forrest_m

any ideas? No teammates, and I can't get my wife interested in sitting by the side of the road for several hours just to hand me a water bottle. Pre-position a bag with bottles and try to scoop it up off the ground? Suck it up and start the race with 3 bottles? What does it mean when the race flyer says "neutral water support MAY be provided"?

Thanks for any help.

bad_mojo

How long is the race? I think you're best bet is to carry what you need.

GuitarWizard

Your wife sounds like my ex girlfriend.

Geoff326

start the race with 3, I've seen people do that.

ifox

I highly recommend taking 3 bottles with you. At my last race (Wente Vineyards RR) I made a huge mistake by relying on what I've heard at the registration "oh, sure, we'll have neutral support". I ran out of water at the end of second lap. And sure enough, there was no neutral support. The temperature outside was 90+.

umd

If you know anyone else in the race, see if they can feed you. In one race here, everyone parks along the road that the race goes by and many people put their bottles on their car and grab them when they go by.

forrest_m

race is 60 miles - longest cat 5 race of the season, as far as I know. I wouldn't worry about it for a short race.

as for my wife, she'd probably do it once or twice a season, but I don't want to go to that well too often. Anyway, she's already being pretty accommodating by staying with the kids while I take the car for most of the day...

Duke of Kent

That's what I'll be doing if I do any races solo this year. I'm going to have 5 bottles set up on top of my car, my driver side rear view mirror folded in. Start with 3, grab one every time I come by, even if I don't need one, and REALLY push the hydration. In a hundred mile race, I'd use 5 or 6 bottles, so this allows for some error in terms of actually grabbing the bottles. You'd be surprised how hard it is to recieve a feed, even at road race feed zone speed, let alone crit speed.

I'm not sure what sort of set up I'll be allowed to run for marathon MTB races, but I'd imagine something similar would be used.

Red Rider

As a noob I didn't know what that meant. I carried 2 Gu packets and 2 bottles of water. Next year hubby will be in the neutral zone to support us, so we don't have to ration our water for the entire race.

Since you're unattached you may want to heed that advice -- take what you need. And good luck.

VosBike

If you're alone you should be able to find some folks to give you feeds. mad people offered at the one long MTB race I've done.

Snuffleupagus

Beer feeds are different

My no feed long race "strategery" is to use from 3 to 5 bottles on the bike/jersey. Two big bottles in the cages, one big bottle in the middle pocket and two smaller ones on the outside pockets.

I prefer to find someone to get a feed from though, usually copious begging, pleading, sucking up and looking pathetic is enough to find someone to help out.

MDcatV

carry what you need - if 3 bottles, put the 3rd in your center jersey pocket. If you carry 4 bottles, put them in the L and R side to "even" out the weight distribution. If you need a bottle/feed, and dont have it arranged ahead of time, seriously, just grab a bottle from someone standing in the feed zone, and keep going.

a cat 5 feed zone, that scares the hell out of me.

jfmckenna

^^ I don't think grabbing a random bottle is a nice thing to do.

Just carry 4 bottles. One bottle per 20 miles ought to be enough.

MDcatV

agree ... I've done it once, it was 100+ degrees, high humidity, and I was in a break on the 1st lap of a road race that stuck. I drank 3 of my 4 bottles, gave 1 to a team mate in the break, and was dry so I grabbed one from a random in the fz. Probably not very cool, but it's an option if desperate.

OP - at least around here in MABRA land, there are typically folks in FZs shouting "neutral" while holding a bottle out (bless them) - maybe same in your race, but I wouldnt advise planning for that, just carry what you need.

heads up!

Wish I had known that while I was dying of thirst trying to get back onto the pack at Poolesville (MABRA race). I rode 20mi of that race without water when it was desperately needed. Didn't even occur to me that neutral water support even existed.

umd

There was a guy that tried this on Sunday, at the San Luis Rey Classic in San Diego. My teammate and I were feeding our cat 1 and cat 3 teammates (in different races on the course at the same time), and when we were holding out bottles we saw some guy come swooping in down the line trying to grab people's bottles. He actually got hold of one but the feeder wouldn't let go. Then he came to us and swooped in again byt my teammate pulled away quickly. We watched as he repeated this down the line. We all kind of said "what the f" after that. That was my first time being in the feedzone, so maybe its more common, but it was pretty f-ed up. He was pretty much charging at everyone, I'm surprised there wasn't an accident.

Anyway, we picked up a lot of discarded unclaimed bottles, and next time I think we will bring them back filled up and offer them to anyone that looks like they need water, in addition to whomever we are feeding.

MDcatV

wasnt official, usually isnt. I dont know if anyone was doing this at poolesville as I was crashed out and just cruising around - you could have picked up one of the 100 bottles laying on the road, if you were already OTB ...

EventServices

Feed Zone don'ts:
- taking other bottles
- knocking the bottles out of the hands of other feeders
- riding on the white line throughout the feed zone
- causing a crash in the feed zone
- yelling at your feeder

Practice your hand-ups until you could perform it at Lincoln Center.

urbanknight

I was actually thinking of doing something like that since I'm in the same boat as the OP. Funny, I have met the girlfriends of all of my teammates, but none of the wives.

That's pathetic. If I was a feeder and saw him coming, I'd be tempted to grab his hand and yank him off the road. Since I have only been fed in junior races to date (packs of 10-20), I've always wondered how it works in larger packs.

grolby

Cherry-picking is a fact of life. People get desperate. It can be pretty hard to find someone to get you a feed. Not that I'm defending it, but most of the guys trying it are probably in a pretty bad state, which I can sympathize with.

Treefox

I don't know anything about your climate, but for only 60 miles I don't really see the need for three bottles...

(but if you want the third, just stick it in a back pocket, then toss an empty loose when you finish your first - You'll even be able to gun it past the feed zone whilst others are fumbling about and crashing into one another as they drop their stuff. You also won't have to deal with owing your wife big favours later on! )

Treefox

That's some serious volume!!!

Not that I'm saying I'm doing it right, but I normally only ever carry one bottle on road races.

gsteinb

my wife left me over a feed zone issue

jkizzle

two on bike, one in middle pocket? bottle every 20 miles, hydrate well before hand and night before?

Enthalpic

Often race permits have a condition that no cars be parked along the course.