Just thought I’d post on here to say thanks to the TrainerRoad people - the combination of podcast and product has helped me so much over the last few years, and despite repeated injuries (broken spine, follow-up surgery on that, then ruptured Achilles just for fun!), I’m now more or less the fastest I’ve ever been.
For the last 6-9 months I’ve been planning and preparing for a ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End (JOGLE). (For those not in the UK - that’s essentially the length of the UK from the North East of Scotland down to the South West of England.) The shortest route is about 870 miles, but that involves a load of big fat busy roads. I chose to go with round numbers, so planned a route that was a touch over 1000 miles, to be done over 10 days, so on average a century a day. (I also planned it to go via my house and my parents’ house, so that I had some home comforts!) I set off on the 2nd July, on my aero road bike with some fairly minimal bikepacking gear, and stayed at B&Bs, hotels etc. The weather was mostly kind (or at least, not too cruel), my arse got sore but held up, and I cruised it - no injuries, nicely controlled power, just touring. Was very tired by the end, but it basically all went exactly to plan. You can see the route here if you’re interested (the ten days joined together with fake speed!): Relive 'JOGLE 2019'
So… TrainerRoad really works for me. I don’t race, but I love the focus and consistency it gives me, not to mention the entertainment and education from the podcast…thank you guys!
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Congratulations. That is an excellent effort. A century a day. No wonder you had a bit of soreness.
It would be interesting to ehar what your training was like from Jan 2019 to the event.
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Damn, son! Solid effort that’s for sure
Well done, great achievement 
Maybe one for my bucket list!
Thanks folks!
Well, around last September / October time I started to feel like I might be able to get back into things soon after my Achilles rupture (took a loooong time to get to that point), so really my preparation started then. I’d put on a bit of weight over the many months of inactivity so I started by concentrating on weight loss for a few months. Went from 90 kg at the end of September to just under 80 by the end of the year. Then I started SSB LV1, and continued the weight loss through to the end of April (75 kg), then I stopped losing weight and put more focus on the workouts (as has been said a million times - the more intense workouts just don’t work so well if you’re limiting fuel). Through May and June I had some vacation and some busy time at work, so I started General Build but didn’t stick rigidly to it (in contrast to SSB, where I pretty much did). I fed in more outdoor rides as well, and started giving them higher prority. Quite a few in the 4 hour range, but really not loads, 0 - 2 per week. (I work ~50 miles from home so can do various 3 - 4.5 hour routes in to work on occasion, but never more than twice in a week.)
I think I did one century ride early in the year just to see how my ankle would hold up, and then one bigger one at Easter (222 km (Follow Graham on Strava to see this activity. Join for free.), which wasn’t really planned - my wife suggested it a few days before just because it would work logistically - she and the kids started a vacation a few days before me ). With hindsight that was an excellent idea - it was a great day out and, though I was a bit stiff afterwards, it really showed me that slow centuries would be well within my capabilities. It was also a beautiful day with light traffic which helped!
Here’s a screen grab from TR.
My FTP was something like 212 in December I think, and the latest test was 252, so still a long way off many people here, but a reasonable payoff for my efforts I think.
At the end of the JOGLE, my Strava fitness/freshness was a bit comical:
Fatigue score of 216 is definitely the highest I’ve hit (and probably ever will!). Also, since I started on the 2nd July, I was looking pretty good on the July distance challenge by the end!:
Probably enough waffle for now… 
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Brilliant write-up. Thanks for posting.
Pretty cool.
How’d you get the tied together Relive?
Also, how did you hit 396 km/h?
So, to make the Relive thing I cheated. I didn’t want to include pauses for lunch / sleep etc. so just splicing the activity files together wouldn’t have worked without a load of extra hacking.
I had planned each stage out using ridewithgps, and had actually already made a combined total route on there by joining them together, partly to share with friends and partly as an easy way to get the total distance and elevation gain. So… I just took that planned total route and fed it into here : Add Time Stamps to GPX TCX or FIT Files | Strava
and asked it to insert timestamp info at something like 200 km/h, so that the total ‘activity’ would appear to have taken 8 hours, and would produce a sufficiently short video without having to slow it down. Worked fine - presumably just an artefact that it appears to max at a much higher speed on Relive.
I did sign up for a trial period on Relive so that I could play with settings etc., but the basic process I followed would work on the free one I think.
