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Mileage and Drills — Your Final 12 Weeks of Training

The following is a guest post from Paul Collins, owner of Strada, a partner organization to Cycle Oregon committed to helping beginner and recreational riders prepare for “The Best Bike Ride in America.”

This year’s Cycle Oregon Week Ride is around the corner, which means it’s time to pick up your training. With only 12 weeks to go, you should have a solid focus on racking up the mileage and honing your skills. Ideally you should be riding 100 miles a week at minimum, and continue building each week.

This week, our training group has added a drill to its regimen designed to help with strength. I can’t emphasize the use of drills enough to become a more efficient rider. Unfortunately, drills are among the first elements riders neglect from their program – particularly when doing longer rides, which seem daunting enough at times.

This is why I recommend using shorter rides for drills. If done correctly, these should wear you out faster than a typical “tempo” ride, which is ideal.

The strength drill below touches on several important disciplines of cycling, including average speed, hill climbing and top speed (which will come in particularly handy for the all important race to the beer garden after Day 3).

Many new riders believe that simply riding will make you faster. This is true to a degree, but after a while you’ll simply plateau if your only training variable is mileage. Use your shorter training rides as a time to work on the other elements of cycling. For additional tips and techniques, visit our YouTube channel or contact us and let us help design a training program based on your individual needs.


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