Originally Posted by
dalameda
telebianchi , I eat pretty well on the rides. For example, last weekend I did the Solvang Century. Stopped at each rest stop and had some fruit and a couple of fig newtons, and had a bottle with spiv in it. I also had some gels to take between stops, so no fear of starvation there. The fatigue I am talking about is more an emotional fatigue that sets in around the mile 70-80 mark. I've tried different visualization and motivation strategies that seem to help, but the interest in the 5 hour was to see if it could give a slight physical "kick" to help me over that phase.
Emotional fatigue
is a symptom of not eating enough. It's well-known among randonneurs. You want to shoot for 250 calories/hour. By your description, you don't eat enough. If you like fig newtons, Heathpack took 1000 calories of them with her on her recent century, plus eating from the rest stop foods. You'd need a gel every 20 minutes, average size gels. The first three hours are the most important for nutrition: you really want to scarf down the food during that time. 1 Clif bar/hour is a good metric. Eat 1/4 of one every 15 minutes. One of the difficulties one must surmount is finding foods that agree with one's stomach in that quantity for those hours.