Some very interesting posts here. Lots of food for thought. I signed up for the K100 on a whim late last year and so now am really having to get serious about it 😮

I live on the edge of the Peak District and so am getting most of my training in via hill climbs and decent runs around these parts. Yesterday was my first big test – the CVMBC, and this year I decided to cycle to and from the event which added 12 miles and about 1,000ft of climbing. So that was a total of 42 hill miles and about 3,600ft climbed (in around 4.5hrs – event plus travel to/from). Now I'm by no means certain of the accuracy of the elevation data as I use mapmyride.com to get it. However I can use this as a relative measure for the K100.

Yesterday I averaged 86ft climbed per mile. And by looking at the K100 route in mapmyride.com the course averages about 58ft/mile (5,800ft total). So my training plan is to get many 40-50 mile rides in the hills at around 70-80ft/mile average. That takes care of the hills.

For distance I'm cycling a day a week to the office – 40 mile round trip and deliberately using fat knobbly tyres to sap my energy 🙂 Oh, and carrying extra weight by design, such as a netbook, power supply etc.

Add into that some quick lunchtime blats of 10-15 miles and I'm building up to around 250 decent miles each month, but aim to get that well above 300 by Sept.

I've also got some long distance road trips planned, over to the East Coast – around 70miles, stay overnight and then back.

This means that I should be OK for the distance & saddle time, OK for hills, OK for terrain. But it is all 'should' and not 'will' at this time. I've set up a sponsor site (http://www.justgiving.com/kielder100) and clearly state on there that I'm not 100% certain of completing this event!

Now I need to look into the right tyres, I'm going through them at a rate of knots at the moment. Panaracer XC Pro get my vote at the moment – they've been brilliant but I've no experience on long forest trails with them… any recommendations are welcome 🙂

Are you sure about that 5,800 feet of ascent?

Seems a bit low. I didn't do it last year, but I thought that was about 12k feet?

@luked2 I'm not at all sure of the 5,800ft either. The point I was trying to make is that I'm using the same tool to do the measurement for K100 and routes that I am familiar with e.g. CVMBC.

If mapmyride.com says that CVMBC is 2,600ft in 30 miles, and that K100 is 5,800ft in 100 miles then I have a means to compare the two in terms of ft/mile.

As mapmyride.com uses the same data source for terrain, and the same method of calculation for elevation then the absolute values don't really concern me, it is the relative values that I'm using as a yardstick. If I can train on routes that are 30-40% steeper than K100 then that will put me in good stead.

I've not been to Kielder for many years, but have had a few holidays recently in Northumberland. The hills there are more rounded and rolling compared to the ones around where I live so it does look like the data from mapmyride.com does have a degree of accuracy I can rely on.

How technical is the route? compared to say the beast or similar welsh trails.

technical wise, not very, no where near the beast. It has a few bits but few n far between. Its more mental toughness, trying to do mediocre things when your knackered is quite difficult