Road Cycling - So Embarrassed, I BONKED!!!

Went out for a ride at lunch today with 3 other riders. I'm a newbie and am still trying to get my legs under me. Well the winds were about 15-20 mph and these guys start out of the gate at 95-100 for their candence! Now I know this isn't much to most of you here but..man, in order for me to keep up, I needed to Kick it up into a higher gear.

With the combination of the wind and speed/candence, I just couldn't keep up with these "veteran" roadies. After about 8miles, I bonked hard. I had to stop, felt like a total dork. These guys averted their normal route for a shorter one because of me. Not only is my pride taking a hit but, I feel like crap now also..lol.

I'm training for a MS150 ride to take place in June. Starting to wonder if I can do it. I want to but, now my confidence is somewhat shaken with my abilities. My mind told me to keep going, my body was screaming at me to stop! Has anybody else gone through this? Any words of encouragement? I'll take all I can get right now!

Well, at least I hope you didn't bonk riding a $5000 bike in front of these guys..... :p
Good luck with your MS ride.....you'll pull through...

Don't doubt yourself... It's no big deal.. you're just not as well conditioned. You jumped in with some guys above your level. You'l' get there soon enough. Everyone has to start.

This is a two day event.. right? With refreshment stops?
Just take your time.. it's no race.
Build up your base miles... gradually increase your weekly mileage.
Before the event, I recommend eating a lot of oatmeal for breakfast a couple hours before. It's slow burn carbs and will last you for hours. But be sure to take along powerbars and drink plenty of fluids, or you WILL bonk after about 2 hours.

Good luck!

Hey Mike,
ya just had a bad day. You win some, you lose some. The guys you were with might have pushed you too hard, too, as you aren't on their level yet.

I've had a few extremely hisheartening rides with heavy winds before. I was alone though.

Like bike2ride said, no big deal. Just let your body come to you in the next few months. Good luck on your MS ride.

What part of MI are you in, if you don't mind? I'm up north.

(Those bikes in front of me are getting farther away! oh no! what's happening here? They are going so much faster! Maybe I have a flat tire? no, hmm...gee a nap sure sounds good ).........lol.... I still remember a day like that too. The dreaded bonk...Just keep doing rides Mike, and as Bike2Ride said about the carbs. You will get stronger! I try to eat something each hour along with something that has salt.

Here ya' go. There is some good basic advice about training and nutrition right here:

www.nationalmssociety.com/ctn/event/event_page.asp?p=211&e=67

Good luck.

55/Rad

Thanks for the encouragement folks, it really is helpful. Brent, I'm in Grand Rapids. The MS150 takes place on June 12 & 13 here in GR. This site is great! Thanks again all.

Thanks for the encouragement folks, it really is helpful. Brent, I'm in Grand Rapids. The MS150 takes place on June 12 & 13 here in GR. This site is great! Thanks again all.

Hey, even Lance bonked on Mt. Ventoux a couple of years back. It happens to everyone. The rule of thumb is "Eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty." I always take a gel shot and a couple of Clif bars on any ride that's going to last more than an hour. Often, I have to give one to a riding buddy. Bonking happens. Don't let it ruin your fun!

i consider myself a pretty fast rider, but am horrible in wind. high winds usually cut my speed in half or more at least. it can get pretty discouraging sometimes. i tend to get off the saddle when my legs are failing. i can usually muster some extra strength that way and keep the speed up a little more. then for some reason the next time i'm sitting my legs are a bit refreshed. try alternating like that once in a while, it helps me.

I've always liked the Basic Training approach to motivation. So...

You better get your **** together pal! If you are going ride with the big boys you better train hard! Get out there every night and look forward to the pain. Don't come back to this forum looking for sympathy. Kids are dying in Iraq and you are crying about the lunchtime fellas making you look bad. Pathetic.

Went out for a ride at lunch today with 3 other riders. I'm a newbie and am still trying to get my legs under me. Well the winds were about 15-20 mph and these guys start out of the gate at 95-100 for their candence! Now I know this isn't much to most of you here but..man, in order for me to keep up, I needed to Kick it up into a higher gear.

With the combination of the wind and speed/candence, I just couldn't keep up with these "veteran" roadies. After about 8miles, I bonked hard. I had to stop, felt like a total dork. These guys averted their normal route for a shorter one because of me. Not only is my pride taking a hit but, I feel like crap now also..lol.


i've bonked more than once. i choose to look at it as my punishment for being slack for a while. it really shouldn't be embarassing. it's just a physiological reality. you probably knew going into it that those guys were too fast for you, and all bonking did was prove it. fight through it. next time you'll make it 10-12 miles before you crack. then 15-17. then you'll finish the ride. bonking builds character.

Mike,

as a newbie my self and a only experience I have is a metric Century (63mi), I can tell you that you can ramp up into shape much faster then you think.

It took me 5 weeks to go from 18 mile rides, to 60 miles with a good hill in it. You must figure out your individual pace. I am 51, weighing over 200lb, and I made it fine. This training schedule should work great for you (http://www.nationalmssociety.com/ctn/event/event_page.asp?p=211&e=67), so go ahead and train. Don't attempt to keep up with your "buddies" (they aint your buddies if they let you bonk like that).. Just take your time and train by yourself. It feels great when you look back and see how far and how fast you progressed.

I have 5 weeks for my first (real) century and I know I can do it even if I don't train, but I know I will enjoy it a lot more if I do train for it.. Luckily by riding buddies are more considerate, and even tho they are in better shape then I am, they indulge me and let me pace...

If you are going to do that ride (notice it is RIDE not RACE), you need to do the miles. Don't even try to go fast. Try to go long. I would go out there and do 50 miles, or what you can do, this weekend. Take that up 10% the next weekend, and so on. Try to get to at least 75 miles the weekend before the ride. Take it fairly easy the last week.

Don't worry about getting out there with guys going at race pace.

You cracked, blew up, got your ticket punched, or just plain quit, but you didn't BONK, not after 8 miles anyway, unless you hadn't eaten in like 12 hours or so.

The term BONK gets used WAY TOO MUCH to descibe just blowing up (going too fast too soon), or just plain quitting. You said your mind said keep going, but your body was screaming stop. Thats just good ol' fashioned suffering! Keep it up, but get used to it. It's part of the sport.

Now if your mind was saying there is a small puple man doing tai chi workouts on your handlebar, and you suddenly didn't care about riding the bike, and just wanted to eat anything you could find, then you bonked.

The BONK, or "hunger knock" as our European counterparts call it is a depletion of muscle glycogen, ie the fuel tank is empty, there is no available glucose in the muscles or your liver, and no carbs in your stomach to digest and make more. The Bloodstream can hold about 3 minutes worth of glucose during intense exercise, the Liver can hold about 12 hours worth at rest. Bike2Ride is correct, if you are going to be exercising for more than 2 hours, eat, or at least drink some carbo drink (gatorade etc...)

Once the glucose in you body drops below 3 millimoles per litre of blood, strange things happen. Some people can't do math calculations, others have trouble reading. If the sugar continues to drop, some people hallucinate. When the brain is starved, neurons in the occipital cortex misrepresent incoming images. Similair problems with the brain occur with sodium depletion. Which is way endurance athletes drink sports drinks, and not just water. They pass out salt tablets at the Iron Man, so people don't sit down in the middle of the road and have a conversation with imaginary people. I've seen it!

Last year at the World Championships in Kona Hawaii, after the sun went down, my buddy was still on the marathon course. There are aid stations every mile with gatorade, goo, sponges, water etc... Once the sun went down, they started handing out Dinner Rolls and Chicken Broth. I guess this was done to keep the sodium levels up, and give your stomach something real to wrap around after 12 hours of goo and gatorade. My buddy said he couldnt drink lemon-lime gatorade for a long time after that race, he just got so sick of it by the end of the day. Remember, these guys are drinking a total of between 750ml and a liter of fluid every hour, some for as long as 13 hours.

Read Lances 2nd book about how he bonked on the Joux Plane. He doesnt even remember part of the climb, wasnt able to hear, and was partially incoherent.

I bonked once as a teenage Cat 4, long ago on a 4 hour ride. the route home was flat, with little or no wind, I was struggling to maintain 14mph, on a flat road!!!

Last week we had a guy who puked his lunch all over his top tube during a ride, he was giving it his all, and he earned respect for his efforts, but he didn't bonk, although he kept calling it that.

But the advice given on this forum is correct, stick with it, try and and hang on to the group longer and longer each time you go out. Stay out of the wind as best you can, roll up to the front of the group at stop lights and before hills, so you can drift back slowly instead if just being gapped immediatly. Some people play mental games to get around the pain, other focus on it and love it. My trick for staying competitive at the very end of the ride is to effectively "hate" eveyone other than my teamates. It's temporary.

you just didn't know what you were in for. these guys knew to load up the night before, that morning, etc. so they had a mental edge. knowing the course also is a big edge.

chances are they weren't even going all out. but if you were dawnted by their cadence, then you just need miles and more miles.

you aren't there yet. in fact, you don't know just how far you are from being in their class. nothing to be ashamed of. believe me, i've been dropped from just about every type of ride imaginable. but the bottom line is:
YOU ALWAYS BENEFIT FROM RIDING WITH BETTER RIDERS!!

you learned that you can't fake it out there. hey,,,at least they waited.

Aw it's all ok, we've all been there and no one will think ill of you. It takes time to build up. You will do fine, just put in as much time as you can into riding at an enjoyable pace and you'll be there in no time.

Good luck!

You got owned.

You got owned.
:lol:

http://www.dluxz.dk/owned.jpg

Thanks for the advice all. I've brought my bike in to work today, I'm going out. For the record, I completed the route yesterday. Just took me longer than everyone else...

Thanks again....

Happens to everybody. I use hate as 104 said,i hate the wind and wont let it beat me. I almost lost last night on my ride.

Mike,

You deserve appreciation for understanding that these other riders were apparently trying to improve themselves and under no obligation to ride at your speed, unless this was specifically stated pre-ride. Unfortunately, a lot of new riders get upset when they get dropped on training rides. Social rides are different from training rides and usually have a no-drop policy.

You cracked, blew up, got your ticket punched, or just plain quit, but you didn't BONK, not after 8 miles anyway, unless you hadn't eaten in like 12 hours or so.

Thank you. You beat me to it.

To the original poster, my advice would be to get miles under your belt without worrying about speed in the beginning. Trying to hang with more advanced riders when you are still getting your legs is a big mistake.

Find a pace where you can stay riding for your entire ride (hopefully an hour or two) without breathing too hard (being able to carry on a conversation if you had to) and then slowly increase the pace. Make sure you get out riding at least three times a week with one ride (usually on the weekend) being the long one. This long one should be up to at least two thirds of the mileage of the event you are training for by two weeks prior.

This will get you into shape much quicker than going all out for fifteen minutes, burning out, and trying again the next day.

You cracked, blew up, got your ticket punched, or just plain quit, but you didn't BONK, not after 8 miles anyway, unless you hadn't eaten in like 12 hours or so.

The term BONK gets used WAY TOO MUCH to descibe just blowing up (going too fast too soon), or just plain quitting. You said your mind said keep going, but your body was screaming stop. Thats just good ol' fashioned suffering! Keep it up, but get used to it. It's part of the sport.

Now if your mind was saying there is a small puple man doing tai chi workouts on your handlebar, and you suddenly didn't care about riding the bike, and just wanted to eat anything you could find, then you bonked.



Agreed. I've fallen into pretty poor cycling shape lately, and I find myself having more legs than wind. It's frustrating, but it gets better quickly. The body is amazing. It can erase years of mis-use in a matter of weeks. Keep at it.

I'd also make a fair guess that you got a little psyched out by your riding partners. You'll be fine. Before long you'll be riding next to them.

You cracked, blew up, got your ticket punched, or just plain quit, but you didn't BONK, not after 8 miles anyway, unless you hadn't eaten in like 12 hours or so.


Yeah, I didn't even think of that. After 8 miles? I'm disabled (to the point where my endurance is seriously affected) and I never bonked within 8 miles.

He should have kept going :)

Nice post about bonking. I remember it felt so weird. The way my body was reacting as I tried to keep going was very strange.

There is no correlation between cadence and power.

Please excuse my misrepresentation of the term "bonked". I just gassed out I guess. I had to stop and catch my breath, take in some water etc.... I didn't bonk. Thanks for correcting me...

Bonk and tired are not the samething. I dont think you recover form bonking,right?

Last week we had a guy who puked his lunch all over his top tube during a ride, he was giving it his all, and he earned respect for his efforts, but he didn't bonk, although he kept calling it that.

Yeah, the proper term for that is ralphed.

I've been there...

There is a ride/race every Sunday near my house called Como Street... after my first 6 months of riding, I felt like I was in pretty decent shape.. and it was about a 35 mile ride witha few rolling hills in it...

The ride takes off... I'm in good shape, hanging with the pack... after about 6 miles I notice that some of the pack is passing me (probably about 100 guys total). I figure, oh this is the faster group... I'll just hang with the slower group... until I looked around... and I WAS the slower group... I tried all I could to grab back on to the group.. but they were just too fast for me... I completely ran out of steam...

I haven't been back riding Como Street since then... although I'm in 10 times better shape then I was, and should have no problems hangin' on now...

sometimes you just beat yourself

jeff

I am glad I read this thread. I am a relativley new rider who went through a similar situation my first year of riding. I asked a friend why I was dying so hard, so fast. He told me I has riding too hard, and I wasnt doing any LSD (long slow distance).

Get some time in the saddle. Maybe lunch rides are not the best idea. Is commuting an option? Build your lactic acid tolerance in your legs and your cardio base before you try to go out and hammer out a fast short ride.

Pain management is another aspect of the sport that I worked on last year which has changed my riding. Realize that it Is going to hurt. If you (I) choose to take part in this sport I have to accept that pain, and have to want it. Like another poster mentioned on pain management, some people try to put it out of their minds, others focus on it. I do the latter. I find it empowering to believe that the pain is the result of my choices.

The short version. If you want it, make sure you body can do it, and your head will do it. Best wishes and keep riding!

Please excuse my misrepresentation of the term "bonked". I just gassed out I guess. I had to stop and catch my breath, take in some water etc.... I didn't bonk. Thanks for correcting me...

yeah, that's not bonking. bonking is...funny, really. you want like hell to keep riding, but you have no fuel at all left in the tank. there's really nothing you can do about it. when it's happened to me, i just drop down to the lowest gear i have and try to stay upright until i finish the ride. in my experience, running out of gas doesn't even really hurt. you're not huffing and puffing, sucking wind. you just simply can't pedal. frustrating, amusing, humbling, etc. but being tired is most definitely not the same thing.