bleedToWin

One thing to take into account is your post ride elevated hunger and calorie consumption. There's data out there that indicates a quicker return to baseline is achieved with increased on-the-bike fueling and overall reduced calories over a 24h period is achieved. I used to carry my all-day elevated eating performances (and drowsiness) as a badge of honor showing how hard I worked, but with high carbs on the bike I'm only doing recovery fuel and one meal upsized, then I'm back to normal and playing with the kids / living life as any other day.

Yip, that's bang on. If you are 23.9% efficient (on the high end of the spectrum) then 1kJ of work requies 4.18 kJ of energy metabolised which is is 1 Calorie (food calorie denoted by capital C).

Your head unit gives an extremely accurate energy expenditure if you have a power meter. That is because cyclists (virtually all of us, regardless of level) fall into a narrow band of efficiency, so you measure the work performed in kJ by your power meter and you multiply by the efficiency factor and divide by kJ to Cal conversion, and as luck would have it those two cancel so work perform in kJ requires the same number of Calories burned. Pedal at 100W and you will perform 360kJ of work in an hour, which requires 360Cal of energy metabolised. The complication is knowing from what sources your body will draw and this will depend on your physiology and fitness etc. 100g carbs is 400Cal of fuel. Pure hyper disciplined zone 2 riding might have a fair amount of fat oxidation, but metabolically speaking even spiking a little here and there will lower your percentage of fat utilised as fuel and it takes 10-30min of zone 2 riding for your body to metabolically return to zone 2 after an effort. If you do low zone 2, solo, and never accelerate hard (not even from a robot just to get back up to speed) you might be burning less than the 100g ingested per hour. For real world situations you are almost always burning through everything you ingest and running down your reserves from hour 1. If you burn what you consume the only health concern is your teeth. 😉

That's only if you exceed what you can digest, not what you are burning.

I think they're trying to highlight the fact that it's multi-dose in one tube... 🤷‍♂️ It's 75g carbs in the 120g tube.

Doesn't matter if you are a slowpoke or a racer, all of us are unable to digest more carbs than what we are burning and your performance will improve if you find your maximum ingestion rate. You need multiple types of carbs to utilise all your absorption pathways. I used to up the recommended dosage of my bottles, and also add maltodextrin, but it throws the electrolytes and flavour profile out of whack and adding stuff throws the carb balance. Currently using SiSu Nutrition which is a local brand designed with high carb bottles in mind. Did over 700g total over 6 hours at Velddrif and plan to do higher rates at upcoming gravel ultras. P.S. Some pro's are calling bike racing a race to see who can eat the most, and it's (theoretically) why all the records are falling... "I was nonstop eating. I don't feel like eating anything else today, to be honest. When you're already going full gas for the first 80k and you're already eating full gas like it's the final, and then you have to continue eating to the end, it's pretty rough." - Tom Pidcock, Strade Bianche

Okay, can't help myself...

I started an analysis now of a few big climbs I've done in the last 5 months, but decided to delete the comment. Any smartass thing I say now will 100% just come back to haunt me!

Only the last climb that counts 😉 Luckily I'm so new to gravel I have no issues just riding what I've got. Next season I'll be overthinking every equipment choice for every race!

😢 😭 When a stronger climber than you with better gearing gets recommended to change his gearing... No real option for me to improve the 34:36. I'll put a stem sticker with all my life choices on the bike so I don't miss the opportunity to question all of them!

Lucky his BMX is 2x... That's 2 x feet for when he gets off to push...

We've done this before and was already boring then. 🙄

Following to see what recommendations come up. Been thinking to get blood work done, but no idea what to start or what to even ask for. I was thinking hormones, Iron, Magnesium.

Nah, man. For every popular item that I've listed at a fair price I've had 3 or 4 parties show interest. That's a very low success rate of giving a "yes" to "is it still available", and much higher rate of "yes, but negotiating with a another person. Will let you know." I have no issues with how people open discussions or how they open negotiations.

Take the Topstone and then make me an offer on my Stages powermeter! 😉

I'm following @Jbr until the sun comes up!

We can have a rerun of Tour du Cap Stage 1 then! 😉

If Richie can't get it, nobody can.

Same way I remember it, but wondering if there's any insight into why the first celebration was 21? Linked to the custom of celebrating 21st birthdays perhaps?

I feel like I remember this. Did you guys do lap up the old pass and down the new one, or am I remembering a different tour around the same time period?

Even with the best view and plenty of time to analyse Gerald still makes up his own stories. "This break of 5 is working so well together." Uhm, what race are you watching? First off, there's six in the break. Second, Geldenhuys is staying at the back and the others are having words and trying to force him through / attacking him. I was tempted to mute them, but it's like watching a car crash and I wanted to know if they will ever figure out what's happening right in front of their screens. They did not, and they were so confused when Dan "broke the cohesion" of the break.

Who wrote this? Spelling and language errors aside, some facts are just plain wrong and in places contradicting. Terlouw unable to follow, resulting in a lead group containing Terlouw? For real. This after saying that Terlouw was in the early break and was the last survivor with Loubser. No he wasn't, that was Geldenhuys. At this point we're just drawing names out of a hat...

Hey, I made the Mamil highlight reel! Was very disappointing to see my vets title defence go up in smoke with 30min spent next to the road with a sidewall cut. Luckily a kind rider saved my ride with some extensive tools from his saddle bag (I believe that's what it's called... 🤔) and I didn't have to DNF. I chased onto Mamil's group (HR ramp early in the below chart) then sat in a bit contemplating my options (and feeling sorry for myself). I decided to pay back the kindness of the stranger that saved me towards the larger cycling community by pulling the group I now found myself in and waiting whenever they dropped the wheel. At Bain's one gent was climbing well and we could see the open cat front riders so I gave him the help he needed to bridge. Nice zone 2 ride to prep for my TT the next day... 😉

Shocking reporting in that segment. No mention of the crashes. Called the weather perfect, while we had rain and wind in the latter half. Stops reporting on the elite race halfway through. Reports the wrong person as winning the race... At least it had plenty of slow motion shots of people eating potatoes / getting medals...