Training between brevets
 

What advice do you have for training between the brevets in a series?

This is my first season of randonneuring. I have been riding 100+ miles a week (20 or so miles a day) during the summers for many years (I am 60) with my longest ride being 85 miles. This spring, I have finished a 200k and a 300k brevet and have my sights set on 400k and 600k. The brevets are 3 weeks apart. There is good advice for preparing for a first century which I - sort of - followed. After the 200k, I simply did my usual commuting and errands on my bicycle, about 10 to 15 miles a day, with some additional riding, the longest being 30 miles. I did better on the 300k than I had on the previous brevet. I took it easy this week and now have 2 weeks before the 400k.

Any suggestions for training for this next level?

Rafael

I believe that once you get to the 300K level, you know how much to exert yourself and how to eat for the long rides. The main thing is to keep doing long rides. Doing a century, or longer, ride on weekends should be good to prepare you for the longer rides. If you are riding brevets near home, perhaps there are some 200K permanents that you could arrange to do on the weekend? If nothing else, you could go out and do the 200K route some more.

You might practice night riding since a 400K is going to require quite a bit of riding after dark. Getting a good light setup helps quite a bit.

Good luck on the 400k and 600k rides. I'm looking to do my first 400K at the end of the month.

My best years of riding brevets have followed the pattern where I don't ride a whole lot during the week (i.e. 20 or so miles a day) but then I ride a longer distance on the weekend.

So my schedule looks something like this:

Weekend 1: 200K brevet on Sat; short spin on Sun
Week: 20 miles a day, with a day or two off
Weekend 2: 100K on Sat; 75K on Sun
Week: 20 miles a day, with a day or two off
Weekend 3: 160K on Sat; 75K on Sun
Week: 20 miles a day, with a day or two off
Weekend 4: 300K brevet on Sat; short spin on Sun

Or something like that.

I will be riding my 400K on May 27th, and so this weekend I'm planning to ride a metric century on Sunday and an imperial century on Monday ... and then keep it shorter during the week.

When you get up into the longer distances two things become quite important: regularity (getting out there, even for short distances, on a fairly regular basis); and rest (taking a couple days of each week, or just short spins on some days, so that your muscles and joints etc. can recover).