Originally Posted by
maartendc
Hello all,
I have been following an 8-week training schedule (see image below) to prepare for my first century, gradually increasing my training of endurance rides on the weekend from 45 miles to about 75 miles on week 6.
Jeez - 8 weeks training for a century? Are you shooting for under 4 hours?
Seriously, I trained 8 weeks for a competitive 10K event, and after 3 weeks my times started declining. Scary. Fortunately, I had time to reboot, and backed off dramatically the last two weeks. I suspect I'm much older than you, but my experience reinforces that this body doesn't like to be over trained, ...frankly I'd prefer a bit of under training to over training if I'm competing.
Big picture, I think you will enjoy your century more if you begin fresh, loose and relaxed with a plan to smell the flowers along the way. As been said, don't over think it.
Oh, and I won my age group on the 10K by minutes, and had a fun run.