I am more of a casual cyclist. I am training for a 7 day ride in July of 60-80 miles a day with 3k feet climb a day in the very hot sun. I am notoriously slow rider which makes my time out on the road very long. I am pouring through the posts which are great information but I have no idea where to start. I have been riding indoors since November and do about an hour or two a day. My goal is to ride faster and longer. I’ve been researching zone 2 training but not sure that is going to get me where I want to be by July. I just want to enjoy the ride and be able to do it day after day! I’d appreciate some basic advice.
My biggest advice would to be not to over think it and just start, pick a LV plan builder plan you like the sound of and go. Good luck 
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Welcome to the forum!
The most basic advice goes like this:
- ride consistently
- slowly ramp up volume
- be sure and take a recovery week, usually every 4th week… one way to get faster is to slowly overload for 3 weeks and then allow the body to recover and get stronger the 4th week. There are other ways.
- get to a pattern that looks like this (off, 3 days, off, 2 days):
Mon - off
Tue - ride harder
Wed - ride easier
Thur - ride easier (or harder)
Fri - off
Sat - ride harder
Sun - ride easier
- by this point you should be at 6-12 hours/week, if you aren’t using a plan or have a coach, its time to start concerning yourself with event specific goals, periodization, etc.
Those are pretty basic guidelines.
Not everyone responds the same. I found it better and easier to increase load by doing a lot of easy riding plus some hard riding. Take that up to 8-12 hours/week for 3-6 months before starting to do more hard riding. Personally, if I loaded an LV plan I would err on the side of doing fewer intervals if it meant doing more time on the other two days (or added time to the plan rides). But thats what I found out works for me.
On the other hand some might do better starting with 3 hard rides per week, and then over time slowly adding easy rides.
Pretty hard to predict which one is “best” and sometimes it also comes back to what’s happening off the bike.
Provided you can recover, riding 5 days a week, at least 8 hours during 3 loading weeks, should do a lot to build up your capacity to ride more. And likely better prepare you for an event that requires 7 days of riding 60-80 miles a day.
You can just ride a lot, or load a TR plan, or buy a plan on TP, or hire a coach, or buy a book that helps you build your own plan. Lots of options.
Hope that helps, and have fun in July! Sounds like a great adventure!
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thank you. helps a lot.
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