Build your endurance and fitness gradually – the importance of recovery
Let’s get back to some basics this week. We are going to discuss progression in developing fitness, specifically as it relates to riding RAGBRAI. To be able to ride long miles for seven days in a row, come July, you will need to build up to it. Let’s review some of the basics of training.
Progressive Overload
There is a concept in exercise physiology called “progressive overload.” What this refers to is a program where you continue to do a little but more work than you’ve previously done with your rides. This stimulates the body to respond to this new stress and adapts to it, making you stronger and fitter over time.
So when it comes to your cycling training, let’s say you can ride 20 miles at this point. Maybe you were pretty tired after that. The next ride, try riding a little further, say 22 miles. This may be a little more difficult and stressful for you. But assuming you allow yourself to recover, the next time you try 22 miles, it should feel more manageable and you shouldn’t feel as tired afterwards.
Recovery is key to improvement
I have this saying that “training breaks your body down, recovery is where you actually get stronger.” There’s this false idea that hard training makes you stronger. Actually what training does is to cause stress and damage to your system, including heart, lungs and muscles. When you do a hard bike ride, your muscles will be sore the following day or two. This represents that you did some microdamage to your muscle tissues. That doesn’t sound good, and it isn’t if you don’t allow your muscles to heal and recover. That means the day after a hard ride you should take it easy, either take a day or two off the bike, depending on how sore you are, or go out for an easy ride to loosen up, or just go for a walk.
Motivated people who like to train all the time may think they are getting stronger and stronger, but in fact will hit a point where they stagnate – not improving and constantly in a state of fatigue. So it’s important to remember that when you are resting, you are training too. That’s when the good things happen to make you stronger and more fit. Your muscles recover and become stronger so the next time you do a ride they will be more able to handle the stress. Your body is amazing in that it responds to what you do to it, and tries to adapt so it is able to anticipate you doing it again. Which you will.
Progressing your cycling training
So getting back to progressive overload, here are some ways to implement this in your training. We can look first at a single ride. As mentioned above, one way to do this is to increase your distance with each successive rides. But of course you should rest after your rides, so a good way to do this is to ride every other day and trying to do just a little more each ride.
Likewise, you should aim to increase your total weekly mileage as well. A general recommendation is to increase your weekly mileage by about 10% per week. So if you rode 30 miles last week, aim for 33 this next week. It may seem that you will never get to riding long rides at this pace but in a few short weeks you will be. The training plan I’ve provided here is designed this way so that both your longest ride of the week and the total mileage of the week increases incrementally.
Building resilience for RAGBRAI
You may be thinking, if I only ride every other day how is that going to prepare me for RAGBRAI where I have to ride seven days in a row? Good question. Once you have been training as described above for a couple of months, you can add another layer of progressive overload. You will start to add back to back days of riding. By doing this, you won’t be fully recovered for on day two but by adding another day of training on top of the first adds another form of stress. Then you rest and recover from this double overload.
As the season progresses you can move to three and then four days in a row. But the key is to then allow yourself a day or more likely two to fully recover before repeating. Remember – recovery is a critical element of training too. So the next time your partner gives you a hard time for laying on the coach, simply say that you are training. You’re not wrong!
So rest as hard as you train!
Coach David Ertl
Find all of Coach Ertl’s Training Blogs, as well as the 2026 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. Ertlalso provides cycling training plans and ebooks at his website: www.CyclesportCoaching.com. You can contact Coach Ertl at: [email protected].
