For what it is worth, I attempted to follow the Tour de Wyoming 10 week beginner training schedule. If you do a web search on century training schedule you should find 8 and 12 week schedules too. I was only sorta faithful to the plan even though my wife, "Coach Lisa", tried her best to make me execute to plan. I know I did more because of her "nagging" than I would have done without it, so I highly recommend enlisting a family member or friend as a coach. Even better if they want to do it too, then you can beat on each other to get to it! If you want to see how I actually did the numbers are below, the first number is the target, the number after the "/" is what I actually did. Because training had to start before the Illinois riding season begins (for most of us anyway) the weekday numbers were mostly done on a trainer in the basement. The last few week's numbers include the 10 miles a day I do as a bike/train commuter, on days when the weather allowed that. On one Friday when I had plenty of hours in for the week, I decided what the heck, knocked off early, and rode my folding bike the 22 miles home!





Week__M-Easy__Tu-Pace__W-Off__Th-Brisk__F-Pace__Sa-Pace_Su-Off_______Total
1______10/12____12/10____0/0____14/14____12/12__20/27____0/15_______68/90
2______10/0_____13/14____0/0____15/15____13/15__25/34____0/0________76/78
3______10/12____15/15____0/0____17/10____15/15__30/17____0/0________87/69
4______11/15____16/17____0/0____19/0_____16/18__35/41____0/0________97/91
5______12/15____18/0_____0/15___20/18____18/0___35/43____0/0________103/91
6______13/26____19/25____0/10___23/0_____19/0___40/0_____0/43_______114/104
7______14/10____20/10____0/13___25/0_____20/0___40/55____0/0________119/88
8______16/10____20/10____0/0____27/22____20/25__55/0_____0/40_______138/107
9______17/10____20/10____0/0____30/0_____30/30__65/80____0/0________162/130
10_____19/0_____20/10____0/0____30/0_____10/0___5/0______100/101.22__184/111.22
___________________________________________________________________1148/959.22


Obviously I am not an expert on this but then a newbie's perspective is always valuable to other newbies. As I have said the one thing my training lacked was experience with the heat that showed up just in time for century day. So you definitely want to do some riding and eating and drinking in the heat as you train to get experience with how much you can eat/drink and what you can eat/drink in those conditions. On a ride this long it is important to replace as many calories as you can (you won't be able to replace anywhere near all) to keep your energy up and it is vital to replace both your water and your electrolytes (again, as much as you can) to avoid heat prostration. I honestly had never partaken of Gatorade before my century ride and probably would have done much better if I had made it at least half my fluid intake. There are other sports drink products that may work better for you, I recommend that you start experimenting to find what you like best. The other major mistake I made even though I had been warned about it was to experiment with my diet on century day. I had plenty of power bars to eat and I knew that they had worked well for me on the 80 mile ride (which, granted, was a lot cooler) but what did I do? I ate one power bar and then sampled all the goodies available at the rest stops! I ended up bloated and unable to absorb much of anything in the way of food or water and I can tell you right now that is not a path you want to follow my lead on. So determine what fluid and food diet works well for you in the heat during your training and stick to what works on century day!! Wait till you cross the finish line then you can pig out on whatever looks good to you.


If you sift through the long distance riding section here on BF you can get some pointers on what to try in terms of diet. Web searches on sports nutrition will turn up a lot of information too. The Hammer Nutrition web site has some general information too though naturally it is heavy on advertisements for their own products which are perfect in every way, of course. It seems to me that a lot of cyclists use the Hammer products and they may be well worth considering. I have not used them so I neither endorse nor criticize them. I may try them myself this summer because I do have trouble digesting solid food in the heat, whether exercising or just laying about, and it may be that their liquid energy drinks could work quite well for me. Doubtless there are other brands to consider, I am not trying to be a Hammer salesman here!


Good luck, mjwithtwins and any lurkers tuning in, with a bit of work you can do it!


Ken