Over recent years, I have helped many cyclists prepare for major long-distance events including Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) and London-Edinburgh-London (LEL). This includes working with ultra-distance cyclists like Jenny Graham, who broke the women's round-the-world cycling record in 2018. Through this experience, I have developed effective training methods specifically for multi-day endurance cycling events. I thought it would be useful to write an article explaining the details of what I have found to be the best way to train and prepare for LEL.
So, how do you train for London-Edinburgh-London?
Training isn't complicated but it is important to do the right things and be consistent. Training at the right intensities and durations to make sure that you build fitness but don't overdo it requires some planning, discipline and objectivity to be most effective.
Before diving into training methods, it's important to thoroughly research what you're preparing for. London Edinburgh London is a 1530 kilometres (950 miles) self-supported cycle ride across the United Kingdom, between the iconic capital cities of England and Scotland.
While it's not a race, you have approximately 128 hours to complete the full distance. The route includes 21 control points at 14 different venues where you'll find:
All of this support is included in your entry fee - all you need to bring is your bike! However, remember that LEL is a test of your mental and physical resilience. Between controls, you need to be self-sufficient - if things go wrong, it's up to you to use your skills and experience to handle them.
Your route will inform the training that you do and your riding strategy, so spend some time considering what is important. If you have long sections without the option of some sort of resupply you need to be aware of them and have a plan.
Have a look at the accounts of previous competitors so you can understand as much as possible about what to expect. The EBR LEL Cycling Club is an excellent resource for this - many members have successfully completed LEL and others are preparing for the 2025 event. Their collective experience provides valuable insights into the challenges and strategies for success.
Read the rules and guidance of the event carefully - both to understand what support is available and to make sure you don't do something that disqualifies your efforts.
Planning your season effectively means working backwards from the event:
A good approach is to look at the period of time you've got between now and your event. For example, if you're starting in February for the August event, you've got about 6 months of training time. Over that period, identify certain weekends or trips that you can do, or maybe even events like an audax or a shorter multi-day ride that can serve as stepping stones along the way to your event.
Many people think that preparing for LEL requires enormous weekly distances. While you do need to build endurance, this isn't entirely true. It is necessary to do some long rides and practice some short blocks of 2, 3, or 4 days in a row a few times, but it isn't necessary to do huge mileages every day.
Your body adapts to training gradually - pushing too hard too soon can set you back rather than accelerate your progress. The key is to apply training stress consistently and allow time for adaptation. This means alternating between building fitness and allowing recovery.
For it to be possible to ride for multiple days with only minimal recovery such as a few hours sleep, you need to develop a sustainable approach to long days.
That means that you train to be able to ride for one long day at a manageable pace, and if you can do that, you're likely to be able to do it again and again as long as you eat and drink enough to keep going.
If you don't eat or drink enough, or you consistently push too hard without recovery, you'll run into problems. But this would typically happen within a few hours, not a few days, so practising pacing and building your endurance for just one or two days works well as a foundation.
Not surprisingly, doing regular long rides is the most important thing to do.
Start with what you can manage, maybe 4 or 5 hours, and build up until you can ride for as long as you expect to do in your event.
Do this gradually - you don't need to do more and more every week. You need to have some shorter and some longer weeks to get proper recovery and let your body build.
Some weeks you can do a bit longer and some weeks you can split your long ride over two days to get used to riding the day after a long ride. You will need to take it easy and do a bit less when you are tired.
When you do two days in a row, it is best to make the first day the longest but don't worry if this is inconvenient, you can do it the other way round as well and make the first day a little faster.
Plan your week around your longer rides.
If you work Monday to Friday, you may have more time at the weekends, so it can be most convenient to do your longer rides at the weekends. This allows you to:
While these longer rides build your endurance, you'll also need some faster riding to develop your sustainable speed. This is where structured training sessions come in, which we'll cover in the next section on Training Intensities.
Getting the balance right between these different types of riding is crucial for successful preparation.
Your body adapts to different types of training in different ways. Long, steady rides build endurance by improving your efficiency and fat-burning capacity. Harder efforts trigger adaptations that increase your sustainable power and speed. Understanding how to balance these different training stimuli is key to effective preparation.
Including some harder workouts into your weekly schedule will make a big difference.
These workouts increase the maximum speeds you can sustain for short periods of time, which in turn makes riding at slower speeds easier and therefore will also increase the sustainable pace that you will be riding at during your event.
Harder rides also make you tired faster, and doing some easy endurance rides when you are tired can boost your endurance fitness. Don't do this all the time though and make sure you are recovered and rested properly for your hard sessions, or they will be wasted effort. Hard efforts need to be fast and hard to be effective.
Having this higher power at your disposal also means that if you do need to work a bit harder during your event, perhaps on a steep climb, you can do it and not dip so deep into your valuable reserves of short term energy.
These harder workouts are often best done as what are known as interval sessions. These involve working hard for a period of time, having a short recovery and then doing it again.
Harder, faster training is done at different intensities.
The most common way of defining these intensities is to use what are known as Training Zones.
Training Zones are ways to define different intensities based on some form of measurement such as heart rate, power or perceived exertion (RPE). Heart rate and power are measured by heart rate monitors and power meters, whereas RPE is how hard you feel you are working according to certain guidelines.
Once you have done a few of weeks riding at an easy/endurance pace you are ready to start some harder training.
Tempo training is something that you can sustain for quite a long time, maybe 45 minutes to 2 hours and is represented by your zone 3 heart rate or power.
As a guide, this should feel a bit uncomfortable at your tempo pace but you can keep going at that pace, you can talk but only in short phrases and generally it feels better to stay quiet and just focus on riding.
These sessions help your basic riding speed and build your ability to ride at a relatively fast, steady pace. Examples would be on long road or on long sections into a strong headwind.
Good tempo sessions to start with are:
As you get fitter you will be able to build up to longer efforts so that you are doing a total of around 2 hours at tempo.
It is best to do these efforts on a good surface where you just focus on riding. You can use a road bike or a mountain bike, or an indoor trainer. If you have a gym membership, using a Wattbike or similar is a great way to start incorporating power into your workouts.
Threshold is a bit like hard tempo, a level of effort you can sustain for between 30 and 60 minutes before you have to slow down. This is the effort known as Functional Threshold Power or Critical Power, which are slightly different but in practical terms can be treated the same.
Good threshold workouts include:
You should aim to do them at the best pace you can but making all the efforts the same speed, so pacing is important, don't go off too hard. The best thing to do is start a little easy and pick things up if you have something left later on.
After a few weeks of doing tempo and/or Threshold sessions you can start to include some VO2max sessions into your plan. Good VO2max sessions include:
A good rule of thumb for VO2max intervals is to make the recovery period the same duration as the effort.
When planning your week, remember that both long rides and interval sessions put significant demands on your body. Aim for 2-3 demanding sessions per week in total, where a demanding session could be:
For example, you might do a long weekend ride and one midweek interval session, or a long ride and two shorter intense sessions if you're managing the load well.
The key is finding the right balance for you and ensuring proper recovery between harder efforts.
It may be tempting to think that continuously building your training volume, hours, distance and intensity up until your event is the best way to go. However, fitness doesn't develop as smoothly as that and you have to take rests to recover before building up again. Some days and weeks you feel tired and sometimes you feel really strong as if you can't get tired.
Remember that it's always better to be slightly under-trained than even slightly over-trained. Being conservative with your training load and taking extra recovery when you need it will serve you better than pushing too hard.
Aim for Perfect Training, not just Hard Training.
Taking as much control of how your fitness develops is the best way, and the best way to do that is to include planned easier and harder days as well as planned easier and harder weeks. This is particularly the case if you have a fixed weekly schedule with commitments you have to keep. You don't want to be feeling super strong on a day you can't go out and ride, so making that day a planned easier day is a good idea.
I like to have a regular weekly structure that gives the best chance of being strongest and most fresh for the higher intensity sessions and doing easier rides when tired. If you work with the longer weekend sessions mentioned earlier, a good week might be:
To help with planning and monitoring your training, we've created a free Google Sheet that combines training planning with our Traffic Light System. This system helps you track not just your training, but also your work/life balance and overall wellbeing - recognizing that successful training requires managing all these areas effectively. You can learn more about this approach in our article "How to Track Your Training Progress with the Traffic Light System."
The planner includes suggested training sessions and practice events suitable for LEL preparation, alongside implementation of the Traffic Light System to help you identify when you're ready to push harder and when you need to back off. You can access a free version of this tool here:
Consistency is achieved by getting a good routine that you can stick to and the doseage of training right.
Good Habits that work well include:
The most successful ultra-distance cyclists typically:
Doing two rides on some days can be a great way to build your endurance fitness. A short, easy morning ride can also prepare your body for a harder workout later in the day.
However, don't overdo it - if you have time, a morning ride before breakfast can make a significant difference to your fitness, but make sure you still have enough recovery time, both physically and mentally.
Indoor training can be particularly valuable when time is limited or weather is poor. It will enable you to:
Some weeks you will be able to do more training than others, and it's important to plan for this. A good approach is to work in cycles:
The key is monitoring how you respond and adjusting accordingly. Use your recovery weeks to:
You can use both objective and subjective measures to track how you're responding to training:
For these to work effectively you need to build up a baseline so that you know what is normal and can spot things changing for the better, ideally, or for the worse. Building this understanding takes time but is invaluable for long-term success.
A good, less objective, but effective method is to get your friends or family to mention if they notice your mood changing for a day or two. If you explain the reasoning and what to look out for this is a great approach. Of course, if you work closely with a coach they can also help with these observations.
If you miss a session it's usually best to stay calm and move on:
Life inevitably gets in the way sometimes. When this happens:
One of the most effective ways to prepare for LEL is to participate in organized events. Getting experience of riding with others, following route sheets, using controls efficiently, and dealing with unexpected challenges in a supported environment is invaluable. These events also give you the chance to test your equipment and strategies with some backup available if things don't go to plan.
You can build your experience gradually through a series of events. Start with a 200km audax - this distance is long enough to test your endurance and preparation but short enough to complete comfortably if you've been doing regular long rides. Once you're comfortable with this distance, progress to a 400km event, which will give you experience of night riding and managing sleep deprivation on a smaller scale than LEL.
If your schedule and recovery allow, you might consider a 600km event, but this isn't essential. Many successful LEL riders have prepared using a combination of 200km and 400km events along with their own training rides. You can also include some sportives for variety.
Remember that these events are training, not targets in themselves. Keep your focus on LEL preparation and don't get drawn into racing them.
Plan your event schedule carefully:
Between organized events, plan your own long rides to:
These rides are perfect opportunities to test your systems without the pressure of an organized event. Riding with others helps you learn about managing different paces and gives you experience of the social aspects of long-distance riding - something that can be surprisingly important during LEL itself.
While practice events are valuable, don't overdo them. Common mistakes include:
Remember: arriving at LEL fresh and well-prepared is more important than completing every possible practice event.
Make notes after each event while the experience is fresh:
Use these insights to gradually build a reliable approach that you can count on during LEL itself.
A successful LEL requires both mental resilience and a solid strategy. As the event website states, "London Edinburgh London is a test of your mental and physical resilience." When things go wrong, it's up to you to use your skills and experience to handle them, but when you make it to the next control, you'll find the support you need.
You can check out our series of blogs on Psychological Tools for Endurance Athletes for some more specific guidance in addition to the points below:
Most ultra-endurance cyclists I have worked with have found that working to a time schedule is far more effective and less stressful than working to a distance schedule. It's impossible to predict the unexpected things that may and probably will happen during LEL, and having your daily distance goal knocked out by such an event could leave your whole schedule in pieces.
Instead of distance targets, plan your days according to a flexible time schedule that includes:
Your schedule will be influenced by where you plan to sleep. If you're using control points, you'll need to time your rides to reach suitable controls during their busier periods. If you're planning to use hotels or B&Bs, you'll have more flexibility but need to plan and potentially book ahead.
Sleep management is crucial for LEL. You have two main options for sleeping:
Control Points:
Hotels/B&Bs:
Many successful riders use a combination - planning one or two hotel stops for good recovery and using controls for other stops. During your practice events, learn:
Be flexible with your sleep strategy. If you need to wait at a control for something like bike maintenance, you can use this as an opportunity for extra rest.
The controls are there to support you, but it's easy to waste time in them. Develop a routine for controls:
Nutrition is vitally important to being successful. Having a solid nutrition plan means:
Learn what's available at controls and plan accordingly, but always have a backup plan for nutrition between controls. You can check out our EAT Strategy for more specific guidance.
Things will go wrong - that's part of the challenge. Use the AMP approach when problems arise:
Start now and every time you think of something that might happen to cause a problem in your event, make a note of it. Keep going through your list and adding what you will do if that thing happens or what you need to carry to account for that eventuality.
This approach will:
Use your training and preparation to build confidence:
Remember that everyone feels nervous before LEL - use those nerves as energy for the challenge ahead rather than letting them undermine your confidence.
Think about how much time and money you are committing to training and how you would feel if you had a mechanical failure because you had skimped on certain equipment. It isn't necessary to have the highest-end equipment - in fact, there's a strong argument for having something less fancy or complicated that can be easily repaired and for which replacement parts can be easily obtained.
Your choice of bike for LEL is important, but reliability and comfort matter more than weight or aerodynamics. Many successful riders use their regular road bike rather than something specifically built for ultra-distance. The key is having a bike you know well and can maintain easily.
Critical aspects to consider include:
Remember that LEL provides mechanical support at controls, but between controls, you need to be self-sufficient. A reliable bike that's easy to fix is better than a high-performance machine that needs specialist knowledge or tools to repair.
Night riding is a significant part of LEL, and good lighting isn't just about being seen - it's about having confidence in your ability to navigate and ride safely through the darkness. A well-thought-out lighting strategy helps maintain your pace and reduces fatigue during night sections.
Your lighting setup needs to include:
Test your lighting setup thoroughly in practice rides. Get comfortable with how your lights perform in different conditions and how long batteries really last - particularly in cold conditions which can affect battery life.
Navigation failures can cost hours and waste precious energy. While the route will be marked, you need a reliable navigation system that you trust and know how to use. GPS devices are popular, but they're only as good as your ability to use them effectively.
Key navigation considerations include:
August in the UK can bring anything from heatwaves to near-winter conditions, sometimes within the same 24 hours. Your clothing strategy needs to handle this variability while remaining practical for multiple days of riding. The challenge is packing enough without packing too much.
Experience shows that layering works best:
The two bag drops provided during LEL are valuable resources - plan their contents carefully to match the sections of the ride and expected weather conditions.
Remember the bag drop might fail, people are dealing with high numbers of bags and equipment, something is likely to go wrong for someone and that someone could be you; ensure you have enough with you to survive if the bag drop system fails.
Basic maintenance skills and equipment are essential:
Know how to perform basic repairs:
The time to discover problems with your equipment is during training, not during LEL. Use your training rides and practice events to test everything in different conditions. Pay particular attention to how your equipment performs when you're tired - what seems manageable when fresh can become challenging after 24 hours of riding.
Good organization saves time and reduces stress. Develop and practise a system for your equipment that works even when you're tired and it's dark. Think through your control point routine and organize your bags accordingly - you don't want to be emptying your entire bag looking for a backup battery at 3am.
Keep essential items easily accessible and establish a consistent place for everything. Practise your system during training rides until it becomes automatic - this will help you stay efficient even when fatigue sets in.
The final weeks before LEL are both exciting and nerve-wracking. After months of preparation, it's natural to wonder if you've done enough or if you should try to squeeze in more training. Through years of helping riders prepare for events like LEL and PBP, I've learned that these final weeks are as much about mental preparation as physical readiness.
This is the time to trust in your preparation. You've done the long rides, you've tested your equipment, and you've built your endurance. Now it's about arriving at the start line fresh and confident. In the last 3-4 weeks before LEL, focus on maintaining fitness while ensuring you're well-rested. A few shorter, higher-intensity rides can help you stay sharp, but this isn't the time for pushing your limits or trying to cram in extra endurance.
Think of it this way: you can't gain much fitness in these final weeks, but you can certainly make yourself tired. Being slightly under-trained but fresh is far better than being perfectly trained but fatigued.
Your equipment should be reliable and familiar by now. Use these final weeks to methodically check everything:
Make any final adjustments well before the event - you want at least a few rides to confirm everything works properly.
The week before LEL often feels strange - suddenly you have extra time because you're not training as much. Use this time wisely:
If you're traveling to the start, arrive with enough time to settle in. A rushed preparation the night before can undo months of careful planning.
In these final weeks, many riders experience doubts. They hear stories from previous events or get last-minute advice that makes them question their preparation. Remember that every rider's journey is different - you've prepared for your LEL, not someone else's.
Your training has given you more than just fitness.; you've learned:
Trust in this preparation. Focus on what you can control and remember why you entered LEL in the first place.
As the start approaches, keep things simple.
The day before:
When the big day arrives, stick to your plan. Don't be tempted to ride faster because others are, or change your nutrition strategy based on last-minute tips.
Trust your preparation and remember this is your adventure.
LEL is a remarkable journey. While the challenge is significant, it's also an opportunity to discover what you're capable of, to see beautiful parts of Britain, and to share an experience with fellow riders from around the world. The memories you'll create will last far longer than any temporary discomfort along the way.
The key to success is having a solid plan and the confidence to execute it. If you'd like help developing your preparation strategy or want to join a community of experienced long-distance cyclists, our EBR LEL Cycling Club offers support, guidance, and shared experience from riders who've successfully completed LEL and similar events.