After a summer of bicycling, the Appalachain Adventure 1000K is fast approaching, and Felkerino and I will be riding it.

Given that the Appalachian Adventure is a late summer affair, Felkerino and I maintained a pretty big base of mileage since finishing the Super Randonneur series with the D.C. Randonneurs.

Despite not tracking my cycling miles, I still have a good sense of our weekend rides throughout the summer.

Our summer cycling consisted of a few back-to-back overnight trips of over a century to 200K each day, a 969-mile tour in the mountains of Colorado, and a 540-kilometer tune-up ride through Pennsylvania three weeks ago.

We tried to keep our mileage up while also conditioning our legs in hilly terrain. The Appalachian Adventure 1000K is not a flat ride.

I also maintained general fitness with weekday commutes, trips to the gym for strength training, and a solid running base (mostly because I have some fall events planned, not because of rando-fitness. Even so, running does help my cardio).

Over the two weeks since our 540K outing, we have been keeping the legs loose, but not putting in any more big efforts. At this point, it’s time to taper.

We have the miles we have and we now focus on being rested and mentally ready.  In looking at our previous years’ training for a ride of this distance, our training and our taper look fairly similar.

Other people have their own ways of preparing for the 1000K and 1200K distance, but this has been a formula that works for us.

We put in the miles over some challenging terrain while avoiding burnout. We managed our other life responsibilities more or less effectively, and maintained our enthusiasm for long-distance riding.

The big event awaits us.