How to prepare for a 40 mile ride in one week

Well that was the challenge for my wife. She was not in a good way and felt very concerned about her ride. She and her friend had been riding once a week, missing the occasional fortnight, but enjoying it and doing about 20 miles into the bargain. Nice and slow, nice and flat, nice an pleasant. Today they did their Sportive and they were very pleased. It went really well.
The route was hilly in Sussex and last Saturday they practiced the first part of the ride and really struggled. My wife was really demoralised and wondered if they'd ever be able to do it. It was their first Sportive and they weren't big into cycling. My wife, not to give too much away, is the on profound side of 50 and no spring chicken. Does that make a difference? Probably.
So starting on Monday my wife started  work on getting prepared for the ride and this is how we did it.

Motivation

Motivation wasn't a problem because she didn't want to fail.

Objective

I knew that we should expect a 3.5 hour time on the terrain but I was happy to say that 4 hours was ideal. In the event, they did it in 3.5 hours. The objective of he training was to get the neuro-muscular and mechanics loosened up and happy to pedal. I wanted to concentrate on peddling mechanics, the awareness of higher cadence work and taking the strain off of the down stroke of the pedal action. By default she was bound to press hard with low cadence. This will tire the muscles quickly so lets get rid of that.
I wanted to improve the other factors like bike, nutrition and hydration.
The result: to relax, don't stress, realise that anyone can cycle 40 miles, go steady, and have some training  that will enable her to be more comfortable.

Turbo

The saviour was the turbo trainer. She'd never been on one before and we had no idea of threshold for power or heart rate but I put the power meter on and used that to see some rough idea of how much her effort would fluctuate.
The first thing to do was to make sure the efforts were easy. There was no point in building muscles or stamina and risking strains or injury. So it was easy pedals for 5 mins, 30 seconds of high cadence and low power, 1 minute rest, another high cadence, then a gentle ride at 80-85 rpm, low power. It was stuff like that twice a day and the session lasted no more than 20 mins. What I did do was fit the cleats rather than normal pedals and got her to notice pedal efficiency but getting her to "scrape the poo of her shoe" at the bottom of the stroke. This was fine for low power at reasonable cadence and would cause no strain though it is a risk of straining the calf or unused muscles. Breathing was not heavy at any time and the heart rate low, probably like walking fast.

We did this for a few days and then on Thursday, that was when we could do the only day of effort. Here we did slow pedal warmup then I did:

• 5 min warm up
• 30 sec fast pedal - 110 rpm with smooth pedal stroke no bouncing in the saddle
• 2 min recovery (slow pedal low power)
• 30 sec fast pedal - 110 rpm with smooth pedal stroke no bouncing in the saddle
• 2 min recovery
• 4 min muscle tension. 50 rpm legs pressing all the time, 100% of the stroke, but NOT hard. Gentle pressure. This is hard to describe, but this must not be hard work. It should be able to be done for 20 mins.
• 3  min recover
• 5 min muscle tension
• 3 min recovery
• 2 min fast pedal
• 2 min recover
• 2 min fast pedal
• Cool down

The fast pedals make the heart and lungs work, they also smooth out the pedal mechanics. These should be on low power.

Friday and Saturday is gentle on the road but NO hard efforts.

The Bike

She has a nice road bike so all I could do was inflate the tyres. That was a big difference. I can't remember the original figure but I inflated them to 100psi. Slick road tyres.

Hydration

I ensured that on the Saturday she drank well. Nothing special, just enough.
In the hour before the ride she had 500ml energy drink. On the ride, she knew to drink regular and often. If energy drink was too sickly, then water will do or dilute it. It was up to her and over 40 miles, 3.5 hours, you can't really get it wrong. It's not critical because you will always make it round.

Nutrition

Pasta the night before. Not too much. Breakfast 2 hours before the ride, gel 15 mins befre the ride. Then gels, banana, mars bar, sweets or whatever, in any combination during the ride. Maybe a gel or banana every hour or so, or  small GU gel every 30 mins if things are getting bad. But just eat something regular. Again, it's not Le Tour so we don't need to be strict.

The result was good.