7 days, 540 miles, first week of June.  Raising some $ for a good cause, will probably have to wear some silly bike wear made by my fashion designer sister who lives out there and is putting me up to this.   how will feathers and a boa go with the new Kissena Kit? 
Any one interested in going? Know anyone going?  Has been on this ride before?

I have joined my sister's club for the SF-LA Ride, the Royal Pheasant Posse, and just as well since it sounds like USAC riders are technically not supposed to ride in these sorts of non USAC events?  In any case,  the odds of having to wear a feather boa on the ride are going up.  there might even be some spurs involved. 

Any suggestions for where to get some Jersey's made?

danke!

and just in case you were wondering about the feather thing, here is my sister, with 3 y/0 in tow, in full Royal Pheasant Posse regalia.... check out pheasant headdress...  (please dont re-post)

pink stuff.

Plug for support!

If you would like to support the cause (helping people with HIV/AIDS, and other related support groups) please click through and make a donation. 

http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/mckay

I have arranged to cover all the costs of the ride already, so any donations will go entirely to the cause.

Blessings be upon you

In other related news, I have discovered this is going to be a more challenging ride than I had thought!   I have not done a long ride like this before, and I am finding that training for it is harder work than I anticipated.  40 miles with a group in the park or a race is way easier than 65 miles by myself in the wind in the hills somehow.

Anyhow, I thought I would post my plan, my efforts, and the results for anyone else who might be interested in pursuing a long ride like this.  Would love any suggestions or input from folks with more experience.

As background, through the winter, I was putting in 2 indoor sessions a week at endurancewerx, and a long (ish) ride on the weekend, and some crosstraining, like skiiing, or skating, when I could get it in.  In march I managed to get in some winter season capping rides at altitude in New Mexico. 

However, this is far from what is needed, I am told, for doing a  week-long ride.   I am supposed to get myself up to two long rides (100 mile)  back to back, and then 2 or 3 shorter (30-40 mile) between, to make up a week.

I get the impression that there are many Kissenas who do this sort of mileage (250-300) weekly, and I have aspired to this level of commitment   But just so you know, that is freakin' hard to do if you havent been doing it...

I did a 50 in PP last tuesday, then a 55 to Bear Mtn on friday, then a 65 Kingston ny to Roxbury ct on saturday, and I am not sure I made any sense to anyone on sunday, and my legs felt like overinflated balloons in the park yesterday. 

My plan is to do the two back to back rides weekly, 70m this week, and adding 10m each week to the 100, then backing off the last week before the ride.  Filling in between with two rest days and 3 30's.  Hoping this will work and that 550 wont be misery.

McKay, I think you shouldn't sweat the actual distances so much. I don't necessarily think you need to have trained the full distances that you are going to ride in the week. It's more about the quality of your training.

I think what's going to be more important for you, is to make sure that you recover well from day to day. So that means keeping up with your hydration and calories all the time. This way you won't suddenly crap out on day 3 because you are just so drained. If you end up bonking, cramping because of glycogen/electrolyte depletion, it's going to be very hard to get back on track and ride comfortably post bonk.

McKay,

I agree with these comments. In Feb I rode over 400 miles in a week and had not done much specific training for such distance. It was about taking care of myself during that week. And I learned long ago that almost anyone can ride a century if they go slow enough (i.e. pace themselves). You'll be going north to south and therefore should have a tailwind. Yes there are hills along the route, but no real mountains. Make sure you don't wear yourself out - or engender injury - in your training. Increase your mileage gradually.

@McKay just take a bucket of your finest chamois cream, the biggest challenge will be the saddle. A 100 miles of new terrain flies by and then you're left with a sizeable chunk of day to soak up the Cali goodness. I predict you'll be chomping at the bit each day for more miles.

JP's reminder about sunscreen offers me the perfect opportunity to name drop. I haven't done that in a while. I used to race with/against and travel with/to some races with former pro Robbie Ventura. And one thing he was always doing? Putting on sunscreen. He was/is a pretty boy, so if you didn't know how detail oriented/anal that dude was, you could assume it was all about vanity. But it wasn't. Getting baked in the sun will KNOCK YOU OUT. Cold. Or hot. Or whatever, you get what I mean.

McKay one other thing to keep in mind is your fit on the bike and the machine itself. Way bigger volumes will smoke out any niggles so keep a weather eye on aches & pains. Likewise the extra miles will wear & tear your machine faster than usual - so heads up, and don't get stung by a saddle that creeps down lower over time, etc. Good luck!

ah, all the kissena goodness comes pouring out, now this is some good support! 

sunscreen, check. (ok, sunburn from yesterday, check. sunscreen today
updated training plan, check. double nyack this week
eating on bike, check.  actually, this is an interesting subject. 

here we digress.  i read somewhere that your body can only actually digest/absorb about 350 calories per hour.  so, it seems like one bottle of water w/sugar (gatorade/osmo/etc) at 150cal and one bar/gu/thing per hour is right, and would make sense to start consuming about 1 hour into the ride, after the existing supply is burned.  i have tried this on long rides before, and to be honest, it feels like a bit much. i have also read drink before thirsty and eat before hungry.  that much intake definitely covers that rule.  one feels on the brink.  but the question in my mind is, what happens to breakfast?  say you have put in 750 cal. at breakfast, hop on the bike, shouldn't that really then take about two hours to consume?  in which case you wouldnt start adding calories untill after the second hour?  or lunch at a rest stop?  (tried a half a tuna sandwich stopping at the runcible yesterday....  bad idea, tossed up most of it on the ride back.  will stick the frosting packs i guess)  In any case,  i could be convinced about teh 350 cal per hour thing, but not sure how to account for what is already in the system?

@McKay. It is good that you are experimenting. Everybody is different, though the number of people that could manage a tunafish sandwich at Runcible are in a small minority. I think you are right about breakfast, depending on how much time elapsed since you ate. On a standard weekend long ride, I eat a normal breakfast immediately before setting off and then don't really start eating/drinking on the bike for at least 1.5 hrs. But then you have to start. For me, a clif bar (250cal) and a package of clif bloks (100 cal), a bottle of Accelerade (100 cal) will get me to Nyack and back (3.5 -4 hrs). The harder slightly longer rides in Calif involved an extra bar/blok and maybe a coke at the Rock Store. By my count, this is less than your 350 cal/hr limit and I haven't bonked in quite a while.

I'm a little tired of buying and eating clif bars so I made a batch of Allen Lim's rice cakes recently. Two of those are a good substitute for a clif bar. Pretty easy to digest (unlike tuna) and a good change of pace. Plus, a clif bar actually broke a cap off of my tooth and a clif blok was so unchewable that I couldn't get it out of my mouth one cold winter day, though I don't suppose you'll have that problem in Calif.

This is probably a lot of reiterating of what other people are saying in this thread but I did a 408 mile ride in a week last summer (end of July, across Iowa). Obviously substantially less hilly than your ride but there were lots of small rollers and a few moderate climbs on the way. I trained in the gym on the spin bike/treadmill (with some weights mixed in) from Feb - April, then on my actual bike from mid-April to July. Almost all of my training was just doing laps in Prospect Park, with maybe 2 or 3 total rides out to Nyack from BK. The ride I did provided an 8 week (give or take) training program if you wanted to follow it, which I did gradually increasing weekly mileage. That being said, I maxed out around 150-200 miles per week in my training, so about half of what I was planning to do. Even with that amount of training I felt overprepared for my ride...or maybe I should say I felt great.

The hardest part for me was definitely getting the calories in on the ride. I'm NOT an on the bike eater so for me it was all about incorporating a lot of small stops where I'd have a small snack, then hop back on the bike and continue. I was a big fan of the mini clif bars and would keep them stashed in my jersey so I could have them on every stop. Also, something else that made a huge difference for me was having not just water, but some sort of sports energy drink (whether that's a fancy bike one for you or whatever). I'm a simple girl, I used gatorade in my water bottle to stay hydrated (Iowa in July was pretty hot and humid). They make single serve packets that you can just dump into your water bottle or keep in your jersey. I found that those were super hepful for me and I'd have at least a few every day.

The biggest complaint I heard on my ride besides just general fatigue from those who didn't train enough (most of my group)? Sore butts. I think getting used to just sitting on the bike for those long days over and over again is the actual hardest part.

Years ago, I was at a talk by Allen Lim, and Floyd Landis was there.  (I've referenced this talk before).  Someone asked Floyd, 'how do you eat at the Tour?'  His response was 'if I start thinking about food, I eat.'  Not everyone is so good, and coffee can dull that sensation for many.  That written, a trick I sometimes use is to set my watch to beep every hour.  It beeps, I down a bar.  

@McKay the easiest way to deal with breakfast is to eat sooner, like 2 to 3 hours before your ride.  Of course that isn't really practical for most people doing morning training.

hmm. well, it is great to hear people's experience.  bombing the gut rings a bell.  tuna was pretty dumb, but i have heard people talk about some protein during a ride, so thats what prompted me that day.  hammer paste is new to me, so i am curious.   so far, i am finding two gels and a 16 oz bottle of osmo on the road, and a big coffee and a pastry halfway seems to work for bk to nyack and back.  probably more than i need, but about as much i have felt i wanted.   i guess that works out to... something like 900cal, or about 200 per hour? but that doesnt count what i already had in the pipe, so i suppose 300 is probably not far off.

remarkably, and to my great surprise, i not only felt better today on my second nyack ride than I did yesterday, but rode faster, and felt some of the fight come back.  i am truly mystified by this, although i have read of course about people feeling better in long races after a while.  i was expecting to feel more worn out rather than stoked.  this is sort of contrary to  how i have felt the day after races etc.  which isnt to say it is easy, and i spent time pondering how impressive it is to me that folks are out doing doubles every weekend. you guys rock! 

anyway, thanks again for all the input.

@McKay, as you get fitter you'll start to recover faster from those rides - feeling better on day 2 is a good sign!

Mr longevity science says the only right time to eat carbs is during or post aerobic exercise – something to do with insulin response.

@McKay. Don't stress about the specific  cal/hr. There is nothing magic about 300. As Jules points out, you have a huge reserve. You just want to make site you don't hit that uncomfortable transition from burning glycogen to burning fat. Just stay away from the tuna sandwiches.

Had to look up the Allen Lim rice cake thing after reading the fueling tips on this thread.  They have bacon in them??  Sold! 

"You just want to make site you don't hit that uncomfortable transition from burning glycogen to burning fat."

That is interesting.  best place to learn more about that?  seems like burning fat would be a good thing, no?

Burning fat = bonking. Basically it's terribly inefficient to burn your fat, resulting in you being hardly able to turn the pedals while feeling absolutely f-ing awful. Not something you want to put your body through.

JohnMalcolmson said:

Burning fat = bonking. Basically it's terribly inefficient to burn your fat, resulting in you being hardly able to turn the pedals while feeling absolutely f-ing awful. Not something you want to put your body through.

OTOH, if you want to ride painfully slow while barely able to think, getting down to fat burning is the way to go.

Fat is a very efficient way to store energy. You get a lot more kJ out of a gram of fat than out of a gram of glycogen. Let's google that: 

Fat: 1 gram = 9 calories
Protein: 1 gram = 4 calories
Carbohydrates: 1 gram = 4 calories
Alcohol: 1 gram = 7 calories

Caffeine helps mobilize the fat stores for energy consumption.
Gianni Bugno (and probably others) were reputed to use a suppository filled with caffeine for slow release during the stage. Maybe they didn't have caffeinated gels in the '80s.

Or maybe we should all just put whiskey in our bottles.