How to train for your first cycling sportive while lifting

For a first cycling sportive, make the weekend ride the anchor of your week. Keep strength training, but leave enough space after demanding leg work to ride comfortably and practise the route’s likely duration, pacing and food. A sportive asks you to keep going for hours; another hard gym session cannot stand in for time on the bike.

British Cycling’s first-sportive guide recommends building towards a substantial portion of the event distance and practising both pacing and fuelling before the day. That gives you a more useful target than trying to squeeze in every session you normally do.

Which sessions deserve space in the week?

Start with the event itself. An undulating 80 km ride asks different things of you than a flat local loop: check the route profile and expected time in the saddle before setting your training days. For a first event, a workable week has one progressively longer ride, one shorter ride for hills or steady effort, and strength work that does not leave your legs heavy for Saturday.

The ACSM’s 2026 resistance-training summary recommends training major muscle groups on at least two days per week for general strength development, with gradual progression. That is a useful baseline, not a demand to fit two heavy leg days beside your longest ride. A shorter second strength session can focus on upper body and controlled lower-body work when the cycling load rises.

If you’re still building the underlying cycling routine, this guide to cycling within hybrid training covers the broader week. The specific placement of lifting beside your longest session is unpacked in strength training around a long ride.

What does an illustrative training week look like?

This is an example for someone with a Saturday sportive-style long ride, access to a bike twice more during the week, and a history of lifting. Adjust duration and effort to your current training; it is not an individual prescription.

Day	Session	Decision behind it
Monday	Rest or easy walk	Leave room after the previous weekend’s ride
Tuesday	Full-body strength, roughly 40 minutes	Put the more demanding leg work far from Saturday
Wednesday	Easy cycle, 45–60 minutes	Add time on the bike without racing the commute home
Thursday	Shorter strength session, roughly 30 minutes	Keep loads controlled, especially if Saturday’s ride is growing
Friday	Rest; check route, bike and food	Start the ride with a plan rather than making decisions at the first feed stop
Saturday	Longer easy ride, building gradually	Rehearse duration, pacing and the food you intend to carry
Sunday	Easy recovery ride or rest	Choose based on how Saturday actually felt

The Saturday ride grows over successive weeks, while the rest of the diary still has to function. British Cycling says first-time riders do not need to cover the full event distance beforehand; its first-sportive advice suggests reaching approximately 75–80% in training. Use that as a guide alongside elevation, ride time and your own experience, rather than a compulsory test the week before.

Where does fuelling practice fit?

Use longer rides to test when you eat, what you can carry and what sits well at your intended effort. Note when energy dips and whether you actually ate what you packed. British Cycling’s guide to common sportive mistakes warns against changing fuelling on event day and going out harder than the pace rehearsed in training.

For example, take the same familiar snack or drink on two progressively longer rides and record whether you can manage it while climbing. If you rely on feed stations, check what the organiser says they supply before planning around them. Fuelling a week with endurance and lifting goes further into the training-side decisions.

What changes when the event gets close?

In the final days, prioritise feeling ready to ride. Keep some familiar movement if it helps your routine, but skip the impulse to replace a missed long ride with a brutal late gym session. Check the event’s climbing and start time, set out the kit you have already used, and carry food you have tried on training rides.

Telos Fitness lets you select cycling and strength, set your weekly hours and move sessions around your diary. Its day-by-day plan and fuelling guidance give the two disciplines a shared structure; the next 14-day block recalibrates using recent training and recovery signals. For this kind of event, the useful starting point is simple: put your long ride on the calendar first, then give strength work a place that leaves that ride worth doing.