Looking Down The Road

Nine months to go. It isn’t very long, really, when you are looking at the task of training your body to ride a bicycle 75 to 100 miles a day—each day—for a period of a couple of weeks.
There are issues; first, simply putting in the time—the actual hours—or saddle time as we call it. This done, your backside won’t become the biggest of your problems. Second, there is endurance. We are going to push our own weight plus the weight of the bicycle for hours at a time, up and down hills, through wind and weather. We will have to condition our legs, hips, and gluteus maximus to propel the bike along, and we have to condition our core muscles so that the long hours holding ourselves in position don’t exhaust us.
Speaking of exhaustion and endurance brings us to mental endurance. We have to condition our minds as well; we'll have to focus on our goals.
For every journey we take in life, there's a beginning. We know that if we don’t start, we don’t finish.
I am the great procrastinator, and maybe I’m not alone. But today, and each new today, we recommit, and we try not to put off training again until the week after we pedal into New York City.
Ready?

Its cool to start at the beginning. Ride around the block. If that's enough, stop. Tomorrow go around the block again. The next day go around your block and the next block over. Venture out on a greenway. We'll ride the eight hundred miles one mile at a time, so let’s train the same way.

We'll put together some training tips and post them one or two thoughts at a time. Feel free to ask questions and one of us will try our best to answer.

Beth Travers
USA Cycling Certified Coach