So I’ve entered the glentress 7 solo and think that I should maybe get a bit fitter. Not really wanting to do serious training as I don;t have a lot of free time with 3 kids and work.

So over the past couple of weeks I’ve been generally doing the following:
commute to work, off road, 13miles, ~300m height gain, twice a week
commute home, off road, 13 miles, ~450m height gain, twice a week
One commute on the road, 12 miles each way, 100, 250m height gain.
gentle 6k run twice a week (not done any running before, so slow, ~30mins).
Weekend is not much, bike with kids maybe.

Over the next few weeks I’m planning a few longer evening (3hrs) and weekend (5hrs) rides intermingled with the above.

Anything else I should really be doing?

Are you doing it solo or as a team? I’ll keep en eye on folks suggestions as im considering a solo attempt

solo, and it’s my first race of any sort for a good number of years.
If it’s relevant, I’m 38

I did it last year as a training ride so didn’t train for it specifically. Got 8 laps (64 miles), somewhere in the top 25 solo I think. The winner 10 and most people 6-8 laps.

My advice would be to ride your bike a couple of times for 7 hours if possible. Work out what you are going to eat, what you are going to carry and what you will need bt can leave in the transition area. I did it with a bottle and a few bits in my jersey pocket. Refilling as needed from the box which contained most of my usual camelbak contents.

If you can it might be worth getting hold of the time crunched cyclist book as it gives advice on how to build fitness without long rides. I didn’t follow it to the letter (far from it) but took a few tips that helped get more out of my commute rides.

Ride you shorter rides harder, even if they are only a few hours. Then just slow down on the day. It was a really good course last year. The downhill genuinely fun but the climbs started to wear me down. The grassy hill after the start,the climb up the red/blue/black singletrack to the buzzards nest carpark then “the long suffering road”. I was suffering the 8th time up that.

I should add, I’ll be commuting 6 miles each way to work. Road racing or timetrialling on Tue or Wed including a 30 mile round trip ride to the start. Social ride on thursday and then long ride at the weekend (70-100 miles on the road or 50 miles off road).

jonba – thanks.
I ride my commutes really hard, but they are about an hour each way so not too long. Still hard work after a long day.
Now it’s getting lighter on an evening, I’ll start extending my homeward commute and adding more hills.
I’m local to GT, so I guess I could just go and ride last year’s course for a day and see how I feel, I know where it went.

any other pearls of wisdom?

It’s worth getting a longer ride or 2 in nearer the time IMO, but if you can ride 3 hours, you can ride 7, it’s a mental thing to some extent.

If there’s running in the event then the running may help, though I doubt it TBH.

I’d get some variety and speed strength in there, intervals and hill reps, this really makes a difference, also “periodise” – have 3 weeks increasing in effort (mileage/intensity), an easy wekk, increase a bit and repeat.

Taper for the event so you peak for it, I like 2 weeks.

This is based on my experience of doing NoFuss10s solo.

– Commuting is a bit rubbish unless you challenge yourself a bit, didnt seem to make much difference to fitness, plus and I found it quite tiring when trying to train and work hard during the day. Could you drop down to 2 days bit maybe do something more constructive? E.g. Easy in and intervals on the way home one day, and moderate in and a longer, hillier route home the other one. The lighter nights are coming and off-road should be drying out as well.

– Getting a good number of long riders under your belt is key – not necessarily 7 hours, bu a few 5 hours (when you ride pretty much non-stop for that time) will do confidence a lot of good. I sort of worked up to the duration on the road and then took it off-road, doing long loops from home or going to GT and riding the three way marked routes.

– trying to do laps didn’t work for me, tried doing an hour loop from home but got bored. Outside the event scenario I just found it a bit dull and demotivating and too easy to stop “for a wee break” and tha was me. Boom.

– have an outline plan and some goals (e.g. “do 4 hours non-stop by end of April, 5 by end of may”. I found doing something too prescriptive didn’t work but I did write down what I did in a bit of detail and made sure I did 6 or 7 of my 8 planned sessions

– talk to work about a bit of flexibility – e,g, can you start at 10 or finish at 4 one day a week, found that gave me what felt like a huge amount of extra time

– make yourself ride in shit weather once or twice, you never knw what it’s going to do on the day and if you know you can hack it, you’ll get a mental boost.

Hope that helps, it’s not science but worked for me – generally top 1/3 in the 10s I did which is good for a fat lad.

Thanks all. I know I can do 7 hours OK. Done several multi day rides at 10+ hours per day ok with a few stops).
I guess with my limited time I’ll hammer the commutes and extend them when I get a chance. Do a few longer rides and a couple of all day ones too.
Just measured the commute and the basic one is 40km in the day with 800m climbing. It’s quite easy to extend to give 1000m climbing a day so I think I’ll work on that.

I followed a couple of training guides for 10@Kirroughtree a couple of years ago. The main thing I remember was that they built up to a max of 80% of your race distance, so a couple of 8 hour rides in prep for 10 hours in the race. But if it makes you feel better do a 7 hour ride, but try and do it in race conditions, so try and do as much riding in the time as possible. I think I focussed too much on the longer rides and should have spent more time doing high intensity stuff in the evenings but found it hard when I started to get busier with work. Sounds to me like you have it pretty well covered. Glentress’s resident whippet uses the bastard climb out of last years course to do hill reps, so if you really feel like hurting yourself 😉

chriswilk – Member

I’m local to GT, so I guess I could just go and ride last year’s course for a day and see how I feel, I know where it went.

Some parts are officially closed… Had a wee look down a bit the other day and it’s been blocked off but I think it’s mostly navigable. Lovely course…