Carbonfiberboy 

Distance: 195 miles; Elevation gain: 9700'; Saddle time: 12:02; ET: 14:55; Average speed: 16.2; Average cadence: 85; Average HR: 123; Average temp: 48°, some rain, mostly dry.

Bike: '99 Trek 5200 - 52-42-30 and 12-25; Wheels: Rolf Vector Comp; Tires: Vredestein Tricomp @ 145#; Saddle: Terry Fly; Bag: Detour High-Tail

I was out of town for the club brevet, so this was a make-up, ridden over the same course. I'm not doing PBP, so certification didn't matter. A friend had DNFed on the club brevet due to a mechanical - his FSA crank fell off. Apparently those nuts need LockTite. So we started the ride together, but he began to have problems. He's a Real Athlete, not a putzer like me, but he's even longer in the tooth. At 75 miles, he developed A-fib. We rested for quite a while, but his HR didn't come down much, so we continued slowly to the next town at 92 miles, where he phoned a family member to come and get him. He's fine today.

I did the rest of the ride solo. After I left him, I had 20 miles of flat with truly terrible broken chipseal upwind, with the flags straight out. I had hoped to begin making time, but couldn't sustain over 17.5. That really took it out of me. So I was glad to get into the hilly section of the ride, also chipseal, over every tiny, windy, hilly road the course devisors could find. Even that started to wear after a while. There were some serious walls, where I could not turn the cranks seated and had to climb the whole thing out of the saddle in my granny.

It got dark about 10 miles before the finish, so I got to check out night riding with yellow lenses and the Cateye HL-EL530. That was OK, but next time I'll have two of those lights. I was still doing 22 on the flats in the dead calm, and 22 at night feels very fast.

My legs are tired today, but my butt's fine. The knee operated on last year is sore, but getting better. My aero bars were pretty useless after 150 miles. I was tired and my position seemed cramped on them, so I just gutted it out on the hoods like everyone else. They're more useful on flatter rides. I coasted down every hill, so I only got into the 52 ring a few times. I could have done without it. The 42 was handy, as always. I liked the close ratios in the back. My buddy has a compact. My setup was better, as I didn't have to shift into the little ring as often and his ratios were further apart. My cadence dropped off as I got tired. It just seemed like too much work to spin fast.

Food: I took a total of 2 quarts of my malto/soy drink powder and used it all. At 164 miles I was feeling kind of wasted and my mouth was tired of the drink, so I tried a slice of pizza. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the pizza place makes and cooks each slice individually, so that took forever. Huge slice, though. My stomach felt fine after that, but 1.25 hrs. later I started getting flashing lights in my peripheral vision, my sign of low blood sugar, so I started in on the malto again. Moral: there aren't many carbs in pizza crust and my body runs on carbs. I would have done better with a PB&J, but that wasn't an option.

Overall, I was very pleased with the loaded bike's performance on chipseal. It mostly floated right over it. Nice rando bike. That may have been helped by the two 1-liter Zefal bottles (thanks, Machka) and the loaded High Tail. I didn't have any back problems like I did on the 200k, and maybe that was due to going to the bottles instead of the Camelbak. I needed that much fluid, as I ran them both dry twice. I'm going to get a Bento Box, as my jersey pockets were covered by my wind vest most of the time.

I kept my HR mostly under 75% of MHR, and under 82% on the hills. My saddle time was pretty good, but I stopped to change clothes or look at the cue sheet or putz around too many times. Also, mixing the drink powder is slow. I couldn't just buy something and go. Also had a flat, luckily not in the rain. But I wasn't racing, just trying to enjoy the rando experience. I could have kept going, though I was happy to quit.

joshben

i'm gonna try my first 300k tomorrow...my geared bike is (and has been for a bit over a month) outta comission, so i'm gonna do it fixed...i've done a flattish 174 mile ride fixed, and a 200k with 10,000' climbing fixed...i'm not sure about the climbing figures for tomorrow's brevet, but it's supposed to be mostly rolling...

honestly, i'm a pretty intimidated about doing 300 rolling kilometers, fixed

Hocam

Sounds like a great ride but 2 quarts of powdered mix?! That must have made a lot of malto!

What kind of physical therapy did they have you doing for your knee?

Carbonfiberboy 

I mix it up at 1 pint dry = 1 liter bottle. That's food for 3 hours or so. I wouldn't want to carry more powder than that, so for longer brevets, I'll have to experiment with eating like a normal person, and just using the malto when I need it.

Nada. It was just arthroscopic surgery for a torn meniscus. Back on the rollers in 4 days. A couple weeks of easy spinning, then back riding again. I've had issues with scar tissue though. I hope it was just some more of that coming loose, but it is sore where the tear was, so maybe the joint doesn't like not having all its little cushion intact. Which would be a bummer. I enjoy these long rides.

Carbonfiberboy 

Depends on how steep the rollers are. If you did that 200 fine and this is similar terrain, no problem. Just pace yourself - dial it down a notch from the 200, especially for the first 150k. Then you'll know what you can do on the second half.

merlinman

what a great ride - sounds like you are really dialing in how to do these long ones - congrats!

Machka 

Aerobars -- I rode with mine for the first two years I was in Randonneuring, then removed them in 2003 because they are banned on the PBP ... and I've never put them on again. Like you say, they're good in flat terrain, but not much use in hills.

52 Ring -- I had mine removed ... actually I had all my chainrings replaced and now my biggest ring is a 48. Much better!

Bento box -- that's one of the reasons I have one ... half my rides are done wearing multiple layers and if I have pockets in the clothing I'm wearing (and often I don't) they are buried so deeply I can't get at them anyway. Bento boxes are so handy!

Bottles - I'm glad you liked them! I have back problems with my camelbak too.

Food - it strikes me a bit funny ..... a lot of American riders go the "powdered" route. Canadians, Australians, and Europeans tend to prefer the "real food" route. Since you're not going to the PBP, stick with whatever works for you ... but if you were, I'd suggest working on getting used to eating a lot of real food during the rides.

Congratulations on a good ride!

Carbonfiberboy 

I see you're back on BF. I once wrote 50,000 lines of software code while recovering from achilles tendon surgery. Sounds like you're getting the same sort of run-around we get down here with our health insurance "providers" (read deniers). Diagnosis is expensive, palliative treatment is cheap, so they put off diagnosis hoping:
1) You'll die (cheapest)
2) You'll get sick of the process and go away (also good)
3) You'll get well (more expensive because you'll still consume services)
Meanwhile, they give you pills and physio, not really knowing what's wrong. They almost ruined my wife's ankle with this strategy. Get a diagnosis! Diagnosis first, then a recovery plan - surgery or whatever. I say, get up and dance on their desk. They'll often come to see it your way. My .02.

Yes, I saw you've gone to quite small gears. I use this one bike for everything and I really like the 42 and the 12-25 cassette. I run the whole cassette from the 42 and that takes care of almost all "normal" riding. The 52 comes in handy on group rides if I get a burr under my saddle and want to honk. But the 30 isn't really small enough. Right now, only my bottom 3 gears are smaller than the 42X25. If I went to a 28 ring, my bottom 4 gears would be smaller, and with a 26 ring, my bottom 5 gears would all be smaller. I can run my 5 bottom cassette cogs from the inner ring without FD rub. My only hesitation is that right now a double downshift is one bump on the left brifter along with two bumps on the right. Another bump on the right brifter and I'm in about the same gear as the 42X25, so I don't do much shifting back and forth between chainrings as the gradient changes on a climb. If I went to a 26 ring, a double shift would be 4 bumps on the right brifter to get the next gear. What do you think?

I don't know what the nationality thing has to do with eating. Maybe these powdered products aren't as available outside the US? For me, eating this way on rando rides is a carryover from hard group day rides. I've tried eating real food between mountain passes, for instance, and had horrible results. I do better on liquid food with a little bit of solid. One croissant or one sandwich is OK, but not too much. If I eat a 6" sub, I need a tow truck to bring me in. I'll continue to experiment. Pizza is out. Nuts, fruit pies, and deli sandwiches? One of my buddies swears by Hostess cupcakes. Do they count as "real food?"

oboeguy

How much do you + bike weigh that you run your tires at 145psi? My butt hurts just thinking about it and I'm a pretty big dude. I agree on real food, BTW. I have quite the assortment of Powerbars and whatnot but during a century or brevet or just a long training ride, if real food is available, the PB stays in the jersey pocket.

Machka 

Yeah, I'm back ... I'm "resting". And I'm seeing my regular Dr on Tuesday so we'll see where that goes.



With my setup I actually have very little rubbing, and I generally stay in my 36 ring, and flip back forth between a few rings on my cassette. It's actually very comfortable.



It's just something I've observed ... and you could be right about availability. Sustained Energy and Perpetuem are banned here in Canada because of one ingredient. Spiz is also banned for the same reason. I'm not sure if these things are also banned in other countries, but I didn't notice people using them much. I rode with the CTC in England and none of them had Gatorade or anything other than water. When we stopped for a break, it was at a pub and we had beer and beans on toast. And in Australia some of the riders did have Gatorade but nothing else - we all ate real food the whole way around the Great Southern. In France most of the riders I observed were eating real food ... in fact, the French riders stop in restaurants along the way and have whole meals complete with wine and everything. It was on the PBP where I really noticed the difference. The American riders were all there with little baggies of powder mixing up this and that, and the rest of the riders were going through the food lines.

It took me 3 years of Randonneuring before I could stomach solid food on rides over about 300 kms. During my first couple years I lost a lot of weight during the randonneuring season - about 25 lbs each summer - because I couldn't eat during my rides. I did the RM1200 on 13 cans of Ensure!! I lost 8 lbs during that ride, and it wasn't water weight because I was drinking a lot of water ... I just wasn't eating. It wasn't till the PBP that I was finally able to eat all the way up to about 900 kms, and on the Great Southern in 2004, I managed to eat all the way through the ride. However, even still I have some rides where I can't eat.

So ... a couple tips from someone who struggled with this, and still struggles now and then: eat what you crave. If you crave something, eat it as soon as possible. And nibble all the way through the ride. If I don't keep eating all the way through the ride ... if I let 30 minutes or 60 minutes go without eating ... I have trouble eating when I think I should eat.

This long distance stuff is tricky business!!

knobster

What size tires are you running? I'm running 25's and have them pumped up to 110#. Seems ok.

Machka: How do you have your bike set up?

Carbonfiberboy 

Before the 300, I weighed 159, bike 18, equipment, water, and food another 10-12 lbs. The high pressure doesn't bother my butt at all. I think that's because I'm not all that heavy, I have a pretty stretched out riding position, and I pedal hard, so there's not so much weight on my butt. The 5200 frame gets most of the credit, and there's some padding in the Terry saddle so every little bump doesn't whack my sit bones. I've been told that Vredesteins feel a lot like tubulars. I've never ridden tubulars, so I can't confirm. Anyway, they have a supple feel even at that pressure. And they're fast. Rolling resistance happens because some of your energy is converted to heat by tire deflection. The more deflection, the more heat generated, thus the greater the resistance. For a simple reductio ad absurdem, consider RR trains - steel wheels on steel rails have almost no rolling resistance. Most of what is written about bicycle rolling resistance and tire pressures is nonsense, with no data to back it up. A number of years ago, Bicycle magazine did a rolling resistance test. Vredesteins at 145 had half the rolling resistance of any other tire tested.

bmike

I'm running Conti GP 4 seasons at 65-70. I'm also looking into something a bit more supple... but this past weekend I dropped these from 95 to 65-70 and they felt great, and as fast as before.

If people are really interested in rolling resistace I highly recommend the BQ article about tires. Jan Heine did his best to do controlled, real world tests - on pavement, with bike and rider.

Enlightening for sure.

Carbonfiberboy 

You've mentioned this before. May I ask what that one ingredient is?

The people with whom I've been riding treat these rando rides like long distance races. Maybe that's a major difference. Americans take everything so seriously! I decided to try randonneuring because I was looking forward to having fun with people on very long bike rides, just like you say. I absolutely did not expect the hell-for-leather riding style, trying to hold the time at each control to 5 minutes or less.

Well, yes! That's exactly why I use the powder that I use: I can whack it down with no issues.

When I saw that pizza joint, my whole body cried out "PIZZA!" So that's why I got some. But I should have kept eating other things, and not expected one slice of pizza to carry me.

I rode with a buddy yesterday who has the same setup as me, but a 26 granny ring instead of my 30. So I guess that's what I'll get.

Machka 

In what way? Tires?

I have 25s and I have them at about 100 psi. I'm small so I don't need my tires pumped too full.

Machka 

The ingredient is L-Carnitine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnitine (scroll down)

A friend mailed me some packets of Sustained Energy a few years ago in two boxes. One box had several Hammergels and the packet of Sustained Energy. The other box just had Sustained Energy. I got the box with the Hammergel (and one Sustained Energy), but the other box was confiscated and both my friend and I received notes from Customs about bringing banned goods into the country. I'm probably on some list somewhere now.


There are a few around here who treat the rides like races too. I started randonneuring in Manitoba with a bunch of riders who stopped at every control to sit down for a meal, all rode together, and had fun with it. It was great! That was what really appealed to me about Randonneuring. I kind of miss that with the group here. And let me tell you, the French really have the relaxed style of riding down pat!!

Another thing I noticed at the PBP was that I could pick the Americans out of the crowd, not only for the fact that they had several pounds of powder with them, but for the fact that a lot of them were on Trek racing bicycles with all sorts of high-tech equipment (computers, GPS, lighting systems, cell phones, etc. etc.). The Canadians and Australians and a few other countries rode more touring-style bicycles with average equipment - a bicycle computer and fairly decent lighting systems. The French and some of the other European countries, rode bicycles that looked about 30 years old with flashlights taped to their forks. And the English rode all the "odd" bicycles like the tricycles (like the ones we had when we were kids but larger), recumbents, recumbent tandems, the triplette, etc.


Yes ... and I was the same way with Ensure until I realized I wouldn't be able to get Ensure in France. Then I knew I had to get used to real food.


The pizza was probably all right, but a slice of pizza might only be about 500 calories, so you do need to start eating again in an hour or so after the pizza.

It's like this ... if you've been eating well before the ride, your body has about 2000 calories to play with. If you burn 500 calories per hour, you can ride for about 4 hours ... you may roll in feeling a bit weak, but you can make it. So, suppose you eat 250 calories per hour starting right away. You double the length of time you can ride. But eventually you'll still run out of calories.

I find that around the 6-7 hour point, I need to eat a meal with 500-1000 calories. The only way I can digest something like that is to plan to ride slowly for an hour or so after that meal. But after a meal like that I can continue to eat 250 calories per hour again for a while before I need another meal. But I do need to keep eating. If I don't, a 500-1000 calorie meal will only last an hour or two.

Eating can be quite a complex thing!! And a pain!! Once you get up to the 1200K rides, you could be aiming to consume anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 calories in 3.5 days ... and as nice as that may sound to some people, it's really not. I get so tired of eating.


Mine is a 48X36X26 ... or did I tell you that already?

knobster

Actually gearing, but I saw you posted that in a later post. That a MTB crankset? Mine is a 53/42/28 and I'm thinking of going the route you have. Don't see much need for the larger ring.

Carbonfiberboy 

How weird! AFAIK, that's not a UCI banned substance. It's also on my list of substances that I don't think do much.

AHA! That's a piece of the puzzle that I've never seen mentioned before, but that makes a lot of sense. I've always assumed that one just ate the 250/hr. and the rest of the calories came out of fat, which I've got plenty of! But if one rides for 80 hours at 250/hr., that's only 20,000 calories, leaving about a 30,000 calorie deficit, which is about 8.5 lbs of fat, which is a bit much to lose in 3.5 days.

I think you have mentioned it. I put that into my gearing SS with my 12-25 cassette and it doesn't look too bad. I'd use the big ring more and the granny ring even less, so more shifting in front. OTOH, I'd spread out the wear a bit more. What crankset, rings (manufacturer), and bolt circle do you use?

vik 

I can buy both products at two stores within a few blocks of my apartment in Calgary. I can also mail order them from the US if I want a better price. If they are banned in Canada the local Hammer Nutrition Rep sure isn't aware of it - neither is Canada Customs.

The only reason I can think to ban them is the awful taste!....

Machka 

I have actually managed to get ahold of them too in the last year or so, which leads me to believe that possibly the ban has been lifted, or is in the process of being lifted, or customs officials are starting to look the other way or something. But in 2003 when my friend mailed me some, customs was definitely catching it!! They listed L-Carnitine on the letter we got as a banned product and gave us a warning about attempting to bring banned products into the country.

Since 2003, I did discover that L-Carnitine can be brought into the country on a prescription basis, with the approval of medical officials. So .... maybe that's how some of these shops are doing it???? I asked the local shop here how they managed to get ahold of it, and they didn't seem to want to tell me.

But you're right about the taste!! I haven't tried Perpetuem, but I have tried Sustained Energy. It isn't bad for the first 300K or so, if you empty and entire flask of Hammergel into it ... but after that, or without the hammergel .... YUCK!!

Machka 

My setup is a Shimano Deore mtn bike crankset with an XT cassette (11x34) ... I have not yet been in my 26x34 granny ... I haven't needed it!! That is a really nice feeling.