Hi!
I accidentally bought a road racer 3 weeks ago - first time I have been on a bike since high-school. I am working in the north of Norway for 6 months and thought this would be a good way to get a look at the scenery around here, its simply stunning! The first two weeks I did five 30 mile rides and decided to enter a local race just for the heck of it. After that race I have not been able to think about anything other than bikes - it was great! This week I made two 70 mile trips and two shorter ones for a total of 220 miles. My butt officially hurts.
What I see is a need to organize my training a bit. Usually I go about things like this by buying a book and reading up, but until I get the Cyclist Training Bible perhaps you could give me a few pointers...
I am 26 years old, weigh 140 lbs. As mentioned above I have little riding experience but I am decently fit. Will buy a PC-15 HRM tomorrow to aid in the training. Most likely I can not put in more than 4 rides per week due to work and other activities so thats the kind of program I am looking for
As a long term goal I would like to enter the Lysebotn race exactly one year from now. This is a 90 mile long race, starting off with a pretty intense climb of 3200 elevation feet (see links).
Graph
Image of first climb
I will only be able to ride a bike for a few more months before the snow gets here, but I have plenty of hobbies/ winter activities to keep me in fit through the winter.
People seem to be suggesting "building a solid base" and then increase your tolerance to lactose etc through higher intensity interval training... My question is then, should I focus on having longer, low intensity workouts at first, or will interval training do me good right off the bat? I will obviously need to do some hill climbing activities, but should that wait until next spring, or should I start next year?