Preparation for the Tour Divide

I’m desperate to do this, money is the only blocker. I have to make a family trip out of it, so I think I’d fly out to the start, the wife and kids would fly out to her folks in the Mid West, then they would road-trip down to the finish with perhaps her sister and family too, then we could all drive back. Costly, and more time is required than just the 3-4 weeks of riding.

That blogs making me chuckle already, bookmarked. As another fat middle aged IT pro I’m cheering you on. I managed to dump the ciggies a few years back, if I can do it you can.
Think you should publicise the events you plan to do with your rider number so we can encourage (well, heckle) you. And chapeau for having cohones for posting it up here .. the ideas out there, you’re doing it now..

here’s a bit of inspiration for you.
a friend’s cousin rode to London from Turkey in 8 weeks. 4,000km. no plan, no fitness and not a lot of cycling beforehand.
http://dancingbearonabike.wordpress.com/%5B/url%5D

Awesome. I’m a bit young for the diesel engine to have kicked in yet, but when I get a bit older racing the Divide is on the to do list.
Fair play to you.

From an XC and road racing background, I can’t emphasize the importance of strength for a ride like that. For a long time I thought fitness was the be all end all, just get out and ride your bike la de da. I’m now beginning to realise that for any comfort or longevity in sport, you need to keep on top of your strength. Body weight exercises- squats, lunges, pressups, planks, bridges are as much as you need, just getting them done regularly is the important bit. To be honest, I just enjoy riding my bike, so I’m not that fussed on rolling round the floor getting sweaty, but after having to sit out for weeks and months with injuries, there’s a net gain in bike riding enjoyment if you do a little hard graft. Get a routine and stick to it and you’ll never have to worry about it again.

Best of luck

Good luck 🙂 will also be keeping an eye on the blog.

Went to see a talk by Mark Beaumont last night. Very inspiring, but one point he made (as ^^) was to train in all aspects of fitness, gym work, other sports, core strength, everything. By cycling, even every day, you just develop the cycling muscles. The point at which you get injury / strain in endurance events is when the big fat cycling muscles that you have worked on eventually get fatigued (which they will after a number of days in the saddle) and then your shoulders hunch, your knees go out of line etc. At that point it is all the other ‘non cycling’ muscles that hold you together and keep you going.

Once again, thanks for the words of encouragement folks!

Good call on the gym work/core strength stuff. I need to work much more on that sort of thing, along with much more thorough stretching. My bad back at the moment is the result of too much driving and not enough effort put into maintaining my core. More sit ups in the morning for me I think!

Just reading the bio’s of the TD racers on the Salsa website. Scary stuff!

That blog is bloody good Brakes – cheers for that

please don’t copy the dancing videos though.

With regard to core, be careful of burning yourself out. I know that I don’t really enjoy it (maybe you will so you won’t need to worry, don’t let me influence you!), but can hang in with a hard session for 3 or 4 weeks. But that is all I can do. After 3 or 4 weeks I’ll find something else to do or kid myself that it’s not worth it, no matter how good my intentions are.
That’s not the approach you want. Stay modest and underexpecting when planning how many reps of whatever you’ll do. Much better to start low(easy :O!) but consistently build up than suffer with something that’s tough for as long as you can bare – which won’t be the 12 months that you have.
If you have money, then potentially a circuit class or something would be the best medicine, they’re much more ‘enjoyable’ than your bedroom floor and much harder to back out of (in a good way)

very good points above on core strength – this underpins everything

Thats a fair point – my love affair with the gym comes in fits and starts and it’s when I leave it alone for a period of time that I end up with chronic pain. I might join the local gym this weekend as it seems pretty good and they have circuits there that I can partake in. I also have to drive past it on the way home so that’ll guilt trip me into going

And think about doing some audaxes, the antipodeans have done this. Martin & I did a few and Mike Hall has done some this year as well. The 300/400/600km ones are excellent for just getting used to massive hours on the bike. Any bike.

The last 3 months particularly try and ride 2 days in a row weekly with all your kit on your bike so that the body is used to it. Good luck, you will have a great time. And as I said earlier stretch and core;-)

This is a great read about 2 guys riding the divide

about the only book I have ever read cover to cover without getting bored

May as well chirp in here. After the HT400 this year I’ve fully committed to the TD next year. Already highlighted need for time off next year. Just a matter of riding myself into shape again.

Round is a shape right?

Doing it