Saturday last long ride

One of the purposes of my last two long rides was to see how little food I could eat without bonking. The idea was to train my body to go longer on less food, so as not to get overly used to plentiful handouts. I think it was a successful exsperiment, I lasted both rides without bonking although at the end of the 180km ride and 40 min run two weeks ago, by the time I got home and tried making a smoothie my hands were shaking! So clearly I’d fully depeleted myself. On last week’s 200km ride I nibbled too conservatively and so for the hour or so after the lunch stop I couldn’t keep up and felt really negative about the ride. That is, until I realised what it was and crammed in the food. Then a little while later (upon leaving Pie in the Sky) I was back to full force and cruising along at a great pace again.

This weekend I had the opposite idea. I wanted to:
a) train myself to take in as many calories as possible on the bike (so my stomach would get used to it for the race); and
b) try to do a practice run of the nutrition I’d be having on race day to see if it worked out.

One of the things I’d read again and again in all the articles I’d found about Ironman nutrition was to try to take most of your calories on the bike in liquid form. The bloke I spoke to at Clarence Street cyclery confirmed that idea, he said that he had all his nutrition for the entire bike ride in a single bottle!

So Thursday night after work I went to City Bike Depot and picked up a tub of Hammer Perpetuem. Orange Vanilla flavour – a bit odd, but the only one they had. It was a toss-up between that and Endura Optimizer, however the Opty is whey protein and the Hammer is soy protein so totally vegan.

Anyway after a bunch more reading and recalculation I put together a plan the night before for nutrition. I based it around having just over half my calories in liquid form and just under half in solid. I enjoy eating solid foods on the bike, I’ve never had a problem with them and to be honest I like the variety of flavours. I was aiming at about 250 calories per hour, with each hour broken down into 3rds so I’m eating every 20 minutes.

Hour 1 Calories Hour 2 Calories Hour 3 Calories
1/3 powerbar 75 1/3 powerbar 75 1/3 powerbar 75
1 serving Perp 100 1 serving Perp 100 1 serving Perp 100
1 banana 100 1 banana 100 3 dates 100
Total 275 Total 275 Total 275

Hour 4 Calories Hour 5 Calories Hour 6 Calories
1/3 powerbar 75 Veg sandwich 100 1/3 powerbar 75
1 serving Perp 100 1 serving Perp 100 1 serving Perp 100
1 serving Perp 100 1 serving Perp 100 1 serving Perp 100
Total 275 Total 300 Total 275

I lost it a bit at points, and it was hard to keep up with all the stopping, but I stuck largely to the plan and ended up with this total:

8 hours start to finish
6:45 riding time
185km
27.3km average speed
79 average cadence

Nutrition
2 Powerbars 450
2 Bananas 200
4 Dates 150
1 Vegemite Sandwich 100
9 Portions of Perpetuem 950
Total 1850 calories

We went up the northern beaches, McCarrs Creek, Mona Vale Road to Pymble, Pacific Highway to Pie in the Sky then up to Calga to turnaround. Back the same way, but turning at Terrey Hills down Forestway, along Wakehurst Parkway and home.

Started with Dan, Andrew, Mark, Mike H, Geoff, John and I. Mike peeled off at Pymble. John had his tyre slashed by some metal road ribbon about 2 km out of Hornsby on the way home and Geoff decided to let us go and just ride to the bike shop to get a tyre for John, then go home a shorter way.

Awesome day, perfect conditions, the ride felt good (although a harder effort than I want to do the ironman in). Then I came home and did a 20 minute brisk run around Lavendar Bay which felt pretty good actually. I was absolutely shattered afterwards though, it was just above my comfort level and really did me in! The nutrition worked a treat though and I had no problem with the Perpetuem so I think we may have a race plan!