Tell us about your weekend ride

That Frank, his statue tho.

Sounds busy your end, even if it didn't all happen twice ;)

Had a really good ride on Saturday, which things have been building towards for a while (pretty much built my bike with this in mind). The plan was to ride a form of the Seven Lakes route, ending at Bear Mountain for some leg-bashing.

Managed to take quite a few photos from the saddle, but not all are top-notch, so don't be judgin'.

We rode across from Brooklyn to Manhattan and traversed the shit-show that is is midtown, and pootled up the west side cycle route to the George Washington Bridge

The bridge was a bit of a shitshow, but all that was forgotten pretty quickly when we swung around to the entrance of the River Road on the other side of the Hudson. Something like ten miles of blissful, car-free rolling riverside tarmac that winds through the trees, ending with a reasonably stiff ascent to bring you back level with the highway at the top.

After hitting the 9W and picking our way through a deluge of annoying weekend warriors we arrived in Nyack for donuts de rigueur at one of the nice little shops. Delicious maple bacon and cold press pictured.

Not content with one, we had to get a pumpkin spice one (not as good).

Onwards north to the Nyack Beach Park cycle path, which cuts up straight along the banks of the Hudson for a few miles, ending in a surprisingly steep ascent, atop which I saw a house wot I took a picture of

Alex started having some cable tension issues at this point, and his gears were skipping out/generally being a cunt, so by the time we reached the first lake, we had some assessing to do. Or at least he did, I just took pictures of the lake.

And of my bike sitting suggestively by said lake.

I went to enquire as to whether there was a bike shoppe nearby, and was reliably informed there would be one on the direction we were headed, so we trundled slowly on. The chap at the shop had a fiddle around and did what he could, getting all but one of the gears to work, so we soldiered on, tears suitably mopped away.

At the top of High Tor state park, about 74km in we stopped for some apple cider action, and to replenish salt via delicious potato chips. I had the best apple I've ever eaten, and took a pano of the store because I'm like that.

On to the second of the lakes, after which I started to lose count of which one was which, as the roads passed right through them. We covered about 20 miles of spotless, unfuckholed roads, with only the odd wazzock on a Harley to bother us.

Passing through the woods between lakes I spotted this car parked, with nothing for else for miles around.

Onward to another beaut of a body of water.

So beautiful, it turns out, that I neglected to see the roundabout behind us, and had us march onward in the same direction...

After this lake we hammered it down another snaking descent for about 5km, laughing and generally being smug. That is until I realised we'd missed the turning right back at the roundabout, meaning we had to climb right back up that beautiful road. Felt bad for Croft as he was lacking a gear and the ride back up was a pain in the dick.

Back on track we hammered down the right road towards Bear Mountain State Park, crossing the busy Freeway and briefly traveling along it. Not enjoyable. We got to the foot of the real climb up to BM peak and headed straight for the top and took in the vista covered in sweat. Panoramarama.

The descent down from Bear Mountain is pretty nailbiting, and the sides of the road are lined with huge boulders which would ruin your day. Certainly the tested the breaking surface on my Reynolds Attacks, but they stayed solid and delivered me to the bottom with a grin on my face and two flies in my throat.

The final stretch saw us head over the Hudson again across a busy car bridge, and South towards Peekskill for the train. Found a nasty little climb, but once we'd peaked that it was another pedal-free blast for ten minutes, catching up to cars as we barrelled down.

Then a vision of perfection in the form of Peekskill Brewery tap, after leaving the shitty highway.

Far and away the most enjoyable day I've had on a bike. I don't have a Garmin so Strava mangled the distance, though it worked out at about 2,500m of climbing and 90-something miles.

Looks fantastic.

Lovely looking day. Am jealous of the mid ride food.

@sensom great post. sounds like a perfect day apart from the navigation fuck ups ;) Like the way you write too.

A week in the Pyrenees beckons for me and Cycliste. Day 1's route supposedly included a climb up the Col de Peyresoude. Except it didn't. A fact I only discovered halfway up the Col de Peyresoude. Oh well, too late to go back, so we got back to the hotel via the Porte des Balles. This was not helped by the fact it started raining on the climb up the Porte des Balles, so the descent was absolutely freezing. Still, a 40 minute hot shower solved that problem. No photos as the weather was shite.

Cols: Peyresoude, Porte des Balles.
Distance: 123km
Climbing: 2600m

After Day 1's sufferfest, Day 2 featured a rather easier day featuring only the Col de Menthe:

The Col de Portet d'Aspet:

And the Col d'Ares. Total days ride:

Cols: Col de Menthe, Col de Portet d'Aspet, Col d'Ares
Distance: 63km
Climbing: 1749m

Col d'Aspin tomorrow. Probably twice.

good luck!

Cheers all, was a blast! And thanks @_Leon - I knew that journalism would come in handy one day, haha.

#workupto500 September 425

My 425km ride in September was supposed to be a ride home from Devon, but that trip got cancelled so I cobbled together a last minute route to Bradford and back.

On recent long rides my mantra has been Eat All Of The Sugar Now, but this time I tried something completely different. Since the start of September I've been on a low carb (~ 25g per day) high fat diet, with my 55km per day of commuting fuelled by fat and maybe some ketones; I peed on a ketone detecting strip and it said "yes, lots" but those things can be unreliable.

Breakfast: salmon and soft cheese, coffee with cream. On the road: almonds, cheese, biltong, droewors. Electrolytes only in the water bottles. 50mg per hour of caffeine in the morning, stopping at noon.

For the first 8 hours everything felt fine, except for a bit of stomach pain if I ate the cheese too fast or didn't take enough water with the droewors. At the 8 hour mark I'd covered 225km, a distance that normally takes me 9 hours elapsed.

Then I think my blood sugar started to drop, and by the 9:15 mark I was well into a bonk. I'd slowed right down, I was unable to spin to up to 90 even on the flat in a very easy gear, and my primary thought process was "cycling can fuck off". My emergency energy gel perked me right up, and I followed it up with 30g of dextrose over the next hour. I felt better, but didn't regain the pace I'd hit in the first 8 hours.

At the 11:45 mark I felt the early signs of the next bonk, so I added my remaining 60g of dextrose to my water and bought some jelly babies at the next garage. I perked up again, but continued to gradually lose the extra hour that I'd banked during the first part of the ride.

By my rough calculations, that means I burn about 20 to 30 g/hour of carb, and my body had about 225g of carb stored when I set off. Next time, I'll add a small amount of carb to the road food.

The next day, legs properly wrecked. During the later part of the first 8 hours (A4, no twists and turns, just pounding out the miles) my heart rate was hovering around 150 to 155 and I was comfortable maintaining that. At 160 I start the heavy breathing. Maybe the higher than usual caffeine dose on this ride caused me to be comfortable at too hard a pace during those hours and wreck my legs and burn more carb than I otherwise would, or maybe it was the bonking that wrecked the legs, or maybe they just need to HTFU. Further experimentation is needed.

http://www.strava.com/activities/200934112

You're properly mental. I love it.
Good work.
I don't even understand how anyone can spend more than maybe 8hrs on a bike. c.16 is madness.
Also how on earth do you eat so little during a ride?
My much shorter ride (see above) involved all the food, ever, and I was bonking fairly hard at the end.

Fad diets >>>

Major de ja vu. I feel like we've all discussed this exact thing in this exact thread before.
Ah well.

Maybe, but the talent to go round in circles with you?

Wasn't it the weight loss thread?

Noakes was on the ball with his central governor theory but his LCHF thing is off with the fairies..

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/bodywork/the-fit-list/The-Truth-Behind-the-High-Fat-Low-Carb-Commotion.html

Is 27.5km/h not reasonably impressive over that distance?

To me or to you? To me - yeah it's a big ride but then no if he could've done 30+kph by eating more appropriately.

I don't even understand how anyone can spend more than maybe 8hrs on a bike. c.16 is madness.
Also how on earth do you eat so little during a ride?

All generalisations of physiology but (currently reading Faster by Dr Hutch)...

Slow enough, and with a well trained fat metabolism, and your body is powering you with mostly fat. The rate at which you're using carbs (fat burns in a carbohydrate flame) is low enough that the carbs can be replaced by eating (you can only take on a certain amount of carbs per hour). You can go pretty much forever at this pace.

Push a bit harder and your body needs more energy and this has to come from carbs (you're already at the limit of how fast you can process fat into energy). The carbs are being used faster than the body can take in new carbs so this can't go on forever, you'll eventually bonk but how long you can go for at this rate depends on the depletion rate. The average person has 1600-2000kcal of glycogen in the blood and liver - this is what you're depleting. A 200kcal an hour deficit will give you 8-10 hours before you go bang.

Push harder (up to and including race type pace) and you're way beyond what your body can take in and so the glycogen stores are depleted much more quickly, even if you ate like a horse. A 400-500kcal deficit will see you bonking in 4-5 hours; and sooner if you don't eat properly.

25kph average is the upper limit of my "all day" pace, it's closer to 20kph if it's hilly and I'm on fixed.

I can do 30kph average for a few hours, but I have to be careful what I eat. I've simply never averaged over 30kph for anything over that; mind you, I'm just an average fat bloke on a bike (with reasonable stamina and will/staying power).

To me or to you? To me - yeah it's a big ride but then no if he could've done 30+kph by eating more appropriately.

On the previous ride with 90g/h of 2:1 multodextrin:fructose I was a bit slower overall, but not by enough to reach any firm conclusions.

That could've been down to anything. Two rides isn't enough data.

I don't even understand how anyone can spend more than maybe 8hrs on a bike. c.16 is madness.

I like riding my bike. I'm not pushing myself on to put in a fast time or holding myself back for perfect pacing, just rolling along at the speed at which my legs want to go. I don't get depressed if my pace is a bit slower than I expect. It's a quiet mellow activity that (I've found so far) I can happily do all day.

Also how on earth do you eat so little during a ride?

I estimate I took in about 5000 cals, but there's some guesswork there. It soon adds up when you're porking entire 250g blocks of sainsburys basics red leicester cheese. How much of that I actually digested and was able to use as fuel is another question. 90g/hour of sugar would have been 6000 cals. Strava thinks I burned 9000, but 50mg/hour of caffeine and a suspect hrm means I don't really believe it.

My much shorter ride (see above) involved all the food, ever, and I was bonking fairly hard at the end.

You went faster.

Nuts. What bike are you using for these big distance rides?

A Canyon Roadlite Al 6.0, recommended and fitted to me by @scherrit.

Strong work once again @nick.earthloop.

I don't even understand how anyone can spend more than maybe 8hrs on a bike.

That surprised me, I'd thought you can spend more than that on the road.

I find fueling epic rides a touch tricky. But probably do the opposite to you Earthloop. I'm used to munching energy bars, and smashing energy gels. So carry this forward onto a an endurance ride. Except as Doc Hutch says, if I'm cruising at low watts, I'm probably burn far less sugar. So it turns to magma in my gut instead.

In france I just ate loads of 'normal' Food. Then smashed a energy bar/gel before a hard Climb. I did bonk a couple times. Once when overheated, and once when generally fucked. But for the most part it worked.