Training link | jogle-2014

Training

How much training do you need to do to complete a JOGLE in 10 days? I guess the honest answer is I dont know because I havent done it before, I'll amend this page after i've completed it!

What I can say is I know I will be able to do a 100 mile day and I know i'll be able to do back to back days, why? because we tested it out in training.

If you were to take me as a benchmark, where I cycled quite alot last summer and was reasonably fit for 60 miles, I then never got on a bike from the end of September through to early January 2014. As you can see from the training plan (click to enlarge) I lost the stone and as of the Easter break I was beating my personal best times on all of the training runs I did last year so 4 months was enough to get back to form.

So all I needed to do was return to fitness, probably just out of condition. So if this fits your situation a guide is 4-6 months training and weight optimization. If you haven't been on a biked for 2 years then you will have to work at it for a bit longer I suspect, probably taking a 12 month run at it.

Everyone goes on about the weight of the bike and how many carbon gadgets you can get to reduce the weight but the best way to reduce the weight on a bike is for you to lose it, it's certainly a lot cheaper that way. In the 5 months running up to this ride I lost enough weight to compensate for my panniers and a bit more. John and Chris are both like racing snakes anyway so they didn't have that problem, for them it was all about getting the miles in their legs which of course is equally important. Also vitally important is your confidence and state of mind, I saw John visibly improve after a 3 day trip to the Isle of Wight, you could tell he was more comfortable mentally knowing he could do 3 days on the trot and feel okay after it (don't underestimate that)

The thing with training for this type of trip is the time you need to give to it in order to have a fighting chance of not having a nightmare journey. A friend of mine (iron man competitor) told me that given I had a busy life I should concentrate on interval training, stating that 40 minutes of good intervals is as good as 40 mile road trip? I was dubious about investing in this strategy but it didn't take long to see what he meant as I literally fell off the bike after the first session. By mid February i was sold on it as the weight dropped off (with the aid of a good diet) and I felt pretty fit. Losing weight is easy, stop eating sugar and bread, don't drink alcohol do some exercise and it'll disappear before your eyes .... all the other diets are just marketing nonsense.

The proof was in the pudding as we hit the road for the first time on 1st March and delivered a 92 miler then another 55 miles the next day and I felt not too bad, so the intervals on the Turbo worked. I'd recommend them, especially during what turned out to be the wettest and windiest winter for 100 years.

After that it was just road miles, aiming to do about 750 miles of training before the start of the JOGLE, which for me, I sincerely hope, should be enough to get me through (i'll update this statement after i've finished!!)