Dr. Dick Rafoth maintains an excellent website, www.cptips.com – Cycling Performance Tips.  A trained cycling enthusiast who has participated in high altitude rides totaling 200 miles, Dr. Rafoth has prepared numerous resource guides to help begin and more experienced cyclists prepare for races or long rides.  This article can be found at www.cptips.com/mileage.htm.

There are as many cycling training programs as there are trainers, but certain basic "rules of thumb" can be used to help you develop your own personal program for that upcoming event - usually a century or longer - but this program works for shorter distances as well.

Before beginning a regimented training program, develop a base of at least 500 miles of easy rides. (If you have a good winter or off season training program, you can pare down this recommendation.)

Once you have your training base, calculate your average weekly mileage, and then plan to increase it by no more than 10 - 12% per week. This includes both total weekly mileage as well as the distance of your long ride. (This 10 - 12% figure was developed from marathon training to minimize musculoskeletal injuries. Bicycling is easier on the joints and muscles, implying that this figure might be pushed.)

It's important to ride at least 5 days a week, and take at least one day off. Depending on your level of training (or evidence of overtraining) the seventh day is an additional intermediate mileage day or an additional rest day. For example:
one high mileage day equal to the event distance
one long slow recovery day
3 intermediate mileage days
1 or 2 rest days (off the bike or short recovery rides)

Plan a short mileage day or rest day to follow the high mileage day. It should be at least 1/4 of the length of your long ride and should be ridden at a leisurely pace to help loosen up your muscles after the long ride of the week.

The three intermediate mileage days should be midway between the short ride and the long ride of the week in mileage and should be ridden at a good training pace (85 to 90% of maximum heart rate). One or two of these may be interval training rides.

The longest mileage day is keyed to the length of your event or ride and ridden at the pace you hope to maintain for the event. Many coaches suggest you work up to the length (or even 125% of the length) of the event while others are comfortable if you can ride 75% of the event distance comfortably. This is usually a Saturday ride (with Sunday as a backup for bad weather or other unexpected circumstance that might derail your training program).

There should be an additional long mileage and recovery day during the training week.

The final high mileage day of your training program (the week before the event) should be at least 75% of the length of the planned event.

You can estimate the length of your training program by using your "average" long ride from your 500 mile base training period, increasing it by 10% a week, and repeating this until you arrive at a figure that is 75% of the length of the event for which you are training.

If you are training for a single day event or ride, your longest ride should be 10 to 14 days before the event. Then cut back on your rides the 3 days immediately before the event - aim for short, low intensity rides (spinning) to keep your muscles from tightening up. This recommendation is not as important for multiday endurance type rides, but common sense suggests that taking a few days off (short spinning rides only) immediately before the event will facilitate maximum muscle recovery and glycogen repletion.

Be flexible, and adjust your program to your lifestyle. A rigid program is destined to fail.

As far as the pace of your rides:
the long ride should match your own planned century speed
the short "recovery" ride should be a leisurely pace at no more than 50-60% of your maximum heart rate
two of the intermediate rides should be at the planned century pace
one of the intermediate rides, preferably prior to your day off the bike, should be at a brisk pace 2 - 3 mph faster than your planned century speed.

More about your long ride

Are long training rides necessary? Early in the spring when you're building endurance, longer rides have a role to be played in a training program. But during the competitive season, conventional wisdom says not to ride significantly farther than your longest event.
So if you do 40K time trials and road races up to, say, 50 miles, your longest training rides don't need to be longer than 40-60 miles. Early-season long rides build aerobic conditioning. But once the season is underway, distance may detract from the power and speed you need to do well in your goal events.

That said, there's an important psychological factor at work here, too. Centuries and tours can fit into a recreational race schedule. After all, we're into cycling to have fun, and variety keeps it that way. Just be sure to recover well, and don't ride over-distance too often or too close to competition. And remember - long rides won't make you faster!

A reader's approach

The following email from a reader is a great example of how it can all come together. A specific example sometimes shows you the way through the confusion of the"bullet points".

Q. I've gone over your website articles for training, and I have a question. From reading, MaxVO2 occurs at 90% max heartrate. On intense training days, how long should I keep pedaling at MaxVO2? I have a limited training time schedule and I want to maximize intensity for my 2 intense sessions, but I am unsure of how long I should pedal at MaxVO2 rate. I am using an interval based approach for my intense days to control heartrate. On the other 2-3 days of training, I just keep my heart rate in the target range based on if I am doing a long ride or recovery ride, or some days I just cross train instead.
This is sample intense session:

Pedal at 65% for 10 minutes warmup
Pedal at 90% for x? minutes
Recover back to 65%-75%
Pedal at 90% for x? minutes
Recover back to 65%-75%
Pedal at 90% for x? minutes
And so forth until interval is completed. Typically, I like to ride for about 60 minutes for an intense session doing 4-8 intense intervals, maybe 60 is too long? Recovery rides are usually 60 minutes, and my long ride is currently 2 hours. On all my rides I like to keep my cadence at 90-95 RPMs.

Currently, I am in decent shape (resting heart rate 56), but I am trying to increase overall fitness. I'm not trying to become an elite cyclist, but I want to maximize my effort. I've also noticed that as I do intervals, my recovery heart rate seems to increase over time. For example, if I am on the first interval and then go to recovery for 5 minutes, my heart rate may dip back to 130ish, then on the 4th interval and the same amount of recovery time, my heart rate may only go back 140ish. I am not sure if this is normal or if I need to pedal longer during my recovery rate because I am getting fatigued. There's probably no right or wrong answer here, but any advice would be appreciated. - JR

A. I would say you are doing everything just right. You can fill in the "x" with any length interval you'd like. It all depends on the event you are training for and personal goals. Getting better will happen as you put in the time - and as you increase your training (not frequency of each type of ride, but length of each). But don't forget to take off a day or two each week - that often takes more discipline than riding every day.

And yes, it is normal for subsequent heart rate recoveries to be less. The important heart rate is the next morning when you get up (to assure you are recovering and not approaching overtraining).