Good ride dudes. It was interesting seeing new, old, new-old faces. Highlight of my KCC ride was riding up the BB while the sun was still rising, it gave the ride a sweet intro for epicness that awaited.. sorry i dipped out early, had to meet up with some other peeps. 6 AM rides are awesome, i wish i could do them more often.

Dear Tito,

Just to add that Patrick J. and I had managed to navigate through all the fraffic and lapped it out to Piermont. Patrick hung tough until just before Strictly. I think he could easily hang with a C4 field. Although the frisbee attached to his back wheel will need to come off.

The pie plate doesn't actually inhibit performance ( or if so only marginally). It just offends our sensibilities.

dstokes said:

The pie plate doesn't actually inhibit performance ( or if so only marginally). It just offends our sensibilities.

Bonking is something you need to learn to recognize and avoid. I survived my road race today only by assiduous hydration and intake of calories. Very important to figure out how much you need under different circumstances. I saw a guy at the Harlem crit (40 min) with two water bottles on his bike and a third water bottle in his pocket. Not sure what he was thinking.

Agreed.  "Crashing mentally" eating at the bridge and not getting your second wind until Riverside sound like "Crashing Metabolically" IMHO.  30-60 grams of carbs per hour on the bike more if your gut can take it.

A couple of gels in your pocket will help you @Patrick. Of course knowing when to take them is a bigger help.

re: bonking.  i make it a hard rule to eat every 45 minutes, no matter what.  those 45-minute windows begin as soon i start a ride, and if i happen to be in the middle of a tough effort when the next "feed time" comes up, i switch to liquid calories so i don't have to faff about with gel / cliff bars, etc.  depending on the length and intensity of a ride i will vary the amount of calories at each window, but the frequency never changes.

this has worked a charm for me.  no bonks, no cramps to report in over a year.

Check out the Nutrition Thread for more detail.  @Mark the issue with regular feeding is that during a race you get to eat when the pace allows so you need to know how to measure your intake regardless of when or how much you get in each mouthful.

Jules said:

@Mark the issue with regular feeding is that during a race you get to eat when the pace allows so you need to know how to measure your intake regardless of when or how much you get in each mouthful.

i don't disagree.  there are always going to be times when you cannot eat dead on the time you want.  i guess my point is more general in the sense that one should aim to have a target feed time -- a mental marker, if you will -- and if you fall away from that, you should know that you're "late" and potentially going into a bad place if you leave it too late and/or skip another feed. 

scheduled consumption insures against suddenly realizing you're closer to bonk town than is acceptable.  that happened to me on a group ride.  thought i was just tired, then suddenly realized it wasn't just muscle fatigue.  mental checkpoint would've helped.  i'll have to be purdy serious if i do one of those long races

Your metabolism (insulin/glucagon hormones acting on stores of glycogen in your liver and muscles) will ensure that your blood sugar remains constant, as long as you are not diabetic or something. The bonk results from when you have run out of glycogen and this system is not longer able to tap on that stored energy source to maintain the expected blood sugar levels. It's next option is to metabolize fat. This will work eventually, but there is a lag during which blood sugar drops and . . . you bonk. So the intake of food is to give the system some calories so that the glycogen stores do not get totally exhausted. It probably doesn't matter so much about the frequency of intake, from the point of view of blood sugar. However, your stomach probably doesn't want a whole pile of stuff delivered at once and then sitting in there waiting to get adsorbed. In fact, your stomach is less efficient at digesting during exercise because the blood is diverted elsewhere (i.e., your muscles). So the gradual intake of calories is more for the benefit of your stomach.

The regiments described above are just a mental plan to make sure that you remember to do it. One of the symptoms of low blood sugar is spaciness, such that you forget to eat and drink and things just get worse.

Who's up for doing a hundred early Sunday?

Sunday sounds good. But it depends on what you mean by 'early'

In non family terms 730 to beat the heat?

I'll be at BB @ 6am.  Quick ride up to Alpine or Piermont depending on time.  Need to be back to Sunset Park by 1030a.

The ride is at 7:30 am at Brooklyn bridge.

Will join Sunday , but will bailout at sparkhill

damn that means 830 at gwb? depending on tonight's festivities, i shall attempt to come for this.

alyoshas said:

depending on tonight's festivities, i shall attempt to come for this.

+ 1

I'll be there at 730 tomorrow. Long sounds good.

me too (west side bike path)

I'm in! Hall pass in hand.

I will rendezvous on the bike path.

Looking forward to the ride!

Sorry guys; tonight ran later than I intended. Have a muffin for me...