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To enjoy your tour and prevent each day from becoming a personal challenge, you should ensure that you attain a level of fitness that enables you to complete each day without becoming exhausted. As getting over the higher passes is physically demanding this may mean starting a personal fitness programme three or four months before your departure to give you sufficient time to build up stamina so you can complete the required distances and ascents comfortably. Start off with a ride that is just within your current fitness level and ride it a few times until you can ride it comfortably on two consecutive days. Then double the distance until you can ride the average daily distance needed for your planned tour without feeling unduly tired at the end of each day.

If you are going to encounter steep hills, practise ‘feathering’ the brakes – gently applying and releasing pressure on alternate levers – to control your speed on descents. It will prove invaluable when descending some of the steep Lakeland passes surrounded by moving traffic.