Pacing yourself on long days.

[woodsmith]

Way back in September I rashly signed up for the Great British Escapes event around the north and south downs. Its going to work out to be approx 3 x 100 mile days which is a higher daily mileage than I've ever done before.
What tips or techniques do you use to pace yourself over a long day to avoid going out of the gate too hard and turning the latter part of the day into a death march.

[ton]

ask me again in 10 days and i will tell you if my plan worked.........

i am attempting the Dales Divide this coming weekend. and hoping to do 3 x 100 mile days and a shorter 4th day.
furthest i have ridden is 180 miles in a day but that was on the road. this will be mixed terrain.
so i will just plod on without making any exposive ( ) efforts. any proper steep hill will be waked up as it is sometimes as quick as walking.
and i have set a beep on my phone to remind me to drink and eat a bit every hour.

we will see.

so my answer to you is, nice and steadily all day, no rush. good luck.

[boxelder]

At the start, especially in groups, if you're not thinking "this is a bit slow", then you've set off too fast. If you're thinking "this is a little fast, but I'll manage", then you have suffering to come. If you record rides, look back at rides over similar terrain which felt fairly comfortable and note your average speed - use that as a guide. Don't adjust your pace to others, unless it's easing off for slower riders.

'Granny sucking eggs' alert...................

There's the whole % heart rate zones thing if you know how to gauge perceived exertion. You should be able to hold a conversation, unless having to work hard to get uphill, and shouldn't be generating too much heat (unless wanting a good time - but then you'd have trained more). Once getting warm and struggling to speak in sentences, you're into the effort that you won't be able to sustain for very long.
It's as much mental as physical, and probably everyone feels weak/rough after 3-4 hours and repeatedly at intervals ('second/third wind' etc). It's keeping going through that, confident in the knowledge that you'll feel better again, assuming you're refuelling/drinking well enough. Eating lots at once diverts blood to the stomach and will make you feel weak for a while, or sick, especially if it's hot (the weather, not the food....)

[Bearbonesnorm]

I always find the first day of any multi-day to be the hardest. I also find that my energy levels cycle through the day and I will often get a second wind late on and find I can easily to ride well into the night, yet at 3pm I thought I'd died.

I usually don't worry to much about the actual miles and just set off in the morning knowing that I will complete whatever's in front of me 'at some time'. That might be 5 hours, 10 or 20 but the end will come. I do what I can to conserve energy and if that means a spot of pushing, then that's fine because you generally (obvious exceptions) don't get far by going fast.

I appreciate none of that is likely any help.

[Alpinum]

What tips or techniques do you use to pace yourself over a long day to avoid going out of the gate too hard and turning the latter part of the day into a death march.

Low gear (if not ssp'ing obviously), high cadence and since a couple of years I mostly keep an eye on my heart rate. The longest rides so far I've done without hr monitor and looking back I could've gone faster if I wanted.

Last summer I rode a 120 km route with a bit more then 3000 m of climbing in one day and later rode it with a mate over two days (and added a tiny bit more to it) who's used to very regular but short and rather intensive rides. I asked him to not get out of the saddle for short, steep climbs but to drop a gear or two or get off and push. We had loads left in the tank and really enjoyed the trip.

I like to think we have a certain contigency of being able to ride in certain zones of exertion. The higher the exertion, the less time you can spend in there.

Round about 80 % of my max (riding) hr is low enough for me to ride all day, to eat and drink whilst riding etc. Of course this is just a number that works for me, but perhaps it helps as a guide for others.

and i have set a beep on my phone to remind me to drink and eat a bit every hour.

Started doing this too a couple of weeks ago with my watch and feel it has helped a lot.

Don't adjust your pace to others, unless it's easing off for slower riders

+1

HT550 on 2016 was an eye opener. Some strong riders seemed to have lost their humor and guts in Ft. Augustus on the first evening, going off (too?) fast during the first 100 or so km (it was also sunny and hot).

[lune ranger]

Not much more to add to the above except this:
As you aren’t ‘racing’ avoid comparing your progress to that of other riders. Let people go off into the distance if that’s what’s happening and relax as much as possible. Getting stressed about how fast/slow you are or how far or not you have gone can kill off a challenge like this very quickly.
Keep rolling on. Avoid wasted stoppage time. Mentally break up the route into easily manageable sections and give yourself short term goals to look forward to - like some tasty food at such and such a place.

[jameso]

Mostly staying out of anaerobic effort, I think. If you have a heart rate monitor or power meter, get used to your breathing rate at around 70% max HR, the trad HR Z2-Z3 border. For many of of us it's the point where you can't breathe through your nose and have to breathe open-mouthed as you're getting closer to anaerobic effort. I can use that as a reliable guide to my Z2-Z3 border HR. If you don't go much above that too often you'll feel like you're riding slowly but you will be able to ride all day for a few days. ie, as above - you won't be chasing faster riders.
Riding between 70 and 80% (trad zone Z3) to get up hills etc shouldn't reduce your ability to ride all day but it's good to get a feel for how many of those efforts you can handle without tiring too much. Much over 80% Max HR on a long ride and we're burning matches to some extent, less so for a fit, well trained rider but I expect they'd still be keeping a lid on it or only going that hard for a good reason.

[fatbikephil]

Wearing an extra layer up top is a good move - if you start to over-heat your going too fast.
I'm currently pondering pacing myself on long days with single speed.....

[ScotRoutes]

Might be relevant in this thread

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-s ... -section-0?

[woodsmith]

Thanks for the ideas. I will try to encorporate some of them into my training and the event itself.

[whitestone]

As others have said, an all day pace is very, very, steady. If you can't chat then you are going too fast. There's physiological and numerical analysis (HR, power) but they boil down to: if you can't chat ...

There a book "Endurance" by Mark Beaumont who should know a thing or two about long distance riding - 16hrs/240 miles a day on his "Round the World in 80 days" record - that is worth reading. I'm currently watching a GCN+ film with him, Jenny Graham, James Hayden & Lael Wilcox about long distance riding. https://plus.globalcyclingnetwork.com/w ... -endurance but you need to be a subscriber.

On the HT550 group start my "strategy" was: let the fast riders head off and I'll go at my own pace. Once they are out of sight then it's just you in your own little world with the occasional interjection from others who are on roughly the same pace/schedule. As Phil (htrider) will confirm, there was a lot of chatting

There's actually not much difference between my "touring" pace and my "racing/ITT" pace, the main difference is how I treat stopped time - touring is as much about the time stopped at cafés, viewpoints, etc. whereas on ITTs time stopped has to be justified. That's not to say I don't stop and admire the view on ITTs, I defy anyone not to stop at the top of the descent to Carnmore for example, but getting to the finish line is the primary aim. Don't waste time - figure out where the shops, cafés, filling stations are on the route along with their opening times. Most chains like Spar and Co-op have similar goods in their stores so workout what you are going to get beforehand, contactless payment and you are on your way. I have overall and moving time fields on my Garmin - I try and keep them as close together as possible.

[stevewaters]

I find the biggest challenge is my stomach. - On about half the big events last year I got to the point where I couldn't hold down any food or drink and emptied my stomach and felt grim.
On the Cairngorm 300 it luckily only came at the end and I decorated the car park.
On the BB200 I had to bail back to the car near the end because I had emptied my stomach and couldn't take any food or drink.
On other trips no stomach problems - for example Lakeland 300 and Dales 300.

I did the Peak 200 as a big training ride for the HT550 last Friday (140 miles / 17,000ft) and felt sick and couldn't consume anything for the last 2 hours).
I feel I have reasonable fitness so I suspect it is to do with nutrition (too many choccy bars???) and hydration plus pushing myself too hard and not having many breaks - only 2.5 hours in 20 hours).

Would appreciate any thoughts too.

[boxelder]

I feel I have reasonable fitness so I suspect it is to do with nutrition (too many choccy bars???) and hydration plus pushing myself too hard and not having many breaks - only 2.5 hours in 20 hours).

My very unscientific layman's take on this, is that your body only has so much blood to serve muscles and has to prioritise. If you eat and then call blood supplies to other muscles by exercising hard, your stomach can't function as well and eases it's workload by ejecting it's contents. Getting dehydrated just makes this more likely, and sugar requires water for it to be processed, so has the effect of dehydrating you. Scoffing a load of food types your body isn't used to just makes it worse. Eat little and often, prioritise complex carbs/real food and keep sipping water/isotonic stuff. Alternatively rest after eating a larger amount of food, or at least keep your effort in zone 1/2. Pushing yourself into anaerobic effort for too long plays havoc, unless you know what you're doing/refuelling with (which is why tour riders have domestiques ferrying drinks and bags of nutrition to them, and experts telling via headphones how hard to push when).

[Wotsits]

I find the biggest challenge is my stomach. - On about half the big events last year I got to the point where I couldn't hold down any food or drink and emptied my stomach and felt grim.
On the Cairngorm 300 it luckily only came at the end and I decorated the car park.
On the BB200 I had to bail back to the car near the end because I had emptied my stomach and couldn't take any food or drink.
On other trips no stomach problems - for example Lakeland 300 and Dales 300.

I did the Peak 200 as a big training ride for the HT550 last Friday (140 miles / 17,000ft) and felt sick and couldn't consume anything for the last 2 hours).
I feel I have reasonable fitness so I suspect it is to do with nutrition (too many choccy bars???) and hydration plus pushing myself too hard and not having many breaks - only 2.5 hours in 20 hours).

Would appreciate any thoughts too.

Do you have any intolerances, or been tested for any?

I think the extra blood-flow & stress on the body increases sensitivity & i find i have to be really careful with what i eat. Drinking/Eating even a small amount of the key wrong thing seems to increase my sensitivity to loads of other things & once my stomach is upset it can take a good while to settle it down again..

Try these for an intolerance test, they sometimes have offers-
https://www.yorktest.com/

Hope you manage to sort it.