HI, Currently training for Hawaii's century, coming up on Sept. 28th. I've done El Tour De Tucson twice. It's a real adventure. The first surprise is that it's not a century...Its 112 miles. So make sure you plan on the longer distances. When we added in the ride to and from the hotel it was 119 miles. Our team, both times, waited at the finish until our last rider got in. By then the sun was setting and it was getting dark. The Tucson police strictly enforce lights on bikes. Fortunately we knew this and had clip on head and tail lights. "Frogs" work. Make sure you plan on that if you are going to be riding back to the hotel - starts to get dark about 5:00 PM. Only two real climbs on the ride. One is long and I'd call it easy. You get flat spots on the way up. The other is a single steep hill. It is deceiving. You ride towards it and can see it in the distance for a long time. It's a mental game. The way we trained for it was to teach folks to concentrate on the 15 - 20 feet immediately in front of them, not the whole hill. All of a sudden you are up and over the top.

The two river crossings are unique. Both years we rode it was very dry so the river bottoms are this very fine silt. If you have the choice of shoes and peddles this is a good ride for mountain or sport shoes rather than road racing shoes with "look" type cleats. On the second crossing both times there were dozens of TNT cheer leaders on the opposite bank, all over the climb up and out of the river bed. It was a very inspirational moment at that crossing. Lots of signs of support.

It was a little unnerving on the first time through when the odometer clicked over 100 miles and you can't even see downtown. It's like, I'm ready for this to be over, where's the finish. While it's another 12 miles to go. Make sure you and your team are ready for that.

As to training. . . Time in the saddle is important. Work up to a 6 + hour ride. That should hold you and get your butt in shape. 60 - 75 miles is sufficient. Then do hill repeats. If you have a long gradual climb that goes up 200 - 300 feet it would be good for training. We don't have much greater climb anyplace in Minnesota and our hill repeats worked out well. We also found a road that ran for about 10 miles with numerous small hills - 30 - 75 feet climb each. A continual rolling ride. We did that road about a dozen times leading up to Tucson. It really helped.

Good luck. Great ride. Have fun.