A lad up the road is trying to get fit, he bought a mountain bike a few months back. Last week he signed up for a charity ride from Cornwall to whitby over 7 days (600+ miles)

He is quite unfit and few stone over weight. The ride is in May, day 1 is 115 miles!

Can anyone suggest a training program for him to follow to enable him to be fit enough to do it?

Get some miles in, and lay off the beer and pies…

thats what he is doing – what sort of miles (per week) should he be looking at? Food is ok, booze is knocked on the head atm.

10 hours of riding, without exception, every week. Starting now. Then you will be ready. And your lad up the road, same thing applies.

riding! He's got 5 months to get up to the distance- gradually up the distance, 3 steady rides aweek a bit further every week

He should be able to train for that in 6 months.

Tell him to start off with riding a 2/3 times mid week and maybe once at weekend. Shortish rides for the first month just to get used to riding his bike. If he tries too far too soon he'll probably get demoralised and quit. It's not a race so it's going to be all about building the distance he can ride.

Mid January he should start upping the miles for mid weeks and making his weekend ride a long ride. Varying his routes to include hills, head winds and flat rides.

By the end of March he should be able to ride 60+ miles comfortably and then it's a case of increasing the long rides by 10 miles each weekend. Weekend before the ride he should be able to do 100 mile ride comfortably.

If he's going to do the ride on the MTB tell him to put some slicks on it or consider changing to a road bike, if he goes the road bike route then he should do it a couple of months before the ride so he can get used to the bike.

He needs to get riding every day, short distances first and longer distances building up quickly. It's getting his arse used to being in the saddle over and over that he needs most.

I would be talking distances of up to 30-40 miles a ride, with a century every other week.

just needs to get out and ride the bike when he wants to do it. It's not really a big distance so there's no need to go and burst his arse for the next 6 months.

bear in mind that he is about 3-4 stone over weight and not done significant exercise in years.

Road average speed is 6mph

To add to that above: get the bike sorted first thing. If he's' unfit and overweight, those first training miles need to come as easy as possible, both for morale, and for building a base. Either get him on a road bike, or sort out slicks and a good riding position (and some lycra and minty lard- he might need it).

Goan, it is quite a big distance, 7 days @ ~100 miles a day?

sorted him with some slicks 🙂

There are qute a few free 'train for a century' plans kicking about the net, they would be a good start. Most are 12 week programs.

From the ones I've seen the general theme is start at 75% of what miles you want to ride in a day, then work back from the date knocking off 10% each week and that is your Sunday ride. Ride preferably 3 other days mid week which total the same as the Sunday ride.

You should also taper the last week and take a week off every 4 to recover.

Starting low at 20m / 6m that would take about 17 weeks to reach 75 miles.

As noted above, if he starts now, rides regularly, and progressively builds up his riding time and the distance covered, he should be capable of completing the event by May. However, if he leaves it too late he is going to suffer. A current average speed of 6 mph (20 hours for the first day!) suggests he has some work to do, and he needs to be methodical and serious about it. If he has not exercised in years, it is not going to be quite as trivial as some of the previous posts have suggested, and simply getting used to spending a long day in the saddle is going to take a bit of work.
It's the worst time of year to get started, when it is dark, cold and wet, so motivation could be a problem. Finding other people to ride with will help – it's more difficult to dodge a session on a wet Sunday morning when you know your mates are waiting for you to turn up. Something more leisurely like the CTC might be a good bet to start with, and perhaps a beginners ride with a local club once he gets a bit more fitness. Learning to ride with other people could also make things a lot easier for him when it comes to riding the event itself.