Training starts for real on January 1st, so I’ve spent a little time over the past few weeks making a plan to possibly get me through the outrageous Tour du Mont Blanc.
The hours above (330 from now till July – or 40 less than my entire 2023) tell one story; that of me sitting on my bike a lot, hopefully getting stronger and losing weight while doing it.
The first part of the plan will be mostly me in Zone Two, trying to find some hills, with one HIIT session a week. I’ll have a couple of long rides and one medium-long to fill in the time. You can see that total hours progressively increase and I’m going to try “2 weeks on, 1 week recovery”, as opposed to the 3-1 that I have done in the past. Apparently 55 year-olds need more recovery.
Somewhere around April things get more serious. I need to find lots of hills and have a ton of time on my hands. HIIT disappears, replaced by very long rides (up to 10 hours) and as many climbs as I can find. I can see a few extra visits to Mont Ventoux next year.
Depending on how dead I am after all this, I’ll do a 2 or 3 week taper.
So that’s that. All I need to do now is implement. How hard can that be?
The Vicious Cycle 
Gerry, this all very exciting. I do hope you’ll continue to report here about how this plan is proceeding. It will be fun for all of us to watch how it goes!! Patty and I are very excited to see (and be a part) of this journey!
I’m sorry that you’ll miss all the fun, Eric, but I’ll have plenty to talk about when we see each other in October!
Not hard at all. Just pull yourself together and get on with it. (I hope that you can do it. It will be a wonderful achievement in itself, let alone doing the actual event.)
That is sage advice…and so difficult to do. I’ve never really been able to pull myself together.
All the best on that 2024 journey Gerry. It’s going to make interesting reading.
Thanks Luc, and all the best to you in the New Year.