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I'm doing the South Downs Way (in a day) in July, and the Kielder 100 in September. I did these both last year and blew up on the SDW but was OK for Kielder. I don't think I had enough miles in my legs for the SDW last year (a few things went wrong on the day too).
At the moment I'm doing a long ride once a week and also cycling 2 or 3 other times a week of an hour to 90 minutes, plus swimming and yoga. This is all I have time for (in fact find it quite difficult to find this much time).
Anyway I'm planning on increasing my weekly long ride from about 3 hours at the moment up to about 9 hours 2 weeks before the SDW. This means an increase of about 10% a week. I'll keep the other rides about the same (they are commuting miles anyway).
Whaddya think, is a long ride every week, increasing at 10% a week a good plan? Have thought about doing a long ride every other week, but that would mean a 20% increase each long ride, which sounds a bit much.
Your midweek rides are too short. You need to find a way to get one ride of 3 hours. The simplest way is to get up early and ride before work.
Should have said that I'm not looking to be at the sharp end at Kielder, would like to improve on last year if possible. Did just under 12 hours last year. A few weeks before I did a 143 mile (not too hilly) road ride in 9 1/2 hours. I've not been able to ride over the winter (just started back about a month ago) so I'm looking for the best way to get back to feeling OK on a 10 hour plus ride, by July.
Why do you say I should up a week-day ride to 3 hours? And at what sort of effort would that be? My current 60-90 minute rides are done at a fairly hard pace, with plenty of hills. The long rides are nice and steady but also with lots of hills.
Go faster for longer, simple but effective.