Ultracycling

If you're already doing 300k week you have a pretty good idea of what's working for you. Build up to some longer rides as you head towards summer next year as some stuff doesn't become apparent until you've been on a bike for 8, 10, 12, 20 hours.. whatever.

Many people doing your mileage will get away with under fueling for 6hr rides and then fall apart when the duration is upped to, say, 12 hours. It's that you want to be experimenting with next year.

Not quite 7+ days of 300km, but...

An old London-Edinburgh-London (1400km in just under 5 days, so not 7+ days but requiring 300km/day for those 5 days) website had this suggested plan for Audaxes to enter/ride:-

January: 2x 100km events
February: 1x 100km 1x 200km
March 2x 200km
April 1x 300km, 1x 400km
May 1x200km 1x 600km
June 2x 200km, 1x600km
July: 1x 200km + LEL 1400km

Audaxes are good training as they're organised for you, provide an interesting/varied route, can be properly challenging and sort out many of the logistics for you (either food provided at controls or at least an idea of where you can source food). They can be done pretty much at whatever pace you want (unless you're fast enough to continually push the 30kph max average speed) either on your own or working with others.

I had two whole months off the bike away traveling around South America back in November/December 2008. I did plenty of walking but no cycling in that time and lost a lot of my cycling fitness. I had put on half a stone too. But I wasn't starting from nothing as I had a reasonable Audax season the year before (including a series of 200, 300, 400 and 600km rides, all on fixed).

The training didn't start off well. I tried to ride 100km down to the South coast a few days after getting back from South America (just before new year) and had to give up at 70km (Hayward's Heath).

From then I put good effort into the commute (a flat 23km round trip) 5 days a week.

Audax wise, I then did (all on fixed except for the Midlander Super Grimpeur):-

31-JAN: Willy Warmer 200
27-FEB: Brazier's Run 100 made into DIY 200 by cycling to/from the start (250km)
15-MAR: DIY 300: Putney to Thorne (310km)
16-MAR: DIY 200: Thorne to Alston (220km)
17-MAR: DIY 200: Alston to North Berwick (205km)
28-MAR: The Dean 300 (vaguely hilly, 4000m climb)
25-APR: The Elenith 300 (hilly, 4800m climb)
16-MAY: Bryan Chapman 600 (hilly, 8300m climb)
27-JUN: Midlander Super Grimpeur 300 (insanely hilly, 5600m of climb in 300km, took gears)
04-JUL: Dun Run and back home as DIY 400 (430km)
26-JUL: London-Edinburgh-London 1400km

Monthly kilometerages up to and including LEL were:-

JAN: 600.12km
FEB: 539.92km
MAR: 1306.3km
APR: 581.33km
MAY: 853.4km
JUN: 902.68km
JUL: 1979.61km

So, nothing to 700km over 3 consecutive days in just two and a half months.

tl;dr

Ride your bike a bit more than you do now.

/thread

@skinny my low gear will be 36x34 and my stomach is of biblical proportions so hopefully I'll be fine. Thank you for the advice. Hope to do a 600 in march-ish.

@hippy cheers. Yeah I did Greenwich Mean Climb last month and I developed some knee pain which has been niggling so need to alter set up for that. Also made me realise how deadly stopping is. TiTS and all that. I have a habit of overfuelling and getting sluggish cause I'm so terrified of bonking. Maybe I need to just eat bananas instead of donuts. Wanna work on the long rides too. And yeah, basically ride a bit more, and then ride a bit more again I guess.

@Greenbank Wow that's loads of great info! Thank you! Yeah I did my first audax last month and really enjoyed it, friendly faces and other people who like riding long distance being around was nice, unfortunately I work shifts and every sunday so am not free for most audaxes. May try to make a few more next year. I like watching numbers go up somewhat arbitrarily (I guess I'm from a generation steeped in the gameification of things) so am tempted by the AAA awards and stuff.

Little and often. You can eat doughnuts (although they're too high in fat to be a decent fuel) but you should eat them, say half at a time, over the course of an hour or two. It does depend a bit on how hard you're riding, how much you're eating vs. hunger, etc. but that's what you experiment with on longer rides.

http://halfpastdone.com/2015/10/14/alaskas-gold-rush-cyclists-some-things-dont-change/

http://www.the-locals.net/the-trans-america-bike-race/

Trans-america off-road trail. Looks amazing

http://www.bikepacking.com/plog/trans-america-trail-high-desert/

http://cyclingtips.com.au/2015/10/pushing-the-limits-why-long-distance-adventure-racing-is-on-the-rise/

TCR 16.

http://bikepackersmagazine.com/transcontinental-race-releases-2016-controls/

Bit of climbing here.

Thanks for posting this, got a bit carried away before going on holiday and entered the Mille Pennines, the above seems to match up with what I was thinking of doing in prep but subbing a few longer singlespeed off-road rides in to stop myself going totally crazy.

Torino-Nice rally http://bearbonesbikepacking.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6621

700km, mix of road and gravel, might be the odd climb along the way...

bearbonesbikepacking.co.uk/phpBB3­/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6621

Looks like Assietta in the pics. Sounds awesome!

Haven't really had chance to look at it properly, need to find a computer

Little more info here... http://torino-nice.weebly.com/

unfortunately I work shifts and every sunday so am not free for most audaxes

You could look into doing permanents instead. You choose your time, and you can still get your brevet card stamped and your AAA points at your own convenience. Means there's fewer friendly faces, but it gets you out on your bike at least.

http://www.aukweb.net/events/diy/index.htm

Edit: just realised I am replying to a post from months ago, like a wanker. Soz. Basically I have only just followed this thread a few minutes ago so that I can keep up on the latest news from hippy's 2017 ultracycling season and I have no idea what I am doing. #hippofanclub

This sounds interesting too: http://hardcro.com/

Might be a nice place to visit.

1400km with all kinds of services on the controls, so bit like PBP, LEL or other big brevets, but racing.

Still useful, thank you! I looked at doing perms a bit, but I think if I'm riding on my own I'll just not bother getting it certified, as nice as it may be I can see it being a wee bit of a faff.
I've entered TCR so in anticipation of finding out whether I will get in I am upping my mileage by 10% a week. May do the Torino-Nice rally and some long audaxes if I don't get in...

It looks like the date for Torino will either be early July or early September...

Aye, more about how much holiday I can take from work than scheduling stuff though! TCR will mean taking 3 weeks holiday so a pretty significant chunk...

2017's getting a bit ahead of the game isn't it? But flattery will get you everywhere so I'll keep you posted..

First good news is I survived another trip to the Ghent 6. Just. Not sure what I'll do in the off season (other than drink too much) but I'm still looking towards TransAm as my A race. Almost certainly won't race another 24hr and probably no 12hr either but I will probably keep testing at shorter distances and try and get a few more club records. Need to get rid of the post-US trip bulge as a first action.

Triangel shape moar aero

My mate Morgan who I rode most of Tour Divide with is riding TransAm next year too. You should go drinking with him beforehand.

Does he actually want to make the start? :)

You'd be surprised at the number of people who ride PBP, LEL etc. as races ;-)

Haha, yep, some people do take them as races, but you know what I mean. Probably the biggest difference would be riding alone, no drafting.