Originally Posted by donrhummy
1. Obviously, eating and drinking to replenish the glycogen stores and lost water.
2. Electrolytes (and calcium) lost to sweating, as well as antioxidants.
3. Stretching - it's been shown that stretching can remove waste from a muscle and bring in new blood/nutrients. So do you think this could help speed delivery to the muscles once you've eaten/drunk?
The question, of course, is how long it'd take to replenish and whether you can keep pedaling at a reduced rate during that time. Does anyone know if the body releases retained water, glycogen, etc (retained when it realized it was entering a catabolic state) upon eating and before digestion - as it now expects energy to be delivered? Is there a way to trigger that? Or is there too little retained?
Where is this "retained" water and glycogen? Water is typically not a problem at all because you can absorb about 3-5x faster than you sweat away. However, the stored glycogen only adds up to 2000-calories at the beginning of a ride. A fast clip will burn off 800-calories/hr in roughly 80/20% carb/fat ratio (640/160/cal). Your glycogen supply's only gonna last about 3-hours at this rate.
The maximum absorption-rate is about 200-300 cal/hr, so if you've been eating from the start of this ride, you might extend the bonking-point out to 4-hours. At that point, you're a goner! Even if you stopped completely and laid down on the side of the road, you're still not gonna be absorbing additional calories faster than 200-300 calories/hr, so you're gonna have to lay there completely still for 3-4 hours to replenish just enough energy to ride more 1-hour at your previous pace. Then you gotta lay down for another 3-4 hours. It's a losing battle, there's absolutely zero chance of digesting food and absorbing it faster than you burn off. And this is the highest-GI, simplest-carbs possible too. If you've got more complex stuff like breads or vegetable-matter to digest, the absorption-rate will be even slower.
Potentially, if you're in good shape, you can replenish all the glycogen within 24-hours after a bonk, but you're gonna be so wiped out mentally that you're not gonna be able to ride for a couple of days...