‘I didn’t own a gravel bike and hadn’t ridden more than 20 miles in 10 months: How I survived a multi-day off-road event on just 6 weeks of training
Five days of challenging gravel riding in tropical heat on almost zero training – what could go wrong?
Sri Lanka is a country I have always wanted to visit, so when I saw the gravel event Ride Sri Lankan, I knew it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. The only problem was that it was six weeks before the start, I didn’t have a gravel bike, and I hadn’t ridden more than 20 miles in ten months.
One of the most common mistakes in a situation like this, and one I have made many times, is to go straight into panic training thinking that hammering out long and hard rides would be the ticket to fitness. To keep my panic in check I enlisted the help of Paul Vousden from Mapdec Cycle Works to help with a plan, which started with a fitness test, “You need to know where you are right now so we know what we are working with” was Vousden’s ominous introduction.
“You’ve still got the raw material but we need to wake up your muscle fibres and get them working again,” was the conclusion. The prescription was to focus on just three sessions a week and make only one of them an interval workout with very short, but very intense efforts to help sharpen up and generate explosive power, the other two sessions were steady rides of 1-3 hours.
Shorter sessions as these HIIT workouts are a good choice when time is limited, they don’t take long to do and while they produce enough training stress for your body to adapt and get stronger they don’t leave you fatigued which was Paul’s key concern given that I only had six weeks to go from zero to hero with no space for injuries or illnesses. His other recommendation was to add some strength training in the gym to help fire up power-producing muscle fibres and add some all-body conditioning to help with balance and mobility in the saddle.
One of the greatest challenges of the trip wouldn’t be fitness but a body not used to sitting in the saddle for many hours every day. Vicki Farrington at Strength2Speed, a gym for endurance athletes in Kendal put together a programme of simple but effective exercises using whole-body compound moves, like squats and bear crawls to work on flexibility, coordination and strength.
Farrington explained the benefits of compound movements, “you’ll get massive benefits from lifting weights in waking up muscle fibres but it is the small movements, improving control and coordination which will help most in terms of comfort on the bike, particularly off-road.” Part of riding off-road is being able to move around on the bike more dynamically and absorb bumps and impacts from the trail, these gym sessions certainly helped.
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One of my favourites was to hold a weight in front of me and squat just low enough to touch the seat of a chair before standing up again. This simple move made a noticeable difference to the quad and glute strength when hovering out of the saddle over rutted or rooty sections.
Having accepted there was a limited amount that I could do to push the needle on my fitness I looked around for other ways to compensate. I chose to ride a 3T Racemax, designed to look and feel like an aero-road bike but with the clearance necessary for gravel tyres. Whilst there is the option of a single ring version I went double with SRAM Rival to maximise the spread of gears.
I certainly didn’t regret my choice as the route was littered with very steep climbs where the huge rear cassette made everything rideable, while still allowing a big enough gear to pedal the long descents and pick up as much speed as possible. The fit was absolutely spot-on for me, it tackled slower technical sections with agility, gripped through the fast, loose gravel roads and felt balanced at speed on some really rough, pot-holed descents.
I spoke to Matt Hart, founder of sports nutrition company Torq Fitness, who was also riding at the event for his tips on what I could do. “Sports nutrition is the biggest hack there is” he replied positively, going on to explain, “you can have a Ferrari with an enormous engine but half a fuel tank, and when the fuel runs out you have an amazing engine with amazing potential that’s not going anywhere."
"Or you can have a Citroen 2CV with a full fuel tank and a trailer full of fuel and it’s going to outperform the Ferrari.” Possibly not the most flattering comparison I’ve received but sound advice, “you may not have had a chance to tune your engine up but you can give yourself plenty of fuel.”
“Most people can manage 60g of carb an hour, though elite people can manage 90g or even 120g,” Hard explained, adding that all Torq products come in 30g servings to take the maths out of the equation.
With distances on some days of over 100km - which could mean six hours or more in the saddle - that equates to a lot of fuel, with the added challenge of it being a multi-day event, “you are eating today for tomorrow. If you keep fuelling all day, you not only feel good to the end of the day but feel good day after day”, Hard said.
Fuelling is only part of the equation when it comes to cycling in a tropical climate, “the heat and humidity have been interesting for me,” explained Hart, “you could tell on the first day that the sweat rate was going to be really high. Not only do you need to get your fuel in, you need to be really on top of hydration so my recommendation to people has been to drink your calories.
An isotonic energy drink is 30g of carb in 500ml so if you drink a litre of that an hour you don’t need to take on any additional energy.” All of this fuel required made the race hydration vest from Restrap invaluable, given I had no bottle on the down tube where it ran the risk of being splattered by muddy water or even elephant poo (yes really).
Sri Lanka is a truly special place to visit, despite being only 656sq kilometres the landscape is incredibly varied. Our route took us from sandy beaches to the cool, high-altitude tea plantations, through steamy rice fields and vast open plains.
The 400km of riding and nearly 7000m of climbing provided a huge return on the riding investment. Route designer Phil Evans from MTB-worldwide has a nose for gravel, linking together a vast network of trails that could be easily missed but always led to spectacular scenery and interesting, even if there were times when I longed for some buttery smooth tarmac instead.
The first full day of the trip was 75miles with 2500ft of climbing, I managed a moving time of 5.50 hours. The joy of riding somewhere new, in warm weather carried my through the first feed stations and timed section but the last 20km was a struggle. The gym conditioning may have helped my muscles but nothing but long hours in the saddle can condition how your backside feels.
Despite riding in Q36.5 adventure shoes, the most comfortable off-road shoes I have ever owned there were a few days when the heat, humidity and constant need to put pressure on the pedals meant that my feet became sore and swollen. At the same time, my backside which had become as soft as a baby’s bottom through months of sitting on nothing harder than an office chair was also protesting.
I couldn’t stand to take the pressure off my backside because my feet were in agony or sit to take the pressure off my feet. Thankfully as I literally ‘toughened up’ these problems were resolved.
One of the toughest days featured a 7-mile climb, the average gradient of 6% didn’t tell the full story as several pitches were well over 10% for long sections. I was thankful this came in the second part of the trip as by then I was a bit more mentally as well as physically able to cope with the discomfort of riding at my upper limit for a long time.
As the days progressed I was much more able to sustain my early morning freshness and speed to the end of the day. By the final day I was enjoying trying to hang in with faster moving riders and trying to hold my place in a pace line. Both body and brain had woken up and remembered what it felt like to ride bikes again!
Heat and humidity can be challenging if you are travelling from a UK winter to a tropical destination, but in training to help. Heat can have a debilitating effect on performance. Your power output for the same heart rate will be lower, and your perception of effort will increase. However, when cyclists followed heat acclimatisation training, they counteracted this.
So what can you do at home? Well, if you are training indoors you already know how hot you can get so rather than switching on the fan or opening a window train in a hot steamy room, while of course keeping a careful eye on your hydration and stopping if you start to feel light-headed or are finding the session difficult. Other effective methods include regular saunas and hot water immersion which can also be used to maintain your heat acclimatisation.
The fitter you are going into an event the faster you recover and the more able you are to enjoy every moment to the full without compromise. During the evenings, we were treated with gin cocktails in a mango swamp, traditional dance performances on the beach and afternoon tea in a tea plantation.
I certainly didn’t want to miss out on post-ride beer, cool dips in the pool or the chance to explore somewhere new in favour of resting in my hotel room, however sensible that might have been. Adventurous trips such as Ride SriLankan are a careful balancing act of making the most of your time on and off the bike and that is another good reason to start training earlier next time.
While I made Ride SriLankan far harder for myself than needed, it didn’t prevent me from enjoying (almost) every minute of the ride, except one particularly steep and stabby climb which drew a mouthful of expletives. Starting on 28th February Ride SriLankan 2026 is a whole ten months away so you can start training now and not make any of my mistakes or excuses. Entries are not yet open but you can register your interest to hear about it first. Watch the video of the 2025 event.
