Upcoming bike tour and training…
I did not get as much training in as I would like for this upcoming September bike tour.
Part of that is because I didn’t know when Lindsey and Calico were heading for a grandparent visit and partially work. Work was very intense as I tried to get everything in place and it is always hard to leave when you are a small team of 2. I also hurt my back about 10 days before leaving… and had to get a lot of rest in (partly due to a huge screw up by a bike shop, they installed a part backward… and partly me as I had a fun day at the beach and was throwing Calico and his friend Benjamin in a way that was bad for my back injury).
I do think that I am better prepared than on my first bike tour though. This is good as this is going to be a MUCH harder route with a ton of climbing.
I am planning to bike up a Camino Interior route to Santiago, then back down along the Camino coast route, and then a “quick” hop over to Viseu. The route is around 900km, not counting the missed turns, and kilometers to find a hotel or campsite depending on what I do. The route also has 15,000 meters of altitude gain. Most of that is in the first stage. The Camino Interior route is known to be rough, so there will be times I’ll have to walk my bike up 20% grades, and hopefully, the path isn’t so overgrown. It will be an adventure which is what I am after :)
On the bike tour I did in 2018 I averaged 65km a day at a pace of 3 hours and 20 minutes of ride time (over 18 days with 2 break days). But, I also didn’t have much climbing as a huge part of the ride was on a canal path. I only climbed 2,800m versus 15,000m on this upcoming trip…
On this trip, I am blocking out 21 days and seeing how it goes. My little Komoot bike planning tool estimates if I spend 4 hours in the saddle it will take 19 days… if I bump my rating up to “Athletic” on their little tool it goes to 15 days. So we shall see :)
Training plan?
For my first bike tour here are the 3 months leading up to it:
Apr – 9 biking days / 173 km / 11 Hours / 0 rides over 30 Miles
May – 12 biking days / 400 km / 25 Hours / 3 rides over 30 Miles
Jun – 13 biking days / 508 km / 26 Hours / 5 rides over 30 Miles
Here are the 3 months leading up to this current tour:
Jun – 18 Biking Days / 320km / ~28 Hours / 3 rides over 50km
Jul – 17 Biking Days / 324 km / ~28 Hours / 3 rides over 50km
Aug – 13 Biking Days / 554 km / ~32 Hours / 7 rides over 50km.
I feel pretty good about the long rides, as I ride much further than I did for the first tour which is going to help. For example, here were my long rides in those months:
Jul- 67km, 70km, 81km…
Aug – 47km, 63km, 70km, 50km, 71k , 72km
What would I change if I could go back? (and for next time)
In June/July I would have like to have been doing 3 rides a week, each 3+ hours long. That would have helped get more time in the seat. And, then in August, I could have bumped that up to 4 rides a week, each 3 to 4.5 hours long (as then the leap to aiming for 6 to 7 days in the seat doing 3 to 4 hours would have felt easier). Oh well, that is also part of the adventure :)…
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