Training for a Century ride or long-distance skate

Cycling season is well upon us and if you are contemplating a century ride (100 miles, or 161 km) this summer it helps to be prepared.  Since cycling a century is similar in its endurance requirements to ice skating a long tour and also that cycling is close to skating in its physiological demands, bike century training plans make for a good starting point to arrive at a plan for training for a skating marathon. 

There are several good sources of information on biking a century.  Bicycling Magazine's June 2009 has a century training plan.  Another excellent source of information is Ed Burke’s book, The Complete Book of Long Distance Cycling.  The book contains not only training plans, but a wealth of other information for the long distance rider and an invaluable source of endurance training insights that can be adapted to an ice skating marathon training program.   

Here’s a program from the book to just finish a century with the training distances shown and the longest training ride at 65 miles.  A similar program to perform better in the ride has a more demanding schedule that builds to a longer training ride of 75 miles (121 km).

The training programs for a cycling century or a running marathon generally have several common features:

1)             Often a 10 or 16 week program, and it’s assumed that the athlete started the program with an already established solid endurance foundation. 

2)             Shorter distances during the week, with some speedwork, and then a long ride (or run or skate) once a week, probably on the weekend.  The mileage is gradually increased each week, with the long run itself increasing to 60% to 75% of the event distance.

3)             Taper in the final 1 – 2 weeks where mileage is reduced.

The Bicycling Magazine link is similar although it talks in terms of time spent training rather than distance: the “peak” week of training occurs in week 7 with Monday off, Tuesday ride at 1.5 hours at endurance pace, Wednesday ride 1.5 hours endurance pace, Thursday 1 hour at recovery pace, Friday 0.5 hour recovery pace, Saturday 5 hour ride, and Sunday 2 hours at endurance pace. 

To adapt a bike century program to a skating marathon training plan, compromises may need to be made, particularly if the participant doesn’t live near natural ice or a 400m oval.  Not only can finding a place to train on ice be a problem, but outdoor cross training can be difficult in winter weather.  And nearly all the training will occur in early to mid-winter given that the ice marathons are in mid- to late-winter (late January for the Alternative Elfstedentocht in Weissensee, Austria, and late February for the Sweden and the Finland ice marathons).   

Looking at the training plan, for the weekday sessions, 2 or 3 one hour sessions on ice on those days would be great, but cross-training activities can be substituted including dryland training, slideboard training, stationary bicycle, or even short-track speed skating, all of which can be done indoors and are reasonably available.  The “long ride” on the weekend is more problematic.  In warmer climates, inline skating can be substituted (if you have leather boots you may want to utilize clunkier, but more comfortable, boots with a foam liner).  In cold climates in areas that lack a natural ice course cleared of snow, it may be possible to utilize cross-country skate skiing for some of the sessions.  And finally, there is the option to journey to a 400m oval or to natural ice (see the Links and Speed Skating pages on this website).   A first skate marathon is probably going to be like a lot of first-time marathon runners (meaning out to complete the distance and not worry so much about your time), but it helps to have gradually increased skating mileage leading to the event—for a 200km marathon, you’ll need to skate at around 20km (12.4 mph) to finish in 10 hours, and remember its winter so you don’t have too much more daylight.   

I’ll comment on dryland training in a future blog.  If you’ve trained for a cycling century or especially an ice skating marathon, please share your thoughts and ideas.  In the meantime, the ice has thawed and it’s time to get on the bike!