30
Jan
2013

Training’s started … almost!

Total Rides : 0 

Total Distance: 0 km

Total Ascent : 0 m

 

Hi and welcome to my first Tour de Cure training blog! During the period from now until we roll out of Adelaide on April 26th, I’ll be using this blog to keep you updated on what we’re up to and how the training’s going. The plan is to keep the blog going as we hit the roads for real … however I planed to do that last year and it never quite happened!

There’s actually no official ‘start of training’ date, however this year for the first time we’re having assessments at regular intervals to monitor progress and as the first one’s on Sunday, I guess now is the time to step things up! A lot of the riders, myself included, ride year round, so in reality it’s a case of doing longer rides to build endurance and increasing the hill work. You can see why when you look at a snap shot of what lies ahead of us on this year’s Tour.

The first 7 days of riding cover 1,000km of flatish, to dead flat, roads notorious for head, tail and sidewinds. At times the speed of the peloton will be well over 40 km/h as we rip through Western Victoria, the Murray and Goulburn Valleys. At other times when the wind swings head or side on, we’ll be grinding out what could be some of the harder days we’ll experience on a bike. On days 8 and 9 however we pick up some serious elevation. 50% of the entire Tour’s climbing is done on these two days. Day 9 starts straight uphill out of Khancoban (never a good way to start a ride!) and finishes with one of Australia’s most infamous climbs, Dead Horse Gap – this is a 14km monster boasting an average gradient of 9%, with a lot of the climb at 10-15%. To be honest, that will be painful no matter how much training I do!

So there we are, the bike was fitted (i.e.; fine tuned to my body) yesterday and is currently in perfect working order … so no excuses – I just have to get up at 0430 tomorrow for my first training ride!



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