Have I Trained Enough? Am I Ready?

Thursday I leave for my bicycle tour of Alaska.  As usual, when the date for a tour approaches I begin to wonder if I’m ready.  This has been a mixed bag cycling season for me and I know that everything is a little harder than last year.  It seems as if I haven’t trained quite like in the past, so I looked today to compare my preparation for this tour with recent previous tours.  So far this year I’ve ridden 1,817 miles (but who’s counting!).  The final 30 days before a tour, which I consider to be my training miles for the tour, accounts for 587 of those miles.

So how does this compare with other recent tours I've taken?

Year	Tour	Tour Miles	Tour Days	Annual Miles Before Tour starts	Training Miles ridden in prior 30 days	Training miles per tour mile
2019	Alaskabike	400	6	1,817	581	1.45
2018	Crossroads Cycling NM-Kansas	699	9	1,938	324	0.46
2016	America By Bicycle Oregon-Minnesota	2,089	27	2,005	715	0.35
2014	America by Bicycle     DC-Myrtle Beach	576	7	3,424	771	1.34

Although I don’t feel like I’ve trained hard enough, compared to past tours my training mileage seems to be on target.  So maybe I have nothing to worry about.  This year compares with what I did for the D.C. to Myrtle Beach tour five years ago that was one day longer than this year’s tour. My training miles have been almost 50 percent more than the miles I'll ride on the tour.  This also compares with the 2014 tour.  While I did not train as many miles as I did for the 2014 and 2016 tours, I did get in 250 more miles than for the somewhat longer Crossroads tour last year. 

And does it matter if my training, and the fact that I’ll be riding a heavier bike than I usually ride (since I'll be riding the tour operator provided hybrid rather than my own road bike) might leave me noticeably slower than my usual average of just around 15 mph?  Nope!  I have a different attitude for this year’s tour.  I am told there are a total of eight riders.  I don’t know if I am faster or slower than the other riders, although the tour operator says the usual average not counting the lunch stop is somewhere in the 12-14 mph range. I would imagine I’ll be on the lower end of that range rather than the top.  Do I care?  No!  

I am on this tour to ride in Alaska, see the scenery, and check off another state toward my goal of riding in all 50.  Since part of each day will be spent riding in the van anyway (the route covers about 800 miles…we ride about half of those miles on the bikes), if I find that I am too slow and fall well behind the others, I’ll take a ride in the van and catch up.  If I am faster, I’ll just stop and take more pictures.  In fact, on my Garmin, I am going to change the data display so that average speed doesn’t show.  It’s just not going to matter to me this time.  And that feels refreshing!

This Friday when I tool around Bainbridge Island during my stopoff in Seattle, I’m just going to ride to see the island.   There’s no tour riders to keep up with.  No average speed to be concerned with.  I just want to bicycle sightsee.  

Fitting it all in the suitcase

I’ve been concerned about fitting everything in the suitcase.  On Friday my daughter Marci was here and she helped me as I pared down what I had pulled out to pack.  I think I’m going to be ok.  It looks like it will all fit.

I may get in one more training ride on Tuesday morning with my usual Tuesday group ride.  If I do….great.  If not, it won’t matter.  By Thursday morning I’ll be ready to go and looking forward to being on the bicycle in Alaska next Sunday.

I invite you to follow along with me.  My camera is ready and I promise to try and keep the words to a minimum and let the pictures do the talking!

Bruce