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@Greenbank
Long Distance is just about getting miles in the legs, most importantly, keeping eating and drinking.
The first thing to do is to put miles in to help your general fitness and train your fat metabolism. This makes your body able to provide a greater percentage of energy from fat rather than carbohydrates/sugars.
The human body's fat burning is a continuum. At low intensity exercise the body can meet almost all of its energy requirements from burning its fat stores. The faster you go the less able the body is to meet this need burning fat alone and so the more your body uses up blood sugars (glycogen). You'll always be burning some fat and some glycogen; fat burns in a carbohydrate fire. Your glycogen stores can provide about 2000kcal of energy, this is enough for 4 to 5 hours of steady cycling. (Not 4 to 5 hours of Tour de France pace cycling.)
The "fitter" you are the greater the proportion of fat to carbs you'll burn for a particular effort level. So that 2000kcal of glycogen, combined with 2000kcal from your fat reserves could get you round a 100mile ride at a reasonable pace.
Running out of glycogen is what causes the bonk (or hitting the wall). It also means your body is unable to even burn fat effectively enough to keep you going. So even if you go at a steady enough pace to use mainly fat reserves you still need to keep your blood sugar levels topped up.
When I first go back into cycling I couldn't do more than a couple of hours without feeling starving. Now I can do a 10 hour ride without needing to eat. Not fast, only averaging 15mph or so, but that's not entirely shabby. I wouldn't recommend doing a ride this way, I still eat something (500kcal worth) every 2 or 3 hours, and drain a water bottle or two (or three depending on heat) in those few hours.
I do my Audaxing on nothing more than 100km of pan-flat commuting a week as my 'training'. I started off with a 100km ride (London to Cambridge charity ride) which piqued my interest to long distance riding as I heard of people riding back to London. I found Audax and entered a 200. Finishing this in 13h or so left me shattered but the more I've done since then the easier they've become. I now don't think much about doing a 200km ride, and certainly don't bother with any specific training (but then I'd never describe myself as fast at all). I then went on to do 300km, 400km, 600km rides. A 3 day 730km ride up to Edinburgh last March and then the four and a half day London-Edinburgh-London covering 1400km.
Also, at first I couldn't survive without energy drinks (Hi-5, SiS Go, etc). Now I carry the powder for emergency use only, same with Energy Gels. I just have squash in my water bottles or water with Nuun rehydration tablets to ward off dehydration and replace lost salts/electrolytes.