Originally Posted by
B. Carfree
You've misunderstood. The 10%/week increase in training miles is not a guideline that precludes riding longer rides than one's average daily distance. That's the point of it being a weekly guide. Also, it's a training mileage guide, not an event guide. The OP is over 100 miles/week currently, perhaps at 120. In four weeks time he can have his weekly miles up to 175 miles/week by increasing only 10%/week.
There's a serious lack of anything to misunderstand. There is no way the OP could have gotten all of what you said here from people's mere mention of the approach (merely mentioning it is irresponsible or not very helpful).
Originally Posted by
B. Carfree
I don't know where the 10% originally came from, but my experience with it goes back to the '60s/'70s in swimming, an activity that is quite similar to cycling (aerobic repetitive movements with a high risk of overuse injuries). We would take two protracted breaks per year, one after nationals or junior olympics and another between winter training and the spring season. Each time we restarted we carefully ramped up from what seemed like very low yardage by about 10%/week. It really doesn't take very long to get back to the kind of crazy-long workouts we did. Of course, we all appreciated when taper time came.
It seems like an old approach that wasn't really based on anything. If you google, it there is a lot of comments that indicate that it isn't necessary.