Ultra Rider: In Search of the Ultimate Long Ride RSS

Biking is one thing. Bicycling 100 miles is entirely another. But what about the bicycle ride that last all day and all night? At some point, you cross a line and at that point, cycling, becomes ultracycling.

This blog chronicles the story of a guy, his bike and a strange obsession with finding the outside edge of his personal limits.

In this chapter, having broken the UMCA record, recovered from a bone-crushing crash and achieving a top 15 finish at the inimitable Furnace Creek 508 we find our hero grappling with the realities of completing a 100km foot race.

For the complete story, follow this link, and read from the back to the front. The story won't make anymore sense when you've finished, but at least you'll know as much as the rest of us.

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Training Update

I’ve pretty much settled on the rest of my training plan leading up to My Next Big Ride. I’ll try to figure out how to publish it here sometime over the weekend. Lots of miles, lots of work. Should definitely give me what I need to make MNBR go well.

I’m still doing a lot of off bike work. My base miles are really low, although I’ve picked up a lot in the past few weeks - a minimum of 30k per day. Most of my base fitness is coming from running and a daily routine of pushups, situps and squats.

I’ve recently invested in a weight vest - it has taken my workouts to an insane level of intensity. I don’t usually train indoors, but I was looking for a fresh twist to keep my workouts interesting, so I went down to the gym. I did a 10k incline run on the treadmill, followed by 15 minutes on the Stairmaster - which was way more of a workout than the 10k run! I’ll have to do more Stairs in the coming weeks - it really is a challenging workout, especially with the added heft of the weight vest.

After the cardio, I spent some time doing squats on a bosun ball - still with the vest on. Squats are tough in the first place, but keeping balance on the bosun makes it just that much more challenging. I’m definitely going to keep these in my routine. 15 minutes on the stairs and 3x10 on the ball with a vest could probably replace the rest of my normal workout routine!

Tomorrow morning I’m heading down to RPM for the second of our twice-a-week hurlfest. Mike Cranwell, GM of Duke’s Cycle, runs a 12 week cycling bootcamp and reallly puts us through the grinder twice a week. Saturday mornings usually run about 90 minutes, and Monday’s run between 60 minutes and 3 hours. I’m augmenting the Saturday spin with a dryland training session run by Mike Peshko, one of the co-owners of RPM. The dryland work starts tomorrow and runs for a couple of hours from what I understand. Should be an interesting afternoon.

If all goes well, my first event is in 5 weeks. More on that later this weekend.

Posted at 23:19 - Comments (View)

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