How should you prepare for an extreme cycling event

[Roneblack46]

I would say once you have identified your event you need to research as must of past editions as possible: information is key in getting your mental preparation on track. Previous rider race reports, forum feedback on an event, other rider experiences in groups you ride with, there are a host of youtube videos of race reports on various races of similar nature etc.

This will prepare you on what to expect and what challenges other riders experienced and how they resolved these challenges. I see challenges as problem solving - how to work around an issue to keep moving forward. 

I have found many bikehub threads on previous races and events very helpful in what to expect on a specific event. The earlier years of bikehub has long threads of information leading up to an event and after event feedback as well. 

Time of year and what weather to expect is helpful in knowing what hydration and nutrition will look like. This will also guide as to what kit to wear. 

 

 

[Zebra]

Brilliant thread; i like. My FOUR tips, which i used on 3 x C.E.’s, back in the day ( and Sani2C’s, and others):

1. Let the DONKEY (baaie-sukkel) carry the load, not your back…

(no problem with Camelbak/USWE per sé, but the back is a major sweat-surface…, and really, 8 days, with your spares and water and and and…!)

2. If it works for you, ride identical bike brands/bike models as your team mate…

(i.e.: just ONE spare derailleur hanger (ok, in the good ‘ol days!) & EASY to carry spare parts that fit BOTH bikes…)

3. you DO NOT NEED 13-speed anything. MASSIVE SAVINGS TO BE HAD with 10 or 11 speed - please research just HOW MUCH cheaper 11 speed is versus 12 speed!!! You do not NEED electronic shifting; your THUMB has amazing potential…!

4. Boiled potatoes in a zippy, and a lekker CHEESE white bread Sarmie in another zippy, and yes, DATES (pitted!) in yet another ZIPPY, for the w-i-n…!
You do not NEED over-hyped slogans on friggin Holo-gram black containers that cost a 3rd-worlds country’s GDP to afford - JUST SAY NO! (ok, tongue PARTLY in cheek!)
 

(rant off 🤣)

 

[SamTaylor]

I might get flamed for this, it has often been an unpopular opinion amongst other riders I have shared it with, but I really do think people tend overthink/overanalyse the preparation and training for these events, and forget that at the end of the day it’s still supposed to be “fun”. Especially if you aren’t aiming for an age group podium or something like that.
 

I don’t mean you shouldn’t train hard and be prepared, that’s critically important to actually enjoying the ride. What I mean is things like obsessing about route profiles and exactly how many hours a week you train, and how many grams of carbs per hour and and and. Nutrition is especially a topic people tend to over obsess about. All these multi coloured bottles full of chemical concoctions that cost a fortune a not needed. If you take the time to train your gut properly, it’s amazing how well you can do with real food, and if you can get your fat oxidation up, even better. Firstly, you are going to save a ton of money, and it’s going to taste a lot better. Lots of nuts, fatty dry wors, dates (as mentioned by others) goes a long way.

I use either energade or game for carbs and isotonic, and I have never needed more. Marmite/bovril sandwiches also a great way to replace salts. 
 

Then, if you simplify your nutrition to this level, then it becomes easy to stop off at the water points, and survive well on the real food they have there. 5 minutes at a water point, a cup or two of coke, and a good feed on real food, is all you need. It doesn’t need to be a complex operation of prepping different bottles and gels every day to get you through the day. 
 

I always carry a gel or two as a real last resort, but try avoid using it, and if I do, I only use it in the last hour or so of the day. Because once you start chasing that simple carbohydrate dragon, you can never feed it fast enough. 

[olmec]

Here's some of the science on the topic:

 

The time course of adaptations to exercise-heat acclimation.
Within a week of acclimation, plasma volume expansion occurs and
heart rate is reduced during exercise at a given work rate. Core and skin
temperatures are also reduced when exercising at a given work rate,
whereas sweat rate increases. Perceptually, the rating of thermal comfort
is improved. As a result, aerobic exercise capacity is increased. Of note,
the magnitude of these adaptations is dependent on the initial state of
acclimation and the acclimation protocol (e.g. environmental conditions and
exercise intensity). Reproduced with permission from Périard, Racinais [19].

Here is a version of the document online (can't find one without the translated annotations): https://www.jtu.or.jp/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/92e84781d149e6d0410e43efcad1d1e9.pdf

[olmec]

[Cardiogoth]

11 hours ago, cadenceblur said:

very true on finding people to ride with !

This can be harder than you think - especially if they don't have an event of this nature looming on their horizon. 

The African proverb comes to mind: " If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together."

I'll play devil's advocate here - for every "ultra"event I've done, the vast majority (95%) of training that I've done has been alone. Whether it's sitting on my IDT staring at a wall, doing 2 hour runs or rides at 5am or 9pm or whenever, or going out for the long runs or rides on the weekend, I tend to train alone because: 

• My work / life situation is demanding but flexible - I often can't plan training on 24 hours notice, I can move meetings around at short notice to find the time during the day
• It's difficult to find motivated people to ride or run at my pace (slow or fast or whatever) regularly for long efforts because they also have demanding lives
• If you can get through the training hours alone, and yes, that means 10-20 hours a week, a lot of it staring at a wall or going running at 9pm in -5 degrees, the sheer psyche of doing a big event, during the day, with a whole bunch of people gives you a huge boost.

Plus, more people = more navigation by consensus and coffee breaks and pee breaks and late starts and and and.. and most of the time, that means I could have gotten 4 hours of precious training instead of 3 hours of broken up efforts. 

[Cardiogoth]

I'd also add the following things I've learned from hard-won experience:

- The vast majority of your training needs to be in Zone 2, which is probably a lot easier than you think. This is the only way that you can consistently maintain significant amounts of volume without breaking down physically / mentally. One of the most important things I learned while training for my first 50 miler, being completely broken down with injuries and having physios tell me that I was never going to get to the start, was to slow my training all down to Zone 2. At the start of the race three months later, I had logged more volume than in the previous 9 months and I felt great. I lost speed, but real Zone 2 training is bulletproofing.

- Dial in your hydration and nutrition. The temptation is always to train fasted or try to save costs of gels etc, but the benefit of knowing exactly what you need to take in on an hourly basis, and sticking to that (no matter how tempting the aid station Pepsi or Haribos or whatever are), is worth it's weight in the vomit / diarrhea  that's not going to explode from your body as you DNF.

- Dial in your setup. My only real DNF came from a bikepacking race where I hadn't tested my setup properly and thought that, with all the training I'd done (and I'd done a lot) on a 12kg bike, I'd be fine on an 18kg bike. I wasn't. After a huge first day (260kms & 4000m on gravel, with lots of hike a bike), my knee gave up completely and I had to limp to the nearest train station and scratch. For my first 50 miler, I did a lot of running in *everything* I was planning to wear, down to the T-shirt, socks and cap, so that I knew that I could handle 15 hours of running. 

[dave303e]

This is an interesting one and top of mind for me, I am currently in prep for a big ultra bikepacking event. 

A big thing is consistency in training, you need to ride that bike week in and week out. It is pointless going big one weekend and spending the following week sick or recovering.You need to show up. Every. Single. Day.

Also the reason preparation races need to be treated like that. You need to test yourself, but you need to plan that you don't sacrifice the week or 2 training before and after that prep race. So box clever and don't kill yourself on prep races.

 

Event selection has always been a very unique thing. What is your WHY? If that is not there then you will fail. Doesn't matter why you want to do it, but they WHY must be real and applicable to you..

Also don't just stick to local... Local is lekker, but local is also starting to tear the ring and there are some incredible races our there. You will also be surprised at costing. For a 2000km bikepacking race halfway round the world, flights and entry cost less than flights and entry to the local versions. In 2018 the math for a 100mile trail run on Reunion island worked out R500 more than doing a local 100Miler. You pay 4x on travel but 1/4 on entry fee which makes it an easy decision for me. Go see the world.

 

Race nutrition depends on the race. Is it a true ultra or is it just barely an ultra. Distance determines intensity which determines fuel and fuel strategy.

Sub 24 hour 100 mile trail run with resupply every 20km can be done on powders, gels, mini potatoes and bars. So you better be destroying carb drinks and gels all the time so your stomach handles them with ease on race day. You will be amazed how you can get your stomach to handle carbs. 

But for a 2000km bikepacking race means you going to be racing on whatever you can find en route. So you better train your stomach accordingly. My 150km ride on friday had a stop at a spaza for bread and tinned pilchards and another stop for some garage pies and crisps and other than that all I ate was a few left over slices of pizza. But that is me prepping for planned conditions. The intensity is also no where near as high.

 

Time in the saddle/on foot is everything.

You learn and test your kit.

You also build the other fitness that is required. neck, shoulders, lower back and other things need to be prepared. This is also a big one on the strength work. You need to be strong, not just pedal strong, you need core and everything else to match. Cross training can be really useful actually in my opinion. 

Weight is also a big one. Lean is good, it is great for the sub 24 hour events or stage races where you can feed and recover and sleep in a warm bed... But a little bit of body fat will go a long way in handling the cold. So if it is a cold race or a non stop multi day, consider going in a little bit well fed. I learned this the hard way too many times going in at 'race weight' for non stop multiday events in cold places.

 

Coaching is also a big one. A good coach can go a long way. Having the plan laid out in front of you means you can get more out of less training time. They are also bold enough to say you need to do X many hours or you are not going to enjoy the event. I have raced with a coach and now racing without one, but the reality is that nearly a decade of being coached I have a fairly good frame of reference to self train. But even still I have to set out the blocks and weeks in order to get the periodisation and polarisation correct.

 

But ya what I can say, experience makes everything easier

[SamTaylor]

7 hours ago, Cardiogoth said:

I'd also add the following things I've learned from hard-won experience:

- The vast majority of your training needs to be in Zone 2, which is probably a lot easier than you think. This is the only way that you can consistently maintain significant amounts of volume without breaking down physically / mentally. One of the most important things I learned while training for my first 50 miler, being completely broken down with injuries and having physios tell me that I was never going to get to the start, was to slow my training all down to Zone 2. At the start of the race three months later, I had logged more volume than in the previous 9 months and I felt great. I lost speed, but real Zone 2 training is bulletproofing.

- Dial in your hydration and nutrition. The temptation is always to train fasted or try to save costs of gels etc, but the benefit of knowing exactly what you need to take in on an hourly basis, and sticking to that (no matter how tempting the aid station Pepsi or Haribos or whatever are), is worth it's weight in the vomit / diarrhea  that's not going to explode from your body as you DNF.

- Dial in your setup. My only real DNF came from a bikepacking race where I hadn't tested my setup properly and thought that, with all the training I'd done (and I'd done a lot) on a 12kg bike, I'd be fine on an 18kg bike. I wasn't. After a huge first day (260kms & 4000m on gravel, with lots of hike a bike), my knee gave up completely and I had to limp to the nearest train station and scratch. For my first 50 miler, I did a lot of running in *everything* I was planning to wear, down to the T-shirt, socks and cap, so that I knew that I could handle 15 hours of running. 

Interesting take, although I 100% agree with you on the Zone 2 training (and it took me a long time to accept this, but so glad I did), the rest of what your saying is almost completely the opposite of what I do, and mentioned in my previous post. Just goes to show there really is no 1 size fits all solution.

[Cardiogoth]

24 minutes ago, SamTaylor said:

Interesting take, although I 100% agree with you on the Zone 2 training (and it took me a long time to accept this, but so glad I did), the rest of what your saying is almost completely the opposite of what I do, and mentioned in my previous post. Just goes to show there really is no 1 size fits all solution.

Totally - I've found what works for me, but it is not likely to work for everyone. I take a very analytical approach to everything in my life, and I find that doing the planning and preparation reduces my stress on the day, but I know people who are happy to just rock up with way less planning and thought.

[dave303e]

8 hours ago, Cardiogoth said:

I'd also add the following things I've learned from hard-won experience:

- The vast majority of your training needs to be in Zone 2, which is probably a lot easier than you think. This is the only way that you can consistently maintain significant amounts of volume without breaking down physically / mentally. One of the most important things I learned while training for my first 50 miler, being completely broken down with injuries and having physios tell me that I was never going to get to the start, was to slow my training all down to Zone 2. At the start of the race three months later, I had logged more volume than in the previous 9 months and I felt great. I lost speed, but real Zone 2 training is bulletproofing.

- Dial in your hydration and nutrition. The temptation is always to train fasted or try to save costs of gels etc, but the benefit of knowing exactly what you need to take in on an hourly basis, and sticking to that (no matter how tempting the aid station Pepsi or Haribos or whatever are), is worth it's weight in the vomit / diarrhea  that's not going to explode from your body as you DNF.

- Dial in your setup. My only real DNF came from a bikepacking race where I hadn't tested my setup properly and thought that, with all the training I'd done (and I'd done a lot) on a 12kg bike, I'd be fine on an 18kg bike. I wasn't. After a huge first day (260kms & 4000m on gravel, with lots of hike a bike), my knee gave up completely and I had to limp to the nearest train station and scratch. For my first 50 miler, I did a lot of running in *everything* I was planning to wear, down to the T-shirt, socks and cap, so that I knew that I could handle 15 hours of running. 

Polarisation and periodisation...

Break your preparation time into blocks. Most people use 4 week blocks. So it is an easy rest week followed by 3 weeks, each week getting harder and harder in volume and intensity till the next block starts with an easy week again. The easy week is there to help you recover from the block mentally and physically. 

Polarisation happens within each week. Hard sessions need to be properly hard, easy sessions need to be very easy. If you have a hard session today, tomorrow must be an easy one. Again recovery between hard sessions so that you do not burn out.  

That is what my coach did with me and it really worked.

 

[Cardiogoth]

13 minutes ago, dave303e said:

Polarisation and periodisation...

Break your preparation time into blocks. Most people use 4 week blocks. So it is an easy rest week followed by 3 weeks, each week getting harder and harder in volume and intensity till the next block starts with an easy week again. The easy week is there to help you recover from the block mentally and physically. 

Polarisation happens within each week. Hard sessions need to be properly hard, easy sessions need to be very easy. If you have a hard session today, tomorrow must be an easy one. Again recovery between hard sessions so that you do not burn out.  

That is what my coach did with me and it really worked.

 

Agreed re: periodisation, and I'll add that I don't think that a lot of people appreciate how hard a hard workout should be and how easy an easy session needs to be.  

In my case, I had a couple of injuries that limited me to pretty much only Zone 2, so instead of periodising effort, I worked with what I had and took 10 weeks to build as big a base of mileage and time on feet as I could. It worked for me, but ideally I would have done more speed work and consequently rested more.

[DieselnDust]

56 minutes ago, dave303e said:

Polarisation and periodisation...

Break your preparation time into blocks. Most people use 4 week blocks. So it is an easy rest week followed by 3 weeks, each week getting harder and harder in volume and intensity till the next block starts with an easy week again. The easy week is there to help you recover from the block mentally and physically. 

Polarisation happens within each week. Hard sessions need to be properly hard, easy sessions need to be very easy. If you have a hard session today, tomorrow must be an easy one. Again recovery between hard sessions so that you do not burn out.  

That is what my coach did with me and it really worked.

 

I think you mean periodisation with pyramidal and polarised models ? You are correct if yes. Very very key

[dirtrider]

very interesting, and although I did not read through all of it, what I find lacking in the power of the mind. You can be as fit as you will ever be, but if you got into an extreme long endurance race with the wrong mindset you might as well stay at home.  I have done a few of the smaller 400km races and also the bigger 2000km plus races with very little preparation beforehand, but it was for me a mind game. It is very easy to give up when you sit under a tree in the middle of the night after you already done 100+ over tough terrain and you got another 80km before you to get to a check point, but you will regret that for a very long time after the fact. I am not a racer anymore and my aim is to finish these long events in the allocated time given and with as much fun as you can possibly have with your pants on. There is such a thing as over preparing and for me under-preparing makes it more fun and challenging. But if your aim is to set records and break all Strava segment then you better start training your body and mind.

[NotSoBigBen]

18 minutes ago, dirtrider said:

very interesting, and although I did not read through all of it, what I find lacking in the power of the mind. You can be as fit as you will ever be, but if you got into an extreme long endurance race with the wrong mindset you might as well stay at home.  I have done a few of the smaller 400km races and also the bigger 2000km plus races with very little preparation beforehand, but it was for me a mind game. It is very easy to give up when you sit under a tree in the middle of the night after you already done 100+ over tough terrain and you got another 80km before you to get to a check point, but you will regret that for a very long time after the fact. I am not a racer anymore and my aim is to finish these long events in the allocated time given and with as much fun as you can possibly have with your pants on. There is such a thing as over preparing and for me under-preparing makes it more fun and challenging. But if your aim is to set records and break all Strava segment then you better start training your body and mind.

In another thread .... Maar nou ja daar het jy dit 😎

[The Ouzo]

6 minutes ago, NotSoBigBen said:

In another thread .... Maar nou ja daar het jy dit 😎

I think in these ultra events its a lot of mental fortitude.

I often get asked by non athletes how I can keep riding for 100+ km even when I'm tired (remember 100km is FAR for some people)

when the mind gives up the body shuts down.