New and almost new, first race training 60 miles

I've signed up for a 60 mile cycle race in 10 weeks My beginners schedule says 4 days a week two easy, one hills and one long I'm also doing C25K getting back to running at the same time and on a rest day I want to do one day swimming half an hour building on crawl I've done half marathons and completed the physical aspect of yoga teacher training However for the last 2.5 years I have mainly on average worked out in one way or another once a week, trying and failing to get any kind of routine back in my life with exercise but lacking motivation... I've always exercised in spurts of 3 months to 5 years Is this too much? It seems like I'm giving myself fewer excuses, but I'm on a lot of meds and in the past I've been very cautious Made the commitment to myself to do a minimum half hour, run swim or cycle every day This might be pretty stupidly too early as in maybe should build from 4 5 or 6 days

 

on flat roads 60 miles is somewhere near a 4 hour ride for a reasonable trained cyclist, allocate one 3 to 4 hour ride every week from now until the event and then you will know if you can make it, try to concentrate on the bike and leave running and swimming for after the event when you return to normal life,

 

Clouddog, Welcome to the forums... Is the 60 mile ride a race or an organized ride? If it's a mass start race, where the aim is to cross the line first and tear the legs off (as well as ripping the hearts and souls out) of your competitors I may have to be the bringer of bad news... but if you're doing an organized ride over 60 miles then things are looking much happier. This one is easy. Go ride... for fun. Don't start out really fast, or as fast as you can go for 10 minutes and then wonder why you're gasping for air and wonder why you can't go on further. Just go ride down the road in the general direction of somewhere nice and see how you feel after 15 minutes. If you can go a bit faster then up the ante a little. Don't get too carried away that you end up an hour down the road and have to ride another hour and a bit back on your first ride For the first week or so find out what you can do without overly tiring yourself out. Ride 4 to 5 days a week - maybe an hour or so on the week days and a longish ride on Saturday and your longest ride on Sunday. Once you have a baseline of where you're at fitness wise on the bike you can either chose to ride further and to somewhere that interests you, or you can increase the speed and make things more challenging that way. You don't have to train the same way as everyone else. If you just like to ride out in the hills and you dig the scenery through eyes that are stinging with sweat and legs that have felt better then that might be your thing. Some folks like beating their head in on a controlled environment of a trainer measuring sessions to the nearest watt with their power meters.

 

Hi Thanks for your reply I'm not sure if I can bring myself to stop this half hour minimum I hope I do stop before I have to learn the hard way

 

Hi Yes!! The start is staggered and the people on the website were not competitors in the sense of insane competition Thanks for the terminology I think I remember doing 40 miles of intense hills back to back 2 day solo ride After not very much training at all That was probably because I was pretty young I think this ride is virtually flat We're going to drive the route in a couple of weeks

 

You also want to get used to the distance---time on the bike- I am not sure how far you've come in your training, but you'll want to have at least 2-3 weeks where you are getting in one 60 mile ride. Another aspect is comfy cycling shorts with good chamois- you can check this site--it has great cycling clothing for women. http://www.tourcycling.com/category/58/womens-cycling-apparel.aspx