Time to Ramp Up Your Riding

Time to Ramp Up Your Riding

So it’s now April and I’ve been blogging about training now for a little over two months and hopefully you’ve been getting out on your bike some. If you live someplace like Iowa, that can be challenging in early spring with snow, wind, cool temps and wind. And did I mention wind? Holy hang on to your helmet, Batman! But if you read back a few articles, I talk about using the wind to mimic hill climbing if you don’t happen to have any hills handy. You probably have some wind handy. Anyway, the weather is gradually improving and it is time to get serious about putting in those miles to get you ready for RAGBRAI.

Increase your mileage gradually

Two rules of endurance training, as endurance is primarily what you need for an event like RAGBRAI. One is to ride a lot. Sounds basic but that’s basically how it works. Two, increase your riding gradually and don’t make big jumps in mileage too quickly or you may overwhelm your body before it’s ready to handle that load. There are different ways to increase your riding volume and here are a couple. 

You can ride a bit longer on each of your rides. If you can ride 10 miles, next time ride 11. Simple, and easy on your body.  Another way is to ride more often, so if you now ride three days per week, bump it up to four or five. In my RAGBRAI training plan, I tend to use the former – increasing the miles ridden each day assuming you are riding four days per week, but feel free to increase your riding to more than four days per week. 

If you really want to get extreme, you can ride twice a day some days. This works well if, for example, you ride your bike to work.  You get a ride in twice a day. That can add up to quite a few miles if you do it every day. Miles are cumulative no matter how you get them. It is recommended that you increase your volume no more than 10% per week. So that can come by riding 10% more miles each ride, or adding in additional rides.

Increase the distance of your longest ride

In addition to the above, it is important that you target one ride each week to be your long ride. Long is a relative term, but it should be the longest ride you do each week. At the beginning of the season, that will be fairly short but you should build it up, again, 10% each week. So if your longest ride is 20 miles, next week it will be 22. Doesn’t sound like much, which is kind of the idea. Once you get up to 25 miles per ride, you can bump it up 5 miles at a time (I know, that’s more than 10% but it’s not that many more miles at this point).  In just a few weeks, you will be up to 60 or 70 miles for your longest ride.

How long should your longest ride be?

I like to use the rule of thumb that if you can do 70 miles in training, you should be able to ride 100 miles. Remember, on RAGBRAI, you have all day to finish the ride. You can take your time, stop frequently and rest and eat and drink. So it’s like breaking the ride up into shorter rides.

This year the longest day is 71 miles, so if you won’t be doing the 100 mile loop on RAGBRAI, 50 miles may be enough for you in training. Now I don’t want to dissuade you from doing longer rides. If you want to test yourself and keep going longer on your long ride, that will only help. You may want to make sure you can do 71 miles before you get to RAGBRAI, not a bad idea.  You may even find some local rides you can do prior to RAGBRAI such as metric centuries (100 kilometers or 62 miles) or century rides (100 miles) if you want to challenge yourself.

Use training to practice feeding and fueling

Once your body is trained to sit on a bicycle seat while turning your legs for several hours, it can keep doing that for a lot longer even though you haven’t ever ridden that far. The key is to keep your body fueled and hydrated. A lot of what we call fatigue is attributable to dehydration and/or lack of energy. By keeping your supply of fuel (carbohydrates primarily) coming in and drinking regularly throughout your ride, you will be amazed at how long you can keep going. 

Training isn’t just for the legs, it is a great time to practice and experiment with different foods and beverages. Some people will use energy bars or gels; others (me) prefer real food (bananas, fig bars) or you can put sports drink mix in your water bottle and get both energy and fluid at the same time. Try some different options while you are out on your longer training rides and see what works for you and your stomach.

As a cycling friend of mine once said, “You can’t fake endurance”.  And maybe you crammed for finals in school, but cramming doesn’t work for cycling, so get on out there and start racking up the miles!

Coach David Ertl

Find All 2025 Training Blogs

Find all of Coach Ertl’s Training Blogs, as well as the 2025 Training Plan in our Training section on RAGBRAI.com.

David Ertl is a USA Cycling Advanced Certified Coach. He coaches individual cyclists through the Peaks Coaching Group www.peakscoachinggroup.com/davidertl . He also provides cycling training plans and ebooks at his website: www.CyclesportCoaching.com. Coach Ertl can be contacted at [email protected].