Brent is Ready for the Ride Across Wisconsin

Brent Tackles His Longest Bike Ride: the 225-Mile Ride Across Wisconsin

Brent Mazurek has been doing long bike rides most of his life.

On Saturday, he is tackling his longest bike ride, the Ride Across Wisconsin: 225 miles from LaCrosse to Green Bay.

Brent is an original member of the Simple Endurance Coaching Adventure team with the goal of completing RAW, doing some long-distance touring, and finishing the Horribly Hilly ride in August.

First Time With Structured Training

While he has been riding for a long time, Brent hasn’t done much in the way of structured training.

So we set up a consistent schedule of more easy endurance rides, strength training, yoga, and some harder intervals meant to build his aerobic capacity.

We set up a yoga practice twice a week that has helped with his mobility.

“My body is feeling better and more limber,” he said. “I’m recovering more because of it.”

Strength training has been challenging since his access to the gym at work was limited due to the pandemic.

He did some of the Simple training videos, building core strength and lower body stability.

Long Bike Rides Pay Off With Endurance

Like many of us, managing work and training can be difficult for Brent, especially with working from home.

With the increased training time and challenges of work, managing fatigue has been something we’ve been working on a lot.

We use Training Peaks to schedule his workouts and monitor his training.

HIs initial thought was to complete RAW in two or more days.

But once he started training and seeing the progress in his endurance, the one-day ride was the goal.

Practice Fueling on Long Bike Rides

Plus, learning to do long rides slowly was difficult too!

“Every hill or every stoplight, I just wanted to go and work a little bit!” he said. “Keeping myself paced is proving to be difficult.”

But his endurance capacity increased dramatically in the months we’ve been working together.

His long rides got easier while he practiced fueling on the bike.

Long Bike Rides Sometimes Mean Challenges

The biggest training challenge, though, was the longest bike ride as training.

He ended up doing a 200-mile ride from Milwaukee to Green Bay to see his girlfriend’s family.

However, the ride turned out to be much harder than expected due to a stiff headwind.

He tweaked some tendons in his knee from mashing his pedals into the wind.

We took some time off the bike and did some gentle yoga.

He’s recovered now, riding well enough to ride at least five hours at the Riverwest 24!

(Yes, he got the RW24 tattoo!)

Brent’s Ready for RAW!

His nutrition is dialed in.

He has the miles and aerobic capacity to complete the ride comfortably.

And Brent’s plan is to join up with a reasonably-paced group to sit in and get a draft on the way for his long bike ride.

He remembers his dad taking him bike touring as a kid.

“Before I could walk my father would pull me and my sister in a Burley trailer on the Elroy-Sparta trail.”

So on Saturday, Brent is going to be doing his own touring, but this time across the entire state of Wisconsin in one day.

Let’s Talk!

Contact me to ask questions and talk more about making your endurance training effective.