OK, "eat before you're hungry".
Yeah, right, not hungry but should stuff my face.... WTF?
What do they mean "before"??? What about the max heart rate issue???
You guys sure are a lot of help!
Here I am, trying to reach Portland in 16 hours, so I'm likely burning about 300kcal/hour.
=> Not much, right? !!FAIL!!.
So its been painful set of lessons learning all the ways to !!FAIL!! the problem of "eat before you are hungry" when your stomach and heart seem to have ideas of their own.
First thing I learned was: a person only carries around 600-800 kcal of "ready fuel": some in the muscles, much in the liver, and other places. Now the brain, remember thinking about (with) the brain?, needs some of that, actually, quite a bit of it.
So, at 350kcal/hour, with the brain using about 250/hour, you got the amazingly long time of:
an hour!
No wonder the swim of the Ironman is only 2.3 miles or, for the really good folk, about an hour!
Yep, they go gangbusters and, like, are just about at the end of their fuel with the high speed swim, pop, they're out of the water, rushing to the bike (and food).
No wonder after an hour or so, a person might !bonk!. There I am, riding like mad, and, should I be so foolish as to not have additional fuel: !!FAIL!! The legs turn to mush as they run out of fuel.
Now, to add insult to injury, I found that a person's stomach/gut can *only* process ~250-350kcal/hour (2 gu's and a bottle of Gatorade).
Bummer!
That won't really keep up unless I am both "loaded for bear" to begin and also I'm stuffing my face even before I start riding!
Additionally, my MHR is way too low to digest much of anything: I'm basically "time trialing" for 16 hours(!), and, it is warm, I'm drinking a bunch, so how and what do I shove in to me?
Yep, lots and lots of really good ways to !!FAIL!!.
I have and have seen lots of bad examples!
Yes, lots and lots of bad examples
So, a very simple way to !!FAIL!! on STP, is: don't worry about food: just eat what
"feels good" at the moment in the service area or in the stands selling burgers and fries. Or, just don't eat at all and "burn off that lard".
Yep, sure fired way to end up along the road like some oversized toad road kill.
First, just about anyone can ride a bike for a hour or so. Yes, there are "startup issues" if one's stomach is too full or one is already dehydrated, but a person would need to work at it to !!FAIL!!. If a person does something to fuel and hydrate, they can go a bit further: 2-4 hours where, depending on temperature, it isn't very hard.. With just a bit of practice, 4-6 hours isn't that hard.
The trick is 6-16 hours. I have found that about 60, 70 miles out is when it starts that the "rubber meets the road", and by 100-120 miles, it is clear. If I am not doing things exactly right, if fueling isn't dialed in precisely, I am in trouble. Big trouble, little trouble, it all causes problems that could make me !!FAIL!!.
Here I will look at the troubles I've encountered and the recipe I use: