I love cycling, but it’s also work, especially when training for an event. When I’m gearing up for the century ride, I’m riding four days a week. It’s fun but it’s a commitment.

When you have a full time job (and a part time job, and a blog, and another blog, and other commitments), it’s not always easy to find the time to do those rides. And how much time and how many miles are these rides going to take anyway?

I base my personal training schedule on the out-of-print-but-really-nice-for-new-riders Richard’s Cycling for Fitness. This book starts out with four weeks of three rides per week–considering most people have at least two days off a week, that’s a pretty reasonable approach to riding. After the four week bit, the author says that someone can do a metric century–100 kilometers, or 62 miles) comfortably. To me, that seems a little optimistic, although not a lot optimistic. Of course, week one of his plan is 52 total miles: two twenty mile rides and a twelve mile ride. For someone who is new to cycling, this is probably not a reasonable week one.

After the four weeks, the program becomes a four day a week schedule, which is surprisingly a lot harder than the three day a week schedule. How to fit it in?

Say good morning to the 4:45 am alarm.

While the Richard’s program has mileage attached to its rides (of course), I like to think of the rides more in terms of time. “Short” are the two, approximately one hour rides that happen during the weekdays; “mid” is the Sunday ride, about two hours or maybe a bit more, recovering from the “long” Saturday ride, which might start at about two hours but end up being about six hours toward the end of the program.

Richard’s program to get you into century shape is 25 weeks long–almost half a year. Throw in rain days, flake days, and mechanicals, and you can add two weeks to that. It’s a commitment. Right now I’m supposed to be on week four; I usually start at this time of year at an assumed week seven pace, since I’ve been doing a little riding all along.

Let’s see how I do tomorrow at 4:45 am.