AntonioGG

Last night, I saw some people start a little before 5:30 (I was still on my conf call). Some people got there and were waiting for others at 5:30. I started my solo ride at 5:30. Didn't quite do 2 laps. Came in at 7:30 or so and everyone but two people were gone. I was told everyone went to Opal Divine's. The temps seemed pretty nice. When I started, it showed about 92°F on the weather app. This was my first one in months but usually there are at least a dozen people hanging out after if not more. In the winter, there's a core group of dedicated R&I'ers. I've had a 4:30-5:30pm meeting on Tuesday's for as long as I can remember so I hardly ever make it to one, unless I get a chance to get ready beforehand and take the call on the road.

In! Also hoping my work call ends a bit early so I can go wheels down around 5:30.

I have to stay on schedule or I get in trouble. Some people can do the larger meals every so often. I can do 7oz and 70 calories every 15 minutes. Some people have to drink less more often because that much at once when you're pushing hard can cause problems. If I fall behind one hour, that's it. I cannot go back and catch up. I've learned that the hard way.

Doing endurance race pace rides you'll burn 600-800 calories/hour. Anyone that can eat and process more than 300 calories/hour, wow! That's awesome. I've seen this before in person (Rocky Gingg was eating Freebird burritos on the bike and fistfuls of M&M Trail mix), but wondered even if you can handle it, if you're not pulling too much blood flow away from your muscles to digest all those calories? The reality is that we have a few hundred calories worth of glycogen stored in our muscles, after that's gone, we (most of us) can process about 250-300 calories per hour of fast absorbing sugars (4% glucose, 4% Maltodextrin usually in sports drinks), the rest is going to come from fat if we're going slowly enough, or muscle breakdown if we're pushing things. You can go fast or you can skimp on nutrition. I don't think you can do both. I highly recommend the book "What Comes First, Cardio or Weights?" by Alex Hutchinson if you're interested in any of this stuff. And yeah, I second everyone saying "do what works for you and don't experiment on the ride with what you haven't tried in your normal rides". For me, I have done 24 bottles of Inifinit for a 24 hour race without any real food and feeling pretty good. Sometimes on long rides though, one of those gas station cheese peanut butter cracker packs and a coke (+water) will sub for one of my bottles and helps a bit mentally. For 90 minute rides or less I can do water, but in the summer I can get behind very quickly on electrolytes, so at the very least I throw in some Lite Salt (50% KCl 50% NaCl) into the bottle, but I usually drink Infinit in the summer even for short rides. I have too many side-effects of going without electrolytes otherwise.

+1 I put a dropper on my bike and rarely used it so I took it off. I'm going to put it back on just so I can try to roll down Sponge Bob and do more of the drops at Emma Long.

Coca Cola 600 "If you don't eat your meat [enchiladas], you can't have any pudding!"

+1 I was going to mention this as well. Throw in some road rides because even hard rides on the trail do not have the same benefits that a road ride has when it comes to improving your aerobic capacity. I can feel a difference with even one hard 50 or 60 mile road ride on the weekend. The other thing I recommend doing is doing some hill repeats on some of the climbs of the EB. You're going to be doing these hard hills after quite a few miles. Start by doing something like Yaupon or Coutyard 2-3x, take your time between them, play with your gears and/or pace. Even if you plan on walking these during the EB, they will improve your fitness and prepare you mentally as well. Ride them on your MTB so you know what to expect.

Ha! You're old like me. Do younger people get this one?

My first year attempting it I got 50 miles in. I got through City Park and stopped at Bull Creek off Lakewood and waited for my ride.

Don't feel like you don't have to do it all if you don't feel like you can't do the whole thing. The whole spirit of this ride is you "eat" as much as you can. I highly recommend doing the morning neutral ride to the BCGB, doing some of the BCGB then heading back if you want.

Oh, at least 1-2 days rest per week. Some people need only one day. I need 2.

High Intensity training during the week. Get 60 to 90 minutes in when you can 2-3x a week. Get easier recovery rides in during the week. Get long rides in on the weekend. Start with 2 hours, work yourself up to at least 75% of the race distance. You don't need to do race distance in your training if you do high intensity. Get some core work in for sure, at least 30 minutes of hard-core core work. Work yourself up to the harder and harder stuff. Practice keeping your momentum up on the trail, as opposed to "having fun" if that makes sense.

+1

One thing I realized after reading BlahBlah's ride report one year, it's that it's hard for everyone no matter how fast or how slow you finish it. Those guys doing it in less than 8 hours suffered as much as those of us that do it in 10 hours or 12 hours. When I was in better shape, I was excited about the idea of starting at a certain trail at midnight then doing the EB. Now...not so much. 🙂

Some of us grouped together last year and took turns pushing the bike out to Tejas for the dude that broke his arm on the steps. Listen to DesertNomad and bring more water than you think. And like that old Mojo thread says, bring more spares than you've ever brought to a ride.

Albert, now that I know what that icon means, I think it's adequate and no further changes are needed. Thanks!

For forum headers with unread posts, is it possible to change the font color rather than just bold? Or is there another degree of boldness? I'm using the dark theme.

Same for me, but it is forcing me to ride a lot more now in the heat than I have in a few months. It's good motivation for sure!

A flute

Those are the names I "grew" up knowing the trails by.

+1