I'm training for a half century ride on my 50th birthday, April 24. For about two months, I had been riding up to 30 miles for my Saturday morning rides. Since then, I've been increasing my weekend ride by 10% every two weeks. This weekend was my second weekend to do 37 miles. The next two weekends will be 40.

FYI: Tuesday rides are 11-18 miles of up and down hills, Thursday rides are flat 8-11 miles and Sunday (optional) are a light, slow 5-8 miles.

Concern: During my 37 mile ride this weekend, I felt like I was in the middle of a bonk at about mile 31- 32. My weekend ride ritual, since increasing rides past 30 miles has been a half banana about 30 minutes before the ride, then a Gu at 30 minutes and every 45 minutes after that until I have only about 5- 8 miles left in the ride. This morning was 3 Gu shots. During the ride I probably drink about 40 oz of water, half of the water has a Camelbak electrolyte tablet disolved in it. I drink the water first, then switch bottles at the half way point and then drink the electrolyte tablet water during the ride home.

Questions:
1. Was that a mini bonk I experienced this weekend or when you bonk you are totally done?
2. Am I eating/replenishing energy/carbs appropriately? If not, what would you do?
3. Since I am where I am at 37 miles, I will be able to increase my distance at a slower rate when I get into April. Should I keep up the pace of 10% increase every two weeks and a. keep the distance at the last tier the same until my birthday or b. give myself a rest the week before and ride a shorter amount the week before the half century? Should I increase my distance at a slower rate until April 24th?
4. Am I over thinking this because I am already at 37 miles, eight weeks before my half century?

I just don't want to bonk that day. This is important to me. Last year, when I started riding in May, I found 2 miles difficult. Thanks in advance for your replies.

What made you think you were bonking?

If this ride took you under 3 hours, it's very unlikely you were bonking. You have enough stored glycogen in your muscles to run your body for approx 2 hours. You ate enough to last another 2 hours.

Answers:
1. No idea if you were bonking. Describe your symptoms. But probably not.
2. What you do is going to be different than what I would do, because of differences in our levels of endurance training. How many miles per week are you riding? Just the one ride per week? The more training you have, the less you will need to eat. It also depends on the intensity at which you are riding. Less intense, slower rides allow you to burn fat as a calorie source and your fat supplies are almost infinite for the purposes of cycling. Your training rides are an opportunity to train yourself to need less calories. My personal eating scheme is nothing for the first 90 minutes, unless I'm on a really long ride, like 100-200 miles, or I'm going semi-long maybe 50-70 miles but riding intensely, in which case I start eating right away. I eat 200 cal/hr of pure carbohydrate (Cliff Shot Bloks because they're packaged perfectly and easy to eat while cycling), plus another approx 50 cal/hr of electrolyte drink (I use Skratch Labs). On a short ride, 3 hours or less, I might not eat anything unless I felt hungry.
3. I would personally keep increasing your long ride each week by 10%. Then when I got to 45ish miles, I would just keep repeating that length of ride. The more time you spend close to you event distance, the better it will go. One week prior to your event, I would taper by cutting volume in half, but keeping intensity the same. The exact details of how you do this is probably not hugely important, but I'd personally be off the bike 2 days before the event and ride an easy hour the day before.
4. You are not over thinking this. Confidence comes from experience, practice and preparation.

Congrats on your efforts to date - you are doing well! I will try to answer your questions in the order you listed.
1) You can receiver from a "mini-bonk" by eating simple carbs along with more complex ones - take it easy until you recover.
2) Try to eat about 250 calories an hour - peanut butter sandwich, cliff bars, things of that nature - also, eat a bigger breakfast that has good calories in it - eggs, oatmeal, bacon.
3) At 37 miles already, you will not have any trouble riding the 50 miler come late April - just keep on training, increase some more each week and when the week of the 24th comes around, ride easy leading up to the event and you can make it - fresh legs and the comfort of knowing you put in the miles beforehand.
4) You have come a long way since last year - you will make it - just eat smart, hydrate with water and have fun!

That seems like plenty of fuel. (for 50 i'll do like 1 gel). Temps? maybe you need to pre-hydrate a bit more or stop once and fill up

I'd keep going how you are.. going up a few miles at a time should be ok. Or skip one.. do 37 again and see how it goes this time.

what are you riding during the week? I find those rides set up how my weekend rides go. ie if i'm doing a group ride sat. then I like to ride thursday to get the legs going and then have a rest day beforehand.

Oh and my bday is apr 24th too. i'll be 35 this year so i'm a few behind but you'll be fine

just as a reference, not a recommendation...

before my 45 miles rides. i'll eat normally the night before, as late as 9 pm. then i won't eat anything until i'm at about the 35 mile mark, then a 1/2 a PBJ. i'll have water throughout the ride though. but if i go more than about 35 miles i'll have a good chance of bonking. everybody is probably different though.

Sounds like you're doing fine. You can easily go 25% farther on the event day just from the rush of it all.


Try eating more of a meal before the rides- oatmeal, etc., so you have some longer lasting fuel.

Add a PB&J to that half banana before the ride. I still don't want to believe it works as well as it does.

What time are you riding? First thing in the morning or later in the day? For that type of mileage, don't over think it. For morning rides I eat normally, an egg sandwich, fruit and coffee. For rides later in the day, I just have my usual meals and ride 1-2 hours afterwards.

If you can ride 37 miles, you can ride 50. What type of elevation are you talking about?

it's florida.. there is no elevation unless he hops a curb

Any health issues that can impact your endurance? Drinking? Good daily hydration habits?

Those gels could be screwing with you. Try to stick with whole foods.

I think you'll see your best improvement by upping your Tuesday and Thursday rides to at least 20 and 30 respectively. What you're doing for base mileage per ride is a bit short compared to your goal. Try and get to a point where your "short" ride is 20 miles. Metabolism does interesting things once you've been out there for a bit. Maybe you're just not engaging your bodies endurance metabolism enough and training it up, just a hunch I have based on my own experience.

If you want to ride 50, work so that 35 is an easy ride.

How are you riding? Beating the hell out of yourself? What is your perceived effort?

Try to approach your rides so that at the halfway point you feel fresh and basically just limbered up. Increase your effort marginally for the last third. Don't kill yourself, or at least do so when you want too...nothing wrong with maxxing yourself out, flopping over in your saddle, hanging over your handlebars drooling and panting...there's a time & place for it.



I don't recommend bonking, but it's good to know roughly when it will happen. I mean a real bonk, what many people describe as a bonk isn't the real deal... I couldn't get up off the ground when I had mine, head was swimming every time I tried, took about 45 minutes before I felt confident enough to stand.

Yep.

Personally, I can get by on a single clif bar for a 50 mile ride and typically, I'll only eat something on a ride like that if I'm riding during my normal lunch or dinner hours. I usually go about 35 miles on Mondays and Wednesdays with nothing more than water but maybe that's something you have to acclimate yourself to over time.

For you - I'd eat a nice breakfast (more than a half banana! assuming a morning ride) and then eat something half way through your ride, whether it's 25 or 50 miles. Save those gels for when you really need one. Another factor is heat and humidity, particularly early in the year when you're not accustomed to it. Stay hydrated all week long for best results.

I'll vote for over-thinking it. Your bonking may simply have been acclimation, a little energy boost a few more miles and you probably would have felt fine. My minor bonk points are typically 35 and 80 miles biking, 10 miles running. I come to just accept it and work through it. Next time it happens have a snack, ride through it, and see if you come out the other side. Do hydrate, becoming seriously behind the curve hydration-wise is miserable and tough on the body.

A half banana before the ride? Is that a snack, or breakfast? For a morning 35-45 mile ride, at a fairly hard effort, I'd eat a normal breakfast, around 300-400 calories. I usually bring a 250 cal Clif bar. I fill one bottle with a weak gatorade type drink mix, about 100 calories, and a second bottle of water. I have a extra 100 cal bar in my seat bag, and I've eaten it, too, occasionally.

Recently, I've been trying out long "zone 1 or 2" longer rides at a very easy pace, with breathing just slightly elevated. It's interesting that those rides don't make me hungry at all. They are good for training the body to use stored fats for energy.

...Now I'm remembering the 40 mile Saturday cycle club ride that I rode regularly when I started getting serious about riding. It would wipe me out. I'd come home starving and eat a huge meal, then take a nap. That was 6 or 7 years ago.

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You could add a few miles to the shorter weekday rides, and do one 40 mile ride on the weekend, and then a 45 mile the next week. If those two rides weren't a struggle to complete, you could hit the 50 mile mark the next week pretty easily.

I think that riders that can handle regular rides 35 miles with no problems can do a 50 mile "goal" ride the next week. It's more being able to ride that many hours instead of a strength problem.

Assuming your 37 mile ride was solo and your half century will be a group ride, the half century will probably be easier since you'll be in a pack and can draft half the time. If you're bonking then just ride more, you're out of shape. You're pumping a lot of Gu and stuff into your body (and spending a lot of money on it) for short rides. One every 30-45 minutes would give me heartburn. Don't know about that, I hardly use anything. One Cliff bar is good for me on a metric century.

This. You are training your body to run off of bursts of sugar instead of reaching into its reserves. Also, if it gets a burst of sugar, insulin can spike (everyone has different sensitivities) causing the sugars in the gel to be burned faster than you intended. There is a lag in the insulin returning to normal, causing an additional drag on your resources.

Like the others said, next time try a good, but not heavy breakfast. Oatmeal and coffee work for me. On the ride, try taking real food, or something approximating it like Fig Newtons or a Payday bar. They will cost less and give you a longer, slower burning fuel source. The gels are better for a quick jolt.

You said it much better than I.

On another note...Get lentil beans (or an equivalent legume into your diet...) it's proven that they will limit insulin spikes by 30%-50%.

Make sure you get a good nights sleep before your distance rides. If I was going to change anything it would be to increase the base miles you are riding on the weekday rides to around 20-25 miles and on your Sunday recovery ride to 15 - 20 miles. 30-35 on Saturday is fine for preparing to ride a 50 mile event.

Pace yourself. Are you pushing hard to complete all your longer rides at the same speed? If so, don't. Technically, you don't need to eat anything to complete the ride. I've ridden 40 to 50 miles plenty of times without eating anything before or during the ride, it's simply a matter of energy management by pacing correctly.

If you are riding hard, nutrition and hydration can help, but it cannot overcome a critical error in pacing. Food and drink are not magical.

Good luck and enjoy it. If you've ridden 35 miles, 50 miles will be within your reach. Happy birthday!

Thanks all for your input.

I've learned that I'm not eating enough before the ride. I also need to eat more REAL food during the ride rather than the short bursts of sugar. I can see how that can bounce my glucose/insulin levels up and down like a horse on a merry-go-round. I also need to increase my distances during the week on my Tuesday and Thursday rides.

As to how hard am I riding, I am pushing myself the entire ride. I'm not going as fast as I can during the entire ride, but I'm riding harder than what I would call conversational riding (riding while able to have a casual conversation). The only hills I have are the causeway bridges I go over, otherwise it's flat. The wind is usually 10-14mph (and a bit stronger during most of the ride when I'm on the barrier island). Most of the ride is north and south rather than east and west. Most of the time, the wind comes in from the north (which I appreciate during the return). At the halfway mark, I rest for about two minutes and I usually feel good. At the end of the weekend ride, I'm definitely ready for it to be over. My butt and legs are sore, but I can still function the rest of the day.

I thought I may be mini-bonking because I was riding harder and harder, yet going slower and slower for about four or five miles. But the more I think about it, I think it was just a low glucose level due to what happyscientist said. As soon as I turned the corner and headed west, I was fine (the wind was coming off the ocean from the east on this weekend's ride).

What kind of shape am I in? I'm almost 50 years old and significantly over weight. I am about 60 lbs over weight, down about 15 lbs from last year. My goal is to lose another 30 lbs this year, as my diet is significantly changing now. I do have one problem with the PBJ sandwiches. I no longer eat any wheat products. So sandwiches are out. Any bread, pasta, crackers, etc. cause me uncontrolable cravings to eat more carbohydrates.

Or maybe you were just riding into a significant headwind.

Use your training rides to experiment with nutritional strategies. If you are riding at high-for-you intensity for >2hr, you need calories. The harder you are working, the more issues you might have digesting food. So sometimes "real food" is worse than gels or other "bike food" because it needs to be digested. Sometimes "real food" is better than "bike food" because it contains protein and usually some fiber, which is digested more slowly and stays with you longer. It will depend on your unique physiology and also your training state (the more you train, the less the intensity of your rides may be and therefore the less you may need to eat).

Once you figure out what kind of things you can successfully eat on the bike, then try to minimize what you eat during your training rides, see if you can train your body to metabolize fat a little more efficiently.

Don't be afraid of carbs on the bike though, unless you figure out through trial-and-error that they are detrimental for you. Carbs-on-the-bike if a different thing than carbs-off-the-bike.

^^ Agree.. Food is going to be a personal thing. what works for one person could be terrible for someone else.

for me for 50mi i'll eat cereal before i leave. (most of my longer rides are AM) drink some water on the way. have 2 bottles with NUUN and/or Powerbar drink mix. gel flask or Honey stinger gummies in the pocket. for 100 i'll do gels before and after half way and a Portables apple/cinnamon rice cake at 50mi break.

the portables blog and book have good alternatives for different diet restrictions.

I would also ask if you are stopping while you are consuming those Gu's or other snacks. Every rider is different but for me, the more stops/breaks I do the harder it is to complete a ride at hand. For example, I usually will ride 25 miles before my first stop. If I were to change that and stop every 15 miles instead, I am conditioning my body to not work as hard and that I will break more often. When I break, it is hard to get the body back into routine. I can ride 50 miles with one break, if I were to ride the same 50 miles with 4 breaks, it would be even harder (as it is from complete rest to peak heartrate). I am in my mid 30's for reference point.

I think you are overdoing it with the amount of sugar intake. Try cutting down to one Gu and introduce bananas, oat cookies, or an orange. You prob. will feel more refreshed too (because natural products include water).

Congrats on your progress!

Heathpack: I agree. I think it was a combination of the wind plus a glucose deficit at that point. I'm not afraid of carbs, just wheat products. I don't get the same overwhelming craving reaction from oatmeal, grits, rice and potatoes. I suppose I could make little compact rice balls or something like that. I also tried a Bonk Bar the week before last and liked it. But once again, it can get expensive with these workout foods.

Wind can be really tough. I ride my bike up lots of very long hills but I think a headwind in the flats can be way tougher to deal with at times. Its mentally grueling which for some reason translates into physically exhausting. Personally, I have a theory that this is to do with pacing, you can pace a ride up a hill better because you can see it. Wind is different, especially solo if you have nobody to draft off of. The chances of riding the wrong pace for the conditions is greatly increased IMO. So you could feel like you're bonking but you're really just fatigued.

The only reason I said not to fear carbs on the bike is because they are this super-readily-available fuel and other people were telling you to avoid sugar because of the possibility of the insulin spike and then blood glucose crash. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, just that it is not a problem for everybody. My big point is that the more intensely you are working the less you can digest things. So I fuel pretty much with sugar on any ride I expect to be taxing, that's what Cliff Bloks are- sugar (and caffeine). I do this on purpose so that I don't have to deal with digesting anything. I might eat a Cliff Bar on a long more social ride.

Normally we think of eating things like sugar as being "bad" and things with fiber or protein or fruit/veg as being "good". These same nutritional rules don't necessarily apply on the bike, because you're eating for a different reason. Think food as fuel rather than fuel as a source of nutrients. There is actually more to this than what I'm saying, some people try to start recovery on the bike by consuming protein on rides. Personally I can't deal with tons of protein while riding, so I avoid. But it works really well for many people. So again, just realize you have to figure things out for yourself, those are just some thoughts to help you make nutrition decisions as you ride.

And how much 1-2 hours before the ride ??