Sharada Prasad

Participating in TFN has been my new cycling goal. But TFN requires tremendous amount of stamina. I am not sure whether I would be able to complete TFN, but I surely want to give it a try.

TFN starts in second week of December 2009. I have roughly 5 months to prepare. My plan is to increase the distance organically. I ride around 30km everyday. In next five months I want to increase the distance by 3km every week and reach 66km/day close to TFN. Once in a month I want to take up some serious riding. So here is my plan

• Jul -6 – 13 – 33km/day
• Jul – 13 – 20 – 36km/day
• July – 20 – 27 – 39km/day
• July – 27 – Aug 10 – 42km/day
• Aug – 10 – 24 – 45km/day
• Aug – 24 – Sep 7 – 48km/day
• Sep – 7 – 28 – 51km/day
• Sep – 28 – Oct – 12 – 54km/day
• Oct 12 – Nov – 2 – 57km/day
• Nov 2 – 16 – 60km/day
• Nov – 16 – 30 – 63km/day
• Dec – 1 Till TFN – 66km/day

Major rides planned

• July – 25th – Shivagange
• August – 8th – Kanakapura Rd – 75km total
• August – 22nd – Nandi Hills
• September 12th and 13th – Mysore
• October 2nd, 3rd, 4th – Chennai
• November  – 14th and 15th- Tumkur

There are some concerns though.

If the distance between my house and office is 30km, how do I keep on riding upto 66km/day? The answer lies in the route I have to take to office. It is better to leave my house at 7:00am and reach office by 9:30am. I should be able to cover close to 45km in two hours. Again in the evening I should cover 20km back home. In five months, a total of 5hrs/day of riding as compared to my existing 1.5hrs of riding.

I also need to ride longer distances continuously – riding to Mysore, Nandi and other places are good ways to practice.

Longer rides pose special challenges – sore bums, flat tires, necessity of cleat pedals etc. Also the very argument of the necessity of a road bike comes into picture. But I don’t want to invest in a road bike as of now. I intend to do as many days as I can on TFN  with my existing Trek 4300. I need to buy bike shorts and cycling shoes with SPD cleat pedals. Decathlon is the best place to buy them. Cycling shorts are already available at Decathlon. It might take two more months for the shoes and pedals. I need to wait as getting them from US would prove to be costlier. Also, the shoe size may not match my requirements well.

I may also have to change my diet. Longer the distance, greater the need to feed yourself with food and water. I got a hydration bag from Decathlon for purchasing a Rockrider 5.3. That bag should help me for practice rides. One can also buy water bladders and use them with normal backpacks. I may have to work on the diet.

Some two lines about cleat pedals (also called clipless pedals). These pedals help you cycle with more efficiency since your feet would be attached to the pedals. There will be a push and pull effect and this is very important to achieve good speed and distance. You get two types of cleat pedals – LOOK and SPD. More details from Wikipedia. You need a special shoe to ride bikes with cleat pedals. You also get hybrid cleat pedals – pedals which are flat on one side for ordinry riding and with cleats on the other side for riding with the right shoe.

TFN requires commitment. If I cannot follow the plans I have laid out, I am sure that I would drop out on 2nd or 3rd day of TFN and my dream would die with it. But this is a new challenge to test my limits, a new way to see beautiful the Nilgiris_(mountains)^W. What is life without new challenges and new perspectives?

I am tracking the preparations on DailyMile

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.