When I am training for a marathon I do at least two 20 mile runs as part of training. These runs serve two purposes. First they help get your body for the distance of the marathon and second they give you the mental confidence that you can go the distance. It is not necessary to do training runs just as long as the marathon, but you do want to get in some runs at least 75% of the distance.

For the Everest Challenge, the real “challenge” to me is not the distance over the two days or the climbing on an individual day, but the back to back days of a lot of miles and a lot of climbing.

A week ago I did a monster training ride on Saturday and wanted to see how it was to ride the next day and did a ride up Henry Coe. That was a good first test, but to get a better feel I felt doing two back to back significant rides would be better training. On Saturday I did the club’s long distance training ride and on Sunday I wrote with friends for what we call the Triple Crown (Metcalf/Quimby/Mt. Hamilton). Both days had about the same amount of miles and similar climbing, although the climbs on the 2nd day were steeper. In terms of mileage these rides are in the ball park of what I will need to do on the Everest Challenge, but the climbing is about 2/3 as much.

On the first day I rode very hard because I was on a club ride and the others did not plan to ride again the next day. I would not want to try to ride this fast on the first day of the Everest Challenge. I paid the price the second day and had to ride much slower, but that still kept me with the other friends I was riding with.

Categories: Everest Challenge
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