Training for Taupo

training for taupo

well its around 10? weeks until the taupo bike ride 

So how is the training going?

well its going ok not great but there not much i can do about that - some weeks are better then others with the most i done in a week was 400 km - with one of the rides being a 200 km ride that week  most weeks its been around 70-140 km a week  

most of the riding has been going into town so a 65-70 km ride with a few longer rides like a 130 km  and a 200 km ride 

once I'm back on the road i should be doing around 60 -100 km a day as i tour around the place - when i get to taupo i m planing to do day rides when I'm not helping at events - some of then at night to get used to doing longer rides at night ( maybe a 2 lap ride of the lake? maybe a longer ride ) - yes some of my training rides are longer then  many of the fun rides like the (one lap)160 km lake taupo ride that people train for a year to do (some times longer)  - on a side note when I'm doing some of the longer fun rides and some of the riders think I'm just doing part of the ride because of what my bike is (a folding bike with 20 “ ) its fun when they find out that I'm doing the full ride or even more then one lap (my bike friday is a folding touring bike thats cost around $3000 and it’s done maybe 45,000 km in the 5? years that i have had it )

trying to work out how much training to do for a 1300 km bike ride can be hard work as there is a few ways that people use to train for rides this long - some do racing to get fit others ride they bike to work each work day and do longer riders in the week ends ,some even get early (before sun rise ) to train before work  - for me i use my bike touring to get fit for longer rides as well as doing the odd longer ride - longer rides being from 130+ km up to 200+ km depending on what fun ride I'm looking at doing 

- i don't do bike racing - my ave speed seems to be any where between 15-25 km/h - its part of why i don't tent to enter many fun rides as many riders seem to treat fun rides as races also with the time frames that many rides do from start time until the close the course mean i would have to do an ave speed of 27-30 km/h - not what i would call a fun  ride as i like to look at places along the way and not just head down going as fast as i can - on a side note i may not be able to go fast as others do  but i can do the speed I want all day (maybe because of how my dyspraxia is i don't get sore legs on the bike - even after doing 640 km (riding 4 laps of lake taupo in 2011 with strong head and side winds ) i had a bit of a sore back and neck (bad bike fit?) but my legs was fine )

98% of my riding is done on my own - thats to say i don't do rides with other riders (like saturday morning group rides that many road cycles like to do - why not? because when on on tour I’m heading for a new place each day with a full touring load on - when I do day rides the type of training I do means that I tend to keep to a set speed for a set number of km on each ride also because the speed that im riding at is just to slow for most group rides - many group riders seem to like treating the weekly rides as min bike races also when im doing the fun rides that I do most of the time im on my own and not part of a group so in many ways its better that i do my training rides on my own at my speed as that is how i do the fun rides as well as i have a better idera how my training is going (riding in a group in a pace line  is around 20% ( maybe more? )better then riding by you own and I can work on things like testing bike or gear set up with out holding other riders up 

my bike set up for taupo (and other longer rides ) is mostly work out - one of the things that I been working on latly is rear lights - how many lights to use and where to put then on the bike ( where my main rear light used to sit on the rack each time i folded the bike i had to remember to take take the light off or it would break on the ground as the bike rear rack sits on the ground when the bike is folded 

 As for front lights I got that worked out now- a main light power off the front wheel  (so no worrying  about it going flat ) and 2 little led bike lights to use as back up lights and a front low power head light to see places where the bike lights don't show ( like the Handel bar's/bag )   (I'm still looking for this light  so might just pick one up in Taupo )