scrapmetal

Few years ago I biked 92 miles in one day and back than my typical ride was 35 - 40 miles in a day.

I also did a full century when I was on the level of 50 miles a day or so.

What mileage would you go to century from? Some online sources say 80 miles/day - it is like why stop at eighty? you are almost there

What do you think?

chasm54

I think that once you can ride about seventy through similar terrain, you should be confident about the hundred. Another way of looking at it is if you are used to riding 150 per week, you can probably do 100 in a day.

As for why stop at eighty, why not? One doesn't want to ride a century every day - at least, I don't.

TrojanHorse

Depends on the terrain, but a flat century? I'd go ride one right now if I could get away for 6-7 hours without my wife excommunicating me . I've been riding about 2-300 miles a month the last 2-3 months and aside from one 73 mile ride, my long rides are usually about 50-60 miles.

I saw a guy on this site recommending 400 miles in the two months leading up to the century and a long ride of say, 70 miles - if you can do that you can ride a century. That makes sense to me, for a relatively flat route. Some of the centuries by me feature a tremendous amount of climbing so I'd probably worry about trying one of those.

Take all this with a grain of salt - I'll be doing my first organized century ever in August, and another in Sept, assuming that I can get buy-in from the Central Planning Committee.

volosong

I'm not in very good physical shape these days. Having to get up at 4:30 to catch the vanpool for work, getting back to the house at 6:00 in the evening, and teaching two nights a week ... well, the only chance I have to ride these days in on weekends. Lack of sleep too. It's been like this since last August. I try to get in at least one ride a week of about 45-60 miles. All this to say that I'm not as fit as I should be and my weight is up about 15 pounds since the beginning of winter.

The other week, I rode an unsupported century, (fairly flattish with only 2,951 climbing feet), and had no real problems. Only "problem" was mental in that part of the route was along a very heavily traveled state highway and the noise did not make for a pleasant experience. After about 85 miles, I wished the ride was over. I ended up with a 15.6 mph average for the ride. It was almost 17 mph before that 85 mile point, but I was starting to get tired after that and my speed dropped off quite a bit.

To answer your question, all this is to say that I'll ride a century without any real training. It's just for me that the more hills on the route, the longer it will take me. I just need to make sure I eat, drink, and not be in too much of a hurry.

(I have a century ride planned for this Friday, but there will be a long "rest" break in the middle. I'm riding 50 miles to one of the KOMs on the Tour de California stage that day and plan on getting there about 60-90 minutes before the pro peloton rides by. Then, I'll have a fairly easy, mostly downhill ride back home.)

sstorkel

Adding distance is generally pretty easy; it's usually elevation gain that kills you. Once I knew I could easily ride 50-60 miles for two days back-to-back I felt confident tackling a century. The big thing for me was to find one that didn't have a whole lot more climbing than I was doing on my 50-60 mile rides.

gyozadude

+1 on doing back-to-back days with shorter rides.

+1 on doing shorter rides with roughly equal climbing as the century that is as steep or steeper.

The couple main things I'll add, if you already ride regularly on hops over 15 miles or more (3X a week), are:
- Bike Fit
- Personal Overall Fitness to stay on the bike

At least for me, the struggle I had with distance riding for a century or beyond, were due to being unaware about my own optimal cycling geometry and my overall body fitness, including upper body and not just my legs.

Of course, I initially went through issues of poor diet and hydration in my early club rides over 50 miles. As a novice, I had to give up on a few rides because they just burned up my reserves, I hit the wall, and didn't feel like eating/drinking anymore. So I've learned the hard way that I need to eat constantly and drink electrolytes and know that the slug of energy isn't going to be available that fast. Sometimes 40 minutes - 2hrs after I eat, I get that energy. So if you didn't take that break earlier and pace myself and consume the necessary calories and intake that salt and potassium - well, I'll pay the price down the road.

But once I got diet/hydration down, going beyond 70 miles was completely unpleasant over two main things. The first for me was bike fit. I noticed that I could ride my heavy modified mtb with drops and fat slicks and go forever and still feel fresh but given a road bike, I might be able to power-climb for 50 miles, but push past 60 and my joints hurt. And that's when I found that small shifts in geometry made the mtb with drops a better geometry for me. After tweaking my road bikes for a similar fit, I found them even more comfortable and effortless to ride.

And I also noticed that I lifted weights and worked out on upper body and core, I was much more refreshed after a long ride and not beat up anymore. So I think working out the upper body and core abs is critical to ride well on a century.

Otherwise, once I had those down, I could simply ride 20 milers for a few times a week, and wait for the weekend century and it was no sweat.

Drew Eckhardt 

A hard 20 mile ride 3 days a week, 25-40 miles some weekends, and six miles round trip commuting by bicycle each day which would be about 110 miles a week averaging 16 miles daily. It worked for me. That plus one century was enough to feel good on the 1997 Ride The Rockies Grand Junction to Golden covering about 420 miles and 30,000 vertical feet in a week.

A little intensity can be swapped for _a lot_ more mileage. An hour at 100% and 2.8 hours at 60% are considered interchangeable for fatigue purposes under the popular training stress tracking systems (Coggan's TSS, Skiba's BikeScore, etc.) At 60% you might loose 15% of your speed so that gets you 2.3 times the distance.

There's a lot of latitude in how you gain fitness and spend it. If you can do that on back to back days and feel good you can probably pack it into one day for 4.6 times your usual distance.

For example, if you can do an hour solo at 21 MPH on flat ground at 100% (100 TSS) and are fresh you can finish off a century in six hours at 60% (216 TSS or about double the fatigue) and feel fine assuming you don't have comfort issues that aren't problems in the first few hours of a ride.

Mithrandir

The conventional wisdom I was imbued with said that if you could do a metric century, then you should have no problems doing an imperial.

Sure enough, that advice turned out to work for me.



Mind you, "doing a metric" meant finishing strong, not bonking partway through. So for example, this year my training is not yet sufficient for doing a century. This weekend I attempted a 56 mile ride and bonked hard at 46 miles. This tells me that I need at least another month before I can attempt a metric, and possibly 2 months before a century is realistic- at least judging from what I could do last year. We shall see.

bigfred 

I guess it all depends on your goal(s). If its simply to "finish" a century, then increasing your long weekend rides up to 80 miles puts you within striking distance on the day. If you're already riding 80 miles, there's no reason you can't or should continue upto 100. However, if you're interested in setting a personal best or are watching your time, its advisable to taper off a bit in the week to two weeks preceeding the target ride. That should allow your body to come into the target day "twitchy" for a long ride.

Unlike some of the others here, it was the flats not the hills that killed me on my last century. I knew the hills were there and I trained for them. What I neglected to train for were the two longish flat portions of the ride (20-30km each). I cam out of the first 90km of hills feeling o.k. but, wasn't prepared for the hour of continuous pedaling on the flats leading to the final large climb of the ride. Or, the flats from the backside of the climb to the finish. I'm not making that mistake again. I now include both flat portions to some of my distance rides as well as some wind trainer time.

I fully second paying attention to food and water. Eat and drink early, often and in small quantities.

scrapmetal

Thank you, friends, for your input. I usually hurt in shoulders - most - or low back, legs can do it.

Anyway it will be unsupported, I don't like being organized (Miss Tweety, them chicken is orginized)

For anybody from the DC Metro, I want to bike W&OD from Purcellville to Arlington, 4 mile run, Mount Vernon, Custis and back W&OD. It should give me 100+ on the end.
I was thinking Sunday to get a head start on families crowding the path, but Carolina BBQ is closed on Sundays may end up biking on Saturday.

Also I think it is time to get padded bibs, been roughing it all these years and soft seat may help.

Again, thank you for your input.

TrojanHorse

Generally no - you want shorts (or a big) with a chamois because it helps with moisture control, not because it's padded. Thin to win! Same with the seat. Firmer is generally better (I'm talking about road bikes, here, not comfort bikes) and you want the seat to support your sit bones only.

volosong

+1 on a firm seat. It may be counter intuitive, but you will be in agony after 50 miles with a soft seat.

I've found RideWithGPS.com to be great for creating routes. Even if one doesn't have a GPS, they can always print out a route turn sheet to take along. It also shows mileage, contour profile, and the routes are easy to move around to tweak a route. Pretty nifty...and useful.

MattFoley

I did a similar route this past weekend...just short of 80 miles from Capitol Hill out to Leesburg and back. I'm also training for a century this weekened (CASA River Century), so I wanted to make sure I could do 80 miles without drama. From an energy perspective, I had no problems and was tempted to just go ahead and do 100 miles, but my saddle was killing me. It's fine for anything under about 40 miles, but gets very uncomfortable for longer rides. So by the time I got to my turnaround point, I knew my butt wasn't going to last the extra 20 miles.

I should mention that I've been doing my training on my steel cross bike, loaded with a rack, pannier, and my u-lock, because my proper road bike has needed some work and I didn't want to put a lot of miles on it until I had a chance to get it overhauled, which is being done this week. My road bike has a very comfortable saddle and weighs about 12 pounds less than my commuter, so I think a century will be relatively easy on it.

This is the route from this weekend, with elevation. Garmin puts the elevation quite a bit higher (~2100ft with corrections turned on) and I'm not really sure which number is accurate. The century I'm doing is about 1900 ft elevation in mapmyride, so this weekend's ride was very similar.

scrapmetal

Interesting, I never had anything but spandex between the butt and the seat - what do you call chamois here? Goat like animal living in Alps? I bought bibs online today, it has some kind of a woman hygiene product piece that can be detached, is that what you mean?
My seat is pretty firm, it came with the Specialized Roubaix and I never had reason to change, I usually get used to things instead of upgrading

Matt, how was the traffic on the W&OD? I used to bike Purcelville to AOL and back every so often 5 years ago or so and it could get really bad with strollers and such. I like the trail - it's biggest advantage and disadvantage is the fact it was a train tracks once - all those easy hills up and down can get tiresome after a while.

MattFoley

Traffic is area dependent....from Purcellville to Leesburg, it's empty, then some folks in Leesburg, then dead until Sterling/Herndon, then usually pretty dead until you get closer to Vienna. From Vienna to Falls Church is empty again, and then somewhat crowded from FC through Four Mile Run. But WOD traffic is usually never a problem...it's the Mount Vernon Trail that gets terrible...I avoid it whenever I can.

TrojanHorse

Detachable? Women's hygiene product?

Are you sure you're buying cycling products?

swampdonkey90

I did 56 miles today and thought I would die. I was ok until mile 38 or so but everything from there was with rubbery legs. I ate an energy gel at miles 20, 40 and 50 but never really got myself back together. I drank 4 bottles of powerade during the ride but I was having hydration issues probably from not drinking enough fluids for the days leading up to the ride. I was hoping to do my first metric century but it was not to be. I got a flat and I was so beat I did not even bother to to attempt installing a new one ( I have done this countless times..I was just exhausted). Humiliated and only 4 miles from home I had to have the wife pick me up. Ive been pretty depressed about the whole thing since I got home.

How often do you eat on 50 milers ? I thought with a good amount of gels I'd be ok but I was dead wrong. I generally ride 22-30 miles 4 times a week any I do those easily at 16-16.8 mph. But when I attempt a longer ride I die miserably. My longest ride before this was 55 miles and it ended just as tragically. Help.

JimF22003

Cool. That's the exact route I took on my very first century ride about five years ago. I started where Gallows Rd crosses the trail, went downtown for the Arlington Loop, and then out to Purcellville and back. I think I needed to do a lap around Hains Point to make it about 103 miles though. Be prepared to circle the parking lot if you're a mile or two short

The ride went well, but I actually did bonk about 5 miles from home. I wasn't really used to eating for long rides at that point. If I had had a GU or another energy bar with me, I could have had it and been just fine, but I didn't really know that at the time. The nice thing about doing a century on a route like this is there's plenty of places to stop and rest, refuel etc. so you don't need to worry about being stranded way out in the boonies.

contango 

I've seen several sources that say if you can comfortable do 2/3 of your target distance then you can do your distance even if it means digging deep.

I did my first 80-mile day having previously never done more than 30 in a day and it hurt. It hurt a lot.

The trouble with the "why stop there" approach is, well, knowing where to stop. You could argue that if you've done 80 miles you might as well press on to a century, but by the same argument if you've done 70 you might as well press on to 80, if you've done 60 you might as well press on to 70 and so on. And so before you know it a quick ride to get some groceries becomes a century.

For good measure there's also a big difference between a leisurely ride that takes all day and a fast ride without so many breaks. I covered over 100 miles in a day with some friends without any troubles at all but the first time I attempted an 80-mile ride solo I had cramps after 60 miles. The differences were that I was going faster and not stopping to take on food and water. So effectively I was trying to work harder but with less fuel, and that doesn't work for long.

scrapmetal

My first century was from home to warrenton Hume Marshall and it was on roads. Took me whole day and the computer stopped at 93. I ended up circling known roads to make sure it was a hundred

The 92 was on W&OD and all i had was water and 4 bars. When i made it to Carolina bbq on the way back I stopped for food - it was one of the best eatings of my life, comparable with stuff I ate hiking the ridge of Tatras, lol.

I am afraid I will get to Vernon by 11am or so, the worst time of the day. Looks like Sunday to me.
I may end up carrying commuter bag on the carrier to have suppy of food with me.

IBOHUNT

I'll be at CASA this weekend as well. Look for the old fat guy in an Ireland jersey plodding along and wave as you pass.
Their MAPMYRIDE elevation data has a 1870' gain for the 100 miles where ridewithgps has 2600' for just the Jefferson 50 mile loop.
Not sure but it seems that there is a politician in the room... somebody is lying

Now, as a manager of mine once said "Having said whatever I said" I'll just second the eat/hydrate bit and don't wait.

IBOHUNT

Seems t me you have the miles on the bike. I wonder how much is mental?

Do you have anybody around that will go with you? The more folks sharing the misery the merrier.

I've found that I needed to work up to long distances (>50 miles) by slowly working up to the longer distances. e.g: Do a 50 mile ride, two weeks later a metric, then anther two weeks go by an 80 mile deal. All the time paying attention to what your body wants with nutrition/hydration. Not sure which energy bars you were eating but I know I could never eat that much in 50 miles nor do I think I coudl down that much powerade.

Myself, I can go 50 miles on a half a Cliff bar and 2 qts of water around where I live which has been described by others as 'hilly'.
(Don't hook me up with ChefIsaac bars. I'll down all 3 of them in the first 10!)

goldfinch

Maybe you are burning yourself out too soon and just need to slow down a bit.

volosong

That's a puzzling one, swampdonkey. It seems you have the base miles to be able to handle something like that. The only thing I'm wondering about is that riding 22-30 miles at 16+ mph is a lot different than riding 50+ miles at the same speed. Did you start out riding the first 35-38 miles at a 16+ mph rate? If so, then that might be why you bonked at 38 miles. The terrain affects effort and average speeds also. If your 56 mile route had more hill climbing that what you normally ride, then your average speeds will be less ... and maybe you noticed that and worked harder to keep that average speed up. In general, for most of us hackers, the longer distance we go, the slower the average speed will be. Conversely, the shorter the distance, the faster average speed we will be able to maintain.

Just a guess. I'm thinking you went out from the start too intensely and too fast, then couldn't maintain that past your normal riding distances. You certainly ate and drank enough, and often enough. That's why I think you just went from the start too hard.

Black wallnut 

Try using something other than a gel. Clif bars, fig bars, ham sandwich, peanut butter sandwich, Payday bar etc. Eat 100-300 calories per hour. Drink water, at least a bottle an hour and then in moderate weather <80°F add an electrolite drink once in a 60 miile ride. This is what I have done so far. I've used fig bars and clif bars and then towards the end of my ride will use a gel shot or two, usually before a climb or turning into the wind. Dehydration is a killer. I've had it and heat stroke before so now I drink water daily and often. Fill my 32 oz cup at the water cooler 4-7 times a day during the week. I try to drink a large galss before a long weekend ride and start drinking within the first half hour on the ride, paying attention to the time and making sure I drink at least a bottle an hour which is actually not enough. I'll modify or plan my route to stop and refill my bottles. I carry two on the bike, one more of water in a jersey pocket plus a 20 oz gatoraid. So far longest ride to date is about 75 miles.