It's February. How Far Should I Be Riding Now?

It's absurdly cold this morning. -4 F outdoors. -20 wind chill. Drifted snow half way across the road.

These are non-ideal days for epic road rides. But you want to do your first hundred mile ride late this year. How far should you be riding now?

Don't worry much. Just ride.

We're not returning racers. We're not looking to out-perform the competition in April. We're trying to get you strong and fit enough to take on a mid-to-late season endurance challenge without injury and feeling good about your accomplishment.  

ZERO TO 100 IN ONE DAY?
Fearless teenagers and experienced riders might jump on the bike and ride a century tomorrow. It's do-able. 25 years ago, Nancy rode 85 miles one day with no prior aerobic training. She was pretty sore and tired. You're more likely to enjoy the ride and feel good the next day if you increase your effort gently. A few years back, I rode with Randonneurs whose first ride of the season was a 200k (124 miles) in March. That's the shortest event they even organize! But these ultra-distance folks had ridden or qualified for RAAM before. They had deep experience managing energy and effort levels on the bike. Their muscles knew what to do. They were mentally prepared. They had already figured out how much to drink and what to eat. 

LINEAR INCREASE?
The simplest thing might be to ask how far you can ride now, and how far you want to ride and just ramp-up training linearly. Say you can ride 20 miles now and have 8 months to go. You could just add 10 miles to your longest ride each month. 20 miles in Feb, 30 in March, 40 in April, 50 in May... ...100 in October My experience is that this isn't the way it works out and this approach is more likely to result in an early season injury.

GEOMETRIC INCREASE?
Increasing effort in the same proportion each month is a lot easier on the knees. Our Sunday coffee & pastry rides are about 23 miles. If you can ride 23 miles in January, try this sequence of "longest rides of the month":
Jan - 23 miles
Feb - 27
Mar - 32
Apr - 38
May - 44
Jun - 52
Jul - 61
Aug - 72
Sep - 85
Oct -- 100 .

 This represents about a 15% increase in long distance ride each month. More aggressive is very do-able. But this approach should be gentle on your joints and minimize the risk of over-training fatigue.

In fact, if you follow this approach, you'll be ready for a century long before October.

FAR more important than putting in long miles is putting in regular miles. Right now, you should begin telling your body that aerobic output is a regular part of most days.

I think much more about weekly mileage than daily mileage. If I'm doing 100 miles in a week, 100 on any given day is not out of question. Even that's not hard and fast.