exercise enough and eat a lot of junk but i am definitely 125 lbs. says it right there
You shoulda started training last year. Build volume as much as possible. Start doing a long ride once a week and stretch it out as much as you can. Do you have a power meter?
