Audax rides

After getting dropped by George. Without a doubt the best retirement beard, no make that the best beard, ever.

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Waiting for breakfast. Well worth it.

Thank you Norwich rider for insisting on your local!

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It did, and the hope I would catch a group to ride with. I did at the last two stops but not by enough for me to stop comfortably too so I left them to it and thugged it out

Looking at Oasts to Coasts next on the 25th but looks like entries are already closed. Wanted to try riding a 300 before booking it. Oh well. My RRtY requirement for this month is done. Have sent my postal booking for the midweek Boulters Bash on the 22nd. It's a 100km ride which I've ridden before. Starts from Maidenhead. Going to ride there and back to make it closer to a 200.

Someone passed and said hello when he did and said that he had been following me for a while. He thanked me for closing all the gaps. I nodded but didn't really understand what he meant. I saw him again and he thanked me again but didn't get a chance to ask. Anyone understand this expression?

catching people ahead. he was thanking you for bringing him up.
and chapeau for the 15h 300km! x

Excellent work on your 300km!
Top marks

Sounds like a good ride. I like the night ride idea.

Basically you were the sort of person I was looking for and failed to find.

It was actually quite brilliant, must rate as one of the best night rides ever. As the ride was limited to 25km I rode with the front until the first control and had chats about TT extensions and got a cheery hello from somebody going for RAAM. Then took it well easier which meant I rode solo for long stretches into the wind on the return leg, still arrived at control before 3pm. Best thing the wind did turn to west after breakfast and most of all my knee is not hurting. Which 400 now?

It was good to meet you @fussballclub. Quite impressed at how you've dived in at the deep end.

What do you mean limited to 25km? The usual speed limit of 30kph was dropped to 25kph?

Wish I'd ridden - I could've got done for audax speeding ;)

Penalty being waiting for the man in the van until 6.10h.

So this may be bit of a silly question, but how does one train for Audaxes.

I have done a 200km and then on Saturday the 300km. My bike seems to fit me pretty well I am not in any appreciable pain at the end of my rides so far other than fatigued muscles. I know that speed is not meant to be a thing in Audax, but I think I would like to get a bit quicker as much as I like sitting on my bike, there comes a time when I have had enough of it :-). I suppose that I could make it quicker overall by stopping for a shorter period (I had two hours of stops in total on my 300) but that feels a bit wrong. Do I have to be doing massive 8 hour training rides do you think? or will shorter quicker ones help as much?

In other news, I think I am doing

• Severn Across
  
• Windsor-Chester-Windsor (dear god that sounds a long way)
  Is anyone else?
  
  

Assuming I get those done without it being too awful, I think I /will/ enter PBP

George

Shorter high speed rides, say 2-3 hours will speed up your moving time on the bike. Also some hill training will generally serve you well so that when you do have to climb on an audax you can hold a bit of a higher pace.

Longer commutes will help as well. I'm now up to 15 miles in and 3 miles home for commuting.

In the audax handbook they suggest 10-14 hours a week on the bike is plenty in terms of training. Riding the events I think is kind of training in itself. Personally as I don't commute by bike as much as I used to and clock up only 5 hours a week I try to get in a longer ride if I'm not riding an event. I have a hilly 100km ride which goes into Kent and Surrey that I use fairly regularly as a training ride. I also do a bit of upper body strength training 3 times a week, things like chin-ups and dips along with some core work. I find it helps with the handling especially when I get tired.

What I've found (and I've only been at it a couple of years) is that fitness and stamina can last a while, say a month without training but strength drops rapidly without training in a few days. I find that I'll be able to keep going but find the hills really hard or be reduced to a crawl. So I need to train on hills fairly regularly and do some intervals.

Aside from the physical training, there is training the mind. This isn't racing but we're out there for many hours and often riding solo. Can you stay focused and in a positive and constructive frame of mind? Are you able to alter your mental state when you sense it is heading in a direction that isn't conducive to your performance? Again looking back over my limited experience of audaxing I would say that the challenge is just as much mental as well as physical perhaps even more so.

Training as far as I'm concerned is the difference between struggling and feeling comfortable. If you already feel comfortable then you probably don't need to train.

The 10 mile time trials you're doing will benefit speeding up your Audax rides.

To the Sudafed respondents: bless you / thanks. I was of course using Sudocrem but I was smearing it on the pad (of paper that I keep in the pocket of my shorts) rather than applying it directly to my bodty. I thought I read somewhere that that was the technique. I'll give the other way a try next time out.

Thank you all.

I think that you are all right and that basically mostly shorter, harder rides with occasional lingers (which are probably often the audaxes themselves).. My standard commute is 20 miles/day, but it is easy to let that descend to just a trudge that doesn't help much at all. I think I will continue to try and put some efforts into my commute, continue with the TTs and the trips out with the club. I think I will also try and extend the club rides to be 160 km so I get to see that as a "normal" ride.

And I'll put more effort into riding in groups on the audaxes.

"how does one train for Audaxes"

hippy's audax training tips

1. Ride your bike, Ride your bike, Ride your bike
   
2. Practice running and elbowing people out of the queue at your local Costa/Nero until you can beat Bolt to the register.
   3.Train yourself to apply Sudocrem while pedaling
   
3. Train yourself to reprogram any Garmin model blindfolded.
   
4. Learn the floor layout of all the popular petrol station/services brands
   
5. Ride your bike, Ride your bike, Ride your bike
   
6. Stomach stretching exercises will help deal with any 'double fry-up' scenarios
   
7. Don't listen to hippy, he's a pretender and doesn't even own sandals.
   
8. Learn to swear in foreign languages as it gives more variations when you've flatted for the ninth time.
   
9. Ride your bike, Ride your bike, Ride your bike
   

Yeah, but so will all the longer time trials.

Everyone suggesting shorter rides in order to make long rides faster?
The principal of specificity disagrees.
Do longer rides, but set time goals or something similar to push yourself to do them faster.

Doing short rides is easy and sure if you do them quick you'll probably go faster during your audaxes but doing longer rides in training makes the longer audaxes seem easy as you know you can do the distance, you become more efficient bio-mechanically and with regard to training effect, blood volume, fuel burning, etc. You also learn more about what to fuel with, sort out niggling issues, pack better, etc.

It also depends on what you want out of it. Some people like spending a good time sitting down at controls and riding quick in between. It depends on how much time you can give to the sport - you might only be able to fit in short stuff but the longer stuff done faster is more useful I believe.

Specificity may help if you're goal is to do stuff fast, but it's not required if you just want to get round.

Almost all of my Audaxing had been off the back of ~80km a week of pan flat commuting in London with the occasional (once a month maybe) faster 50k around Richmond Park or the Surrey Hills. The majority of the training though came from doing the rides themselves as those easily eclipsed the total of my "training" distance.

The more time you can put in on the bike the better, be it short rides, longer rides or targeted efforts. Just ride the bike.

For me the progression was something like this:-

• Finish a 100, feel broken
  
• Finish a 100, feel ok
  
• Finish a 200, feel broken
  
• Finish a 200, feel ok
  
• Finish a 300, feel broken
  
• Finish a 300, feel ok
  
• Finish a very hilly 300, feel ok-ish
  
• Finish a 400, feel ok
  
• Finish a hilly 600, feel broken
  
• Finish a 600, feel ok
  
  

After riding the first 300 I could go back and ride a 200 without any real problems, even the hillier ones.

At this point it stopped being about riding x00km and more about being able to ride ~320km a day and wake up after a few hours' sleep and crank out another ~320km day. This is pretty much how I got through LEL and PBP.

The more experience (of rides of 200km and more) you have the better and easier it gets; and bloody-mindedness can make up for lack of physical prowess. I'm doing less than 30km a week on the bike at the moment and I'm not worried about an upcoming 200 (Ditchling Devil) as I know I can just force myself round it; I know my fall-back "all-day" pace that I can grind out will be good enough despite having hardly any miles in the legs.

I tend to ride on my own on Audaxes, or side-by-side with a friend. I'm sure I could shave a reasonable amount of time/effort off by riding in a group but it's not my thing. I like the time to think to myself which is partly why I do Audax.

"Specificity may help if you're goal is to do stuff fast, but it's not required if you just want to get round"

But he already gets around, his goal is to do it faster.

http://www.willesdencyclingclub.co.uk/its-back/