50 Days Until The Argus

50 Days Until The Argus

The current countdown reads 53 days, 16 hours, 31 minutes and 55 seconds. This is the time frame in which I have to prepare myself for "The worlds largest timed cycle race" which takes in 95km of Cape town, South Africa.

Officially training started on January 1st with the last mouthful of a pizza bought to aid the recovery from a messy end to 2013. The program takes in both indoor and outdoor cycling with the current target of 113 miles per week outdoor and 50 miles indoor. Weather has thus far proven to be a tough opponent and much of the training has taken place indoors but as of yesterday morning the miles started accumulating. 

The 113 outdoor miles per week is broken down into 26 miles on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with an additional 35 miles added on either the Saturday or Sunday of a working week. This 35 mile session will on occasion be substituted for a longer session to test my endurance for the race. A cycle ride of around Isle of Wight's coast is booked in for the 8th February (100km) and many more rides will be added to this.

Indoor sessions are broken into two segments of 1 hour. These will take place on either a Monday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday depending on the situation with my outdoor training (which takes precedent). Spare days will be used as rest days and any outdoor session missed (for whatever reason) will be made up in the indoor environment. These indoor cycling sessions tend to be high paced and energy sapping so other gym activities might be explored (such as swimming or running) to provide a bit of variety.

2013 was a strong cycling year with a total mileage of 2351 recorded miles and I have no doubt that this figure will be beaten redounding-ly in 2014. For now the training properly begins.