A century plus
For anyone who’s interested in cycling stuff –
I’m thinking of riding Waves to Wine in September, the Northern California MS 150 ride. It’s two days, 75 miles each day (in challenging hilly terrain).
I have the book Long Distance Cycling which has several training programs in it for a century, two basic ones and one that’s for second centuries where you want to improve. Is a training program for a century adequate for the MS 150, or is it going to come in too low on giving me the endurance I’ll need for the consecutive days? If any of them might be adequate, would it need to be the more intense one?
Or would I have to find a different training program? Is the MS 150 not a very good first really long-distance goal because it’s longer than a century in aggregate and I should stick to just a century this year?
A century would still be a very major goal for me since my longest mileage in one day so far is 40 miles during last year’s Sequoia Century 50K (which I’ll probably repeat this year since the longer courses still look really intimidating, but we’ll see). The positive thing is I certainly wasn’t completely wiped after that because I hosted a party that same evening, and I’d done little if any real training (riding my bike to work more than usual was about it) so with training it should be easier.
Any thoughts from those of you who’ve attempted some longer distances, or know people who have?
I know at least a couple of people who have done the MS 150 with fairly minimal training and who aren’t nearly as comfortable on a bike as I imagine you are so I would guess that the training for the century would be sufficient for something like the MS 150.
Comment by Kira — April 29, 2008 @ 7:24 pm
The hilly terrain part worries me, but a friend of mine just did the MS150 with her longest ride prior being 65 miles. That’s the longest I’ve ridden too. If the hilliness of the terrain is reasonable, maybe I’ll do Waves to Wine with you :)
In general, I’ve been told that if you’ve ridden half the distance (per sitting) you’ll be able to do the whole thing.
Comment by Carol — April 29, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
Carol, that would be so fun! I’d love to have someone to ride with for WtW. It’s the hills that psych me out too. The Sequoia Century 100K is 6100 feet of climbing which sounds really intimidating. I don’t know what Waves to Wine’s elevation gain is. (The Mt. Tam Double Century is 15000ft!)
Sounds like I should stop trying to psych myself out and get a schedule set up. The nice thing is it looks like most of the distances required for the weekdays in training can be covered by varying my commute route, though I may need to add in some hills. Maybe a few lunchtime rides in Cupertino…
Comment by Alexis — April 30, 2008 @ 5:08 am