I just finished my very first 160KM century ride. It was super fun. I think in terms of timing I did pretty poorly taking almost 6 and a half hours of total time (in comparison the first person to cross the finish line did it at 4 hours plus) but I had lots of fun.
Part of the fun was also in the build up to the century ride. I was going with a group of 5 friends and we all were talking about what we need to prepare for it a week before. So I decided to put together this thread to share whatever I learned from some of the more seasoned riders about how to prepare for a century ride.
1) The training a week before
People seemed to tell me different things about how to train the week before. Some say I should ride more, some say I should ride less. Some say I shouldn’t even ride at all a few days before.
I’ve read a lot of different articles online about how much to train in the week leading up to the ride and they all differ in some ways. One useful article I read was this one.
Unfortunately I didn’t have the discipline to follow through with that regime which is probably why I took 6 hours to finish it.
2) Nutrition
Eating is a really important part of cycling long distance. You need to be able to pump back carbs into your system so that you have more energy to keep you going.
What the seasoned riders I know told me was that you have to consume one power gel every 45 minutes to an hour. So estimate how many you need to bring based on how many hours you think you’d take.
Also bring energy bars and bananas too but careful not to overeat. If you eat too much too quickly then you’ll feel bloated and that will work against you being able to ride.
3) Salt Pills
This is super important. On long rides especially rides with lots of climbs you tend to get cramps. Nothing worse than having cramps when you have another 50 KM to go. So my friends recommended that we take salt pills (which you can buy from cycling shops and from different brands). The pills are taken one every hour or once every 2 hours depending on the brand.
At the end of the race all of us felt like the pills made a difference. We were all feeling some cramps building up but it never came. We attributed it all to the salt pills.
4) Carb loading
The night before or actually the few days before, we’re all supposed to carb load. There are lots of articles online about how to do this effectively but in short, just eat lots of carbs. We gotta pick our carbs though. Rice and noodles don’t necessarily make the best carbs compared to slow release carbs like pasta or wholemeal bread with peanut butter and jam.
The night before my century ride I had pasta and a bowl of roasted potatoes. In the morning I had wholemeal bread with peanut butter.
5) Sleep conditioning
Having enough sleep before a long ride is crucial. Because most long rides happen really early in the morning, it helps to condition yourself to sleep early and wake up early the week before the ride.
6) Go early and get as far in front of the starting line as possible
This is a newbie mistake I often make. I often take my time and not bother to push all the way to the front of the starting line. If you’re a relatively decent rider, you’ll wanna start as far in front as possible because then you can follow as many pelotons (groups of riders to block the wind resistance) as possible. If you can’t keep up with the very first one, then drop back to the second, and the third and subsequent ones.
But if you start at the back, then you don’t have as many to drop back to. This matters a lot. There’s nothing worse than being caught without a peloton and having to pull yourself through all the wind resistance which was what happened to me somewhere in the last quarter of the ride.
To give you an idea, my average speed in the first half of the ride was something like 32-40KM/H (mostly on the flats). By the last 30KM of the ride when I was riding alone or in very small groups it 15-20KM/H. Both fatigue and not having a peloton to follow had something to do with it.
So that’s it guys. That’s what I’ve learned from my cycling friends this far. I might have missed out some things or you may have a different way of preparing for a ride. If you do feel free to share. I’d love to learn.