Originally Posted by
engstrom
Thanks, and the lack of sleep wasn't part of the plan.
I went to bed at 8:30 PM the night before and had the alarm set for 3:30 AM so I could get up and meet my group in time. Turns out the excitement and anticipation had me tossing and turning until 10:30 when I got about an hour of sleep. At 11:30 I woke up due to the "get hydrated the day before the ride" strategy I adopted. At that point it took another couple of hours of tossing and turning to get back to sleep - partly because of the excitement and partly because I was sleeping on an air mattress at a friend's place. Oh well, lesson learned - next year I'm probably going to get a hotel room closer to the start with a good comfortable bed.
get hydrated the night before is a bad strategy. chances are your just gonna piss away the extra hydration. "drink when I'm thirsty" is a better strategy tho in temps as high as you say, I would go with a "drink x bottles per hour strategy" typically for me that would be 2 bottles, one solely being electrolyte such as Nuun and the other bottle being heed or perpetuem so I get my caloric needs in. I aimed for 300 calories per hour on my century last year and that strategy worked great, i felt strong all the way through.
Congrats on completeing it, it's a sick twisted sort of fun. we had 85degree temps in late september when I did mine so it felt pretty hot to everyone but 100+ degrees is pretty brutal. I did 50 miles earlier this summer when it was 95* out and i felt it later that night.