Kettle Mettle is 62 miles that starts on the gentle Kettle Valley rail grade, then leaves the rail bed for forest service roads above Princeton, where nearly all of its 5,889 feet of climbing is collected. The late miles return to rail-trail with wooden trestles and decommissioned tunnels dark enough to want a light, in warm, dry interior-BC June heat that often reaches the high 20s Celsius by afternoon.

This is a twelve-week plan for masters riders, with more recovery built in than a younger rider’s schedule would carry, because the repeated climbing above Princeton asks for real work and riders past fifty recover slower than they used to. Most of the work builds toward that block of forest-service climbing while leaving room between hard days, because arriving fit and uninjured is the harder half after fifty.

WHAT'S INSIDE

• Structured workouts on your calendar, with real power and heart-rate graphs


• Strength work built in, with video walkthroughs


• Weekly notes from me, plus the Gravel Grit mental program


• A testing week and a mid-plan retest, so the plan runs on your real numbers


• The full Kettle Mettle guide — terrain, gearing, fueling