My training plan
It’s a big leap from a few hours cycling a week to being on a bike for five or six hours every day for days on end. Being ready for the Tour Aotearoa requires training, and training requires a plan.
I’ve adapted my training plan from two sources: one is a structured training plan for the Alps to Ocean trail prepared by Janet Stark (and freely available on the NZ Cycle Trail website); the other is a training guide for the Tour Aotearoa prepared by Jeff Lyall (also available online). They follow the same general principles:
regular training days
a mix of terrain over the course of the week
gradually building up time in the saddle
a recovery week every fourth week.
Regular training days
For me, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are my core training days and I often cycle on Sunday as well. On the other days, I stick to light exercise (like walking, yoga and gardening) and I only cycle if I’m going somewhere. It’s important to give my body time to rest, but it’s also good to do activity that uses my muscles in different ways.
Chris will often run or swim on his non-cycling days. This works for him because it was something he was already doing before upping his cycling, and he tends to do shorter cycles during the week. (Unlike him, I have the luxury of being on a career break so I don’t need to fit my training around work.)
A mix of terrain
I have developed a pattern of:
cycling at pace on tarseal roads on Tuesdays
cycling on gravel on Thursdays (or hills if we have flat rides planned for the weekend)
taking to the hills, with or without gravel, on Saturdays
any of the above and/or a mountain bike track on Sundays.
Tuesdays are easy because I live close to a new bike path that runs along the Northern Motorway out of the city. I almost always ride out to Rangiora and back.
On Thursdays, I usually head out to the beach with a circuit that involves winding along the gravel stop banks of the Ōtākaro/Avon River, around the estuary, along the beachfront to Waimairi Beach, and then home again via the gravel path that runs alongside Bottle Lake Forest and a short road section.
Saturday hill training is more of a challenge. My preference is always to bike from home rather than get in the car and drive somewhere. However, we live in the middle of a (mostly) flat city, so there are limited hill options that don’t involve contending with lots of traffic. Plus it’s good to mix up the weekend rides to keep things interesting.
So, sometimes we bike over to the Port Hills and slog the half hour up Mount Pleasant to Summit Road and loop around to Sumner (with a detour to Godley Head) and back home again. Sometimes we get in the car and drive to Amberley or Waikari and bike through the Waipara Gorge (which has the bonus of gravel roads and hills). Other times, we’ve decided to stick to the flat and do a loop around the North Canterbury towns, or head out to Lincoln and beyond.
More recently, we’ve started including a mountain bike section in our Sunday rides, biking out to McLeans Island or Bottle Lake Forest.
Building up time in the saddle
Time in the saddle is more important than distance covered (although obviously the two are linked). When we signed up for the Tour Aotearoa, we had already organised to bike the Alps to Ocean trail in a few months’ time. This would involve cycling for two and a half to four hours each day so gave us an obvious first step to aim for. That’s where the Janine Stark training plan was helpful.
Initially, I cycled for 50-70 minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and focused on building up the cycling time on Saturdays by 15-20 minutes each week until I was riding two, two and a half, and then three hours. Sunday training initially involved a recovery ride of about 60 minutes, but eventually turned into a similar ride to Saturday’s.
After the Alps to Ocean ride, I intended to gradually build up the time cycling each day but ended up going straight to my target two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays (on the grounds that we had been doing that anyway). However, I’ve been more careful with the weekend rides and am currently riding about four hours on a Saturday and up to three hours on a Sunday. Eventually, I intend to be riding five hours both days, peaking a few weeks before our big ride.
Recovery weeks
Recovery weeks are super-important and Jeff Lyall suggests that over-training is more of a problem than under-training (particularly for those of us with a few decades under our belts). So, every fourth week, I take his advice and cut back training by about 40 percent. For me, that means roughly 70 minutes rides during the week, perhaps a three-four ride on Saturday and no riding at all on Sunday.
Happily, this week is a recovery week so I can take Christmas day off.