Great job summarizing the various models; rider personality and the vital role of nutrition. It's taken me years of reading, watching and experimentation to understand what you so accurately put forth in the video. Great job!
I did my first 200 of the year last week in appalling conditions, on the back of 3 months of mostly zone 2 (7-10 hours total riding a week). The big things for me this year that allowed for a comfortable experience, were consistency (rather than following a particular plan) and riding a full season of cyclocross which gave me the weekly hard efforts I needed. The other thing was being very focussed on fuelling, which is something that I am guilty of neglecting in the past. I see so many people following, or looking for a 'plan' but then don't ride consistently week in week out to make it effective.
Congratulations! That puts you in a good position to start the new year strong. 'Ride Lots' is a perfectly suitable training plan I think. 'Training Specificity' is covered by zone 2 as well, so pretty modest amounts of intensity should be all we need. Mostly relax and enjoy the scenery and have fun smashing climbs or going after KOMs occasionally is how I like to ride anyway. Evidence had me adjust easy pace to be a bit easier, and smashing pace to smash harder than my preference, but not by much. My challenge is just getting enough volume. Fueling training well is underrated. It helps so much with recovery. Thank you for sharing!
My go to bike food are current buns. They're a bit voluminous, but always tasty even when stale and squished :-) . At every 50 gram they provide 134 cal (25 gram carbs, 1 gram fat, 4 gram protein, 2 gram fibre). I also might carry a diy sugary "gel" (sucrose + glucose with a splash of lemon and some diet salt (and as little water as possible))
First of all: This is great video! It is so difficult to explain training intensity based without getting carried away, and you did a great job in exactly that. (I think it was smart, not to explain the zones.) I took some screenshots for future reference when I will work out my plans. Thank you very much 🙏 I was reluctant but can not resist the little devil in me, to point out the pink elephant in the nutrition room: If we wouldn't try to achieve multiple hour endurance feats on a short term metabolic pathway (aka carbs), we wouldn't run into the bonking problem, and wouldn't have to constantly replenish our ridiculously small carb stores with junk food from gas stations and bakeries ;-) If we instead relied mainly on our virtually indefinite fat stores the whole nutrition problem would almost disappear. (And because we are amateurs in randonneuring, i.e.(ultra)long distance endurance events, and not pros in a Grand Tour, the argument of Attacks and Sprints is invalid.) But: We would have to achieve that fat metabolism outside of our training. And that would mean, to overcome our carb addiction … [Disclaimer: I know that carbs as fuel for endurance is almost a dogma. I just wanted to throw in these thoughts as a perturbation, as food for thought. {Pun intended}]
Thank you! Glad it can be helpful, while still being somewhat concise. Really easy to go overboard with technical topics. Modern mainstream eating habits can be pretty appalling, and the reactionary, restrictive, or bio-hacking diets many people adopt in response are often pretty extreme too. 'Balanced Diet' needs a more catchy name. Maybe a topic for another time... On the bike fuel should be thought of differently than daily life diet regardless. Newer long distance cyclists have a few factors supporting robust carb fuel for best results. First, they will require a higher intensity to do things like finish on time, climb hills, or keep pace with stronger cyclists. Higher intensities burn higher rates of carb and lower rates of fat (Romijn, 1993). Training also increases stored glycogen capacity. The trained cohort in Kawanaka (1997) had about 50% more glycogen per gram of tissue than the untrained cohort, meaning bigger total bank of quick access energy. Trained athletes are also more metabolically efficient, so their calories can produce about 5-9% more work (Hopker, 2008). For most folks, just getting trained up over a few years will open up a new level of fat burning potential, along with total power productions. The trained cohort of older men in Bassami (2007) burned nearly double the fat amount over time at 50% intensity than the untrained group. That's important, because even as a carb-eating athlete, I still have a huge caloric deficit fat needs to compensate for.
Interesting and useful. I am more on the casual fun based training side but will try adopt one or two of the strategies and see how it goes. My fueling is usually a good sandwich or banana before the ride, one banana (or two for longer rides) and two energy bars. Also have a bottle of electrolyte drink that i sip along the way.
I hope you can have some benefit when you use a few of these strategies. I tend to use about 2000 kJoules per 100km of general riding. It takes a lot of fuel to keep from getting into a large calorie deficit when rides go longer than 100km. Bananas and sugary drinks have been my favorite fuels.
Somehow I am missing the info you are ‚just‘ summarizing the data/info/studies or also have a sport scientific background? would be nice to know / add to the info perhaps
Hi Frank, Randonneuring is an ultra distance sport that I think is quite tough. It is the subject of this channel. To succeed with any buffer for problems that arise requires more than normal fitness. Lots of friends enjoy the sport immensely or were very interested to try, but several decided to quit or not pursue it further because it was too hard to be fun. I hope through sharing best practices for equipment choice, riding strategy, and perhaps a bit of training, that those interested in Randonneuring and other endurance cycling events can better succeed and enjoy their time on the road more, despite the difficulty.
If I saw you on the road and you started talking this stuff and referring to charts etc. I would make every effort to get away from you. Nobody will reduce my cycling to what sounds like a visit to a recently graduated doctor full of info, study results, pharma sponsored seminars and a bit portly. Go away. I'm 77, cycling as a grown up since 1977, and live it. I also weigh the same 148 lbs as I did in the Air Force in 1976. Just do what Coppi said.
Haha, I won't go away. But feel free to cycle as you enjoy. Check out your local audax/randonneurs club if you are looking for a new challenge. With your experience and toughness as a vet, you may quite enjoy it.
old school training advice I recieved many years ago was to train on my steel bike and race on a lighter bike .
Great job summarizing the various models; rider personality and the vital role of nutrition. It's taken me years of reading, watching and experimentation to understand what you so accurately put forth in the video. Great job!
Thank you for the feedback Stanislao, I'm glad you found it useful. Were there any missing topics that would be helpful to cover?
I agree with Salil. It is one of the best videos on long-distance cycling supported by data. Thank you!
I did my first 200 of the year last week in appalling conditions, on the back of 3 months of mostly zone 2 (7-10 hours total riding a week). The big things for me this year that allowed for a comfortable experience, were consistency (rather than following a particular plan) and riding a full season of cyclocross which gave me the weekly hard efforts I needed. The other thing was being very focussed on fuelling, which is something that I am guilty of neglecting in the past. I see so many people following, or looking for a 'plan' but then don't ride consistently week in week out to make it effective.
Congratulations! That puts you in a good position to start the new year strong. 'Ride Lots' is a perfectly suitable training plan I think. 'Training Specificity' is covered by zone 2 as well, so pretty modest amounts of intensity should be all we need. Mostly relax and enjoy the scenery and have fun smashing climbs or going after KOMs occasionally is how I like to ride anyway. Evidence had me adjust easy pace to be a bit easier, and smashing pace to smash harder than my preference, but not by much. My challenge is just getting enough volume. Fueling training well is underrated. It helps so much with recovery. Thank you for sharing!
Excellent!!!
Really informative and I love your sense of humour!
My go to bike food are current buns. They're a bit voluminous, but always tasty even when stale and squished :-) . At every 50 gram they provide 134 cal (25 gram carbs, 1 gram fat, 4 gram protein, 2 gram fibre). I also might carry a diy sugary "gel" (sucrose + glucose with a splash of lemon and some diet salt (and as little water as possible))
Highly informative. Thank you.
First of all: This is great video! It is so difficult to explain training intensity based without getting carried away, and you did a great job in exactly that. (I think it was smart, not to explain the zones.) I took some screenshots for future reference when I will work out my plans. Thank you very much 🙏
I was reluctant but can not resist the little devil in me, to point out the pink elephant in the nutrition room:
If we wouldn't try to achieve multiple hour endurance feats on a short term metabolic pathway (aka carbs), we wouldn't run into the bonking problem, and wouldn't have to constantly replenish our ridiculously small carb stores with junk food from gas stations and bakeries ;-)
If we instead relied mainly on our virtually indefinite fat stores the whole nutrition problem would almost disappear. (And because we are amateurs in randonneuring, i.e.(ultra)long distance endurance events, and not pros in a Grand Tour, the argument of Attacks and Sprints is invalid.)
But: We would have to achieve that fat metabolism outside of our training. And that would mean, to overcome our carb addiction …
[Disclaimer: I know that carbs as fuel for endurance is almost a dogma. I just wanted to throw in these thoughts as a perturbation, as food for thought. {Pun intended}]
Thank you! Glad it can be helpful, while still being somewhat concise. Really easy to go overboard with technical topics.
Modern mainstream eating habits can be pretty appalling, and the reactionary, restrictive, or bio-hacking diets many people adopt in response are often pretty extreme too. 'Balanced Diet' needs a more catchy name. Maybe a topic for another time...
On the bike fuel should be thought of differently than daily life diet regardless. Newer long distance cyclists have a few factors supporting robust carb fuel for best results. First, they will require a higher intensity to do things like finish on time, climb hills, or keep pace with stronger cyclists. Higher intensities burn higher rates of carb and lower rates of fat (Romijn, 1993). Training also increases stored glycogen capacity. The trained cohort in Kawanaka (1997) had about 50% more glycogen per gram of tissue than the untrained cohort, meaning bigger total bank of quick access energy. Trained athletes are also more metabolically efficient, so their calories can produce about 5-9% more work (Hopker, 2008). For most folks, just getting trained up over a few years will open up a new level of fat burning potential, along with total power productions. The trained cohort of older men in Bassami (2007) burned nearly double the fat amount over time at 50% intensity than the untrained group. That's important, because even as a carb-eating athlete, I still have a huge caloric deficit fat needs to compensate for.
This is such a well researched video. Thoroughly enjoyed it 🙏
Thanks Salil, I tried to summarize the most relevant information in a concise, usable way. Glad you found it useful.
Interesting and useful. I am more on the casual fun based training side but will try adopt one or two of the strategies and see how it goes.
My fueling is usually a good sandwich or banana before the ride, one banana (or two for longer rides) and two energy bars. Also have a bottle of electrolyte drink that i sip along the way.
I hope you can have some benefit when you use a few of these strategies. I tend to use about 2000 kJoules per 100km of general riding. It takes a lot of fuel to keep from getting into a large calorie deficit when rides go longer than 100km. Bananas and sugary drinks have been my favorite fuels.
Is this correct? I use 4000 cal per 100 km/4h...
Thank you! I love your style of videos!
Thank you Myles!
Somehow I am missing the info you are ‚just‘ summarizing the data/info/studies or also have a sport scientific background? would be nice to know / add to the info perhaps
엥 제주도넹
좋은 비디오 감사합니다
감사합니다. Jeju is a nice place to live. Glad you enjoyed the video!
You are overthinking this.
Is the objective simply to be a normal and healthy cyclist or simply a flash in the pan.
Hi Frank, Randonneuring is an ultra distance sport that I think is quite tough. It is the subject of this channel. To succeed with any buffer for problems that arise requires more than normal fitness. Lots of friends enjoy the sport immensely or were very interested to try, but several decided to quit or not pursue it further because it was too hard to be fun. I hope through sharing best practices for equipment choice, riding strategy, and perhaps a bit of training, that those interested in Randonneuring and other endurance cycling events can better succeed and enjoy their time on the road more, despite the difficulty.
If I saw you on the road and you started talking this stuff and referring to charts etc. I would make every effort to get away from you.
Nobody will reduce my cycling to what sounds like a visit to a recently graduated doctor full of info, study results, pharma sponsored seminars and a bit portly.
Go away.
I'm 77, cycling as a grown up since 1977, and live it.
I also weigh the same 148 lbs as I did in the Air Force in 1976.
Just do what Coppi said.
Haha, I won't go away. But feel free to cycle as you enjoy. Check out your local audax/randonneurs club if you are looking for a new challenge. With your experience and toughness as a vet, you may quite enjoy it.