Kassy

Hiya,

So I agreed to do this ride from Lhasa in Tibet, via everest base camp, to kathmandu next year. It's mainly on hard packed roads so not single track, it takes a month and so figured it counts as touring even though it needs a mountain bike.

Mainly wondering if anyone has done it before and give any advice... and also any advice on training for altitude touring?

Right now I'm really unfit, quite overweight, and I've never been a very good cyclist although I have previously done Ironman and cycled across cambodia and myanmar - it wasn't pretty but I got there.

I would actually like to do this trip properly and have a seriously good crack at it. I just seem to be a bit overwhelmed really... how much riding do I really need to be doing at this point for example? How do I write a training program for this?

I only have a road bike at the moment so been riding that... since the riding position is quite different on a mountain bike, how much use is training on the road bike?

Also, I had my ankle replaced 3 years ago (I'm only 29 now), and need another operation in july. So that will take out a few months for the recovery - will be back to swim training for the fitness asap and also doing weights and use this time to try and build general fitness and lose some of the weight....

I was feeling ok about it... I think it'll be hard, but a great challenge, however, yesterday I just started to freak out a bit that I don't really know what I'm doing or even how much I need to be doing.

Any help would be great!