Spring Training

65 mile Tune up on Sunday, 26 April
125 mile Audax Ride on Sunday, 24 May


The single most important element to training for the 65 mile Tune Up ride and the full 125 mile Audax ride is… Saddle time!

That’s right, time on the bike counts for more than any other factor. In preparing for this kind of riding, consistency trumps intensity. In other words, it doesn’t much matter how hard you ride, but rather how often and how long.

What’s ideal and what’s minimal? Ideally, I’d like to see you spending 10 to 15 hours a week on the bike. More, that should be spread out over the entire week. That ideal week would consist of a couple of short rides in the hour and a half to two hour range, a couple of medium length, three hour rides, one long ride of four to five hours, and at least one day of rest and recovery.

Most of us have two major challenges to attaining this kind of effort. The first is finding the time amid all the other things we do. (I’ve written extensively about that in this blog.) The second challenge is weather.

As the weather in the last week might indicate, “Spring” in our climate is not a gentle, bucolic, paradise. No, we get weather. Weather with character! A daily temperature swing of about 20 degrees is normal, and a 35 degree excursion, is not unusual. We’ll see that today. That means we can go from freezing, in the morning to quite temperate in the afternoon. It also means we can see heavy rain, and pop-up thunderstorms almost any time. We do get a lot more clear weather than the nasty sort, but stretches of several days of rain aren’t exactly unheard of.

What’s a body to do? First, be prepared to be flexible. You may need to take a forced rest day due to unusually nasty weather. It’s rare that this happens more than once a week.. So a planned long day on Wednesday, might be swapped for a planned rest day on Friday.

Another strategy of great use involves equipment. If you don’t already have them, get a rain jacket and a helmet cover. During Spring Training in north Georgia, your rain gear is the first thing you pack. I might add, have a cap with a bill on it with you at all times. A ball cap or a cycling cap will do. The cap is worn under your helmet during rainy weather. It doesn’t help to keep your head any drier, but it does wonders in keeping the rain out of your eyes. (Incidentally, the visor on your helmet is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. It’s too high up, and too open. It does some good, but not much.)

So be prepared for rain, be prepared to deliberately go out in rain, and go out and ride as much as you can. Keep doing that until a couple days before the Tune Up ride. Give yourself a couple days off before the 65 miler, and use that as your long ride that week. Continue the program until a week before the Audax Ride, and you’ll be fine.