Explanation of century training programme in C+

Russell160

I am a relative newbie and am planning my first 100 mile sportive in summer. I'm booked into the Cheshire Cat this month, the 66 mile route. I can currently manage 50. Planning the 100 mile Pendle Pedal in August. I'm 47 and a stone overweight, which I'm working on .
My little eyes lit up at this month's (April) Cycling Plus with a training programme for a century on page 107. But basically I cant make sense of it.
What does Recovery mean? is this what you do for the last hour of your main ride? Or a separate ride.? Does tempo relate to pace on main ride or the recovery ride. Am v confused.
The distances eg 50 miles: is this total per week (surely not?) or one big ride.

Alternatively, can anyone point me in the direction of a simple training plan that is comprehensible.

I currently commute 20 miles each day so would ideally like to make this a training ride.

softlad

'recovery' typically refers to a separate ride..

alien8

I think their plan means:

The Long & Steady ride is your main ride for building endurance.

The Recovery ride is the day after and should be easy/no effort.

Add the Tempo/Hills sessions in on other days to build strength. Have a rest day after these sessions.

The Long & Steady ride is distance based. The other rides are time/effort based.

If you Google for training for a century you'll find lots of training plans. Don't get too hung-up on it all - modify things to fit in with your time on the bike. Build your endurance ride up each week - if you can ride 75/80% of your target distance reasonably comfortably then you should be fine.

Mettan

Russell160 wrote:

I am a relative newbie and am planning my first 100 mile sportive in summer. I'm booked into the Cheshire Cat this month, the 66 mile route. I can currently manage 50. Planning the 100 mile Pendle Pedal in August. I'm 47 and a stone overweight, which I'm working on .
My little eyes lit up at this month's (April) Cycling Plus with a training programme for a century on page 107. But basically I cant make sense of it.
What does Recovery mean? is this what you do for the last hour of your main ride? Or a separate ride.? Does tempo relate to pace on main ride or the recovery ride. Am v confused.
The distances eg 50 miles: is this total per week (surely not?) or one big ride.

Alternatively, can anyone point me in the direction of a simple training plan that is comprehensible.

I currently commute 20 miles each day so would ideally like to make this a training ride.

Just had a quick look at the 100 miler - looks like its got over 10,000 ft of climbing - this is a hard Sportive Russ - personally, to try and tackle this at a "reasonable pace" you might want to do a couple of 60-70 milers with 5000-6000 ft of climbing in the build up to the Sportive (the Cheshire Cat 66 miler (just under 5000ft) seems ideal) - that's in addition to your 20 mile commute a day - maybe you could make your commute a bit more Hilly (if it isn't already?) ?

andy_wrx

You'll find the Pendle Pedal a lot harder than the Cheshire Cat - it's rather overlooked compared to some more famous ones, but is a stiff sportive, particularly when you start doing Nick of Pendle and the other steep bits which follow it after 80 or 85 miles.
- the first year I did it, I got to the last feedstop in Clitheroe and thought 'only 15 miles to go now, I'll be finished in an hour !'...err no I wasn't...

But on the other hand, it's rather later in the year (August ?), so you have plenty of time to get ready for it and you should be fitter by then than you will be at the end of this month for the Cheshire Cat - get round the Cat 66miler and you'll manage the PP 100miler too.

I reckon that if you're doing a 20 mile commute each day, that's 100 miles a week in its own right and will give you an excellent fitness base - the C+ training plan is for someone who's not riding to work each day, whose only riding is that in the plan.

You will need to do some longer rides at the weekend - your 20 daily miles is presumably 10 each way ? Go out at the weekend and do some longer stuff, up to 70+ miles or whatever it says in the plan : come event day you need to be ready to do 100 miles distance and also to spend upto 8 hours on the bike, so you need long-endurance stuff in addition to your 2 x 10 a day.
And do this somewhere hilly : where are you - NorthWest somewhere ? Head for Peak District, Lakes, Pennines, whatever's handy for you.

That means riding 6 days a week, which means you can't do extra rides for these recovery, tempo, etc : the training plan assumes that's all you're riding, but you're doing your commuting, so your commuting will need to cover these other rides.

Riding 6 days a week you risk burnout/overtraining, so you need to treat most of your commutes as easy/recovery rides : recovery means 'very easy', hardly any pressure on the pedals, no hills, little easy gears to spin rather than pushing big ones - let your body recover from the longer or harder sessions.
If you treat each commute, 5 days a week, as a hard training session and add on a long hard one at the weekend and you'll have problems...

As for fitting-in the tempo or speed sessions, that depends what your commute's actually like - rural, part-rural-part-urban, city centre ? Lots of stop-start at traffic lights or pretty flowing ?
My commute is half-and-half, so I can get some short-sharp speedwork sprinting between holdups at traffic lights and junctions in town, then once out onto rural roads I can get some steady-state tempo speed.

Bronzie

You'll find an explanation of training zones here:
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/articles/ ... evels.aspx

Basically they go:
Level 1 - Active recovery - very easy pace for recovering from previous hard training sessions
Level 2 - Endurance - "all-day pace"
Level 3 - Tempo - sort of pace you can hold for around 2 hrs max
Level 4 - Lactate Threshold - typically 1 hour time trial pace
Level 5 - VO2 max - short intervals 3-8 mins
Level 6 - Anaerobic capacity - short intervals 3 mins max
Level 7 - Neuromuscular power - flat out sprints c. 10-30 secs

Russell160

Thanks for all your informative and detailed replies, makes sense now.
My commute is mainly gentle rural, but I can fit in some detours with hills (I live in Colne, Lancashire) so I can mix and match demanding rides with recoveries.
Thanks for the tips on the sportives: yes, I didn't fancy the 100 mile Cheshire Cat as all the climbs look stacked towards the end. I'm cautiously optimistic about the 66. The Pendle Pedal is a)on my home turf and b) a big ask, but I've got time to build up to it. Should be 14 lbs less by August. That's the theory anyway. Thanks again. What a great site this is.

chill123

recovery means not stressing your body/muscles. you can do this by either doing nothing, or preferably doing a short very light workout/ride. getting the right amount of recovery is one of the most important things you can do.

skavanagh.bikeradar

Hello, I've not seen the plan of which you speak, but I do a 20 mile round trip commute and last year did a load of sportives. What I did was use the turbo trainer a couple of evenings (straight off the commute and onto the turbo) to do a couple of regular sessions . One of these was an interval session working at threshold on the 'efforts' and the other a hard tempo ride or 'sweet spot' (search this forum for what this means). I'd then try and get out for at least a couple of hours on a Saturday morning and occassional Sunday rides of 3 or 4 hrs.

As the weather got better (about now-ish) I tried to extend a commute home leg into a 40 miler at 'sweet spot' effort. I always attacked every hill I came across.

I rode commutes mainly by going easy in the mornings and TT pace on the way home for about 20 minutes, the rest an incremental warm up using the rear cassette to crank through the gears over a few minutes until hitting my TT gear and hammering it and then easing off near home. Obviously if I was going to do a longer commute home or a turbo session I'd back off and maybe do 10 minutes at TT pace and save myself for the rest of the session.

Listen to your body. You will know when you are tired or over tired so take note and ease off for a couple of days, noodle into work and don't worry about it. I neglected this a couple of times and ended up experiencing 'wooden legs syndrome' while out on a regular 2 hour ride where everything was a struggle and hills seemed crazily steeper than usual. Also your mind will go stale if you overdo it and you'll be finding excuses to duck a session or take it easier than you ought or cutting it short etc. Take note and ammend accordingly.

Most of all take time to look around when riding. Sometimes you forget why you are doing it so take stock sniff the breeze and enjoy it.