We are back to business, training for our 200+ mile ride September 12, Lotoja. Prior to France we were focused on climbing, but now we have to switch to riding for distance, with climbing included, as Lotoja will included about 8500 feet of climbing over the 200+ miles. And yes, it’s all in one day.
Saturday we set out for a 102 mile ride. There wasn’t much climbing, only about 3500 feet, so that meant we were doing most of the work ourselves – there were no long descents. We are back on our ketogenic diet, and had coffee with butter and coconut oil for breakfast along with bacon and eggs. We set out with 2 Quest protein bars each, and we drank 8 oz of water with KetoCaNa prior to starting. I took some extra KetoCaNa powder with us but we did not end up needing it. We also did not start with Super Starch, but again, we took 2 packets with us just in case (we did not end up needing it). We also took a small bag of salted nuts and snacked on those throughout the ride.
We finished in just over 6 hours, averaging 16.5 mph. My legs were REALLY sore afterwards. I was using different muscles than I had been training for long climbs with, and boy did I feel it.
The good news is our nutrition plan worked well – we both ate our bars, and snacked on the nuts, but we didn’t feel we needed anything more than that. We were very hungry at the end, however, and had a very satisfying burger (no bun) and salad at the end of our ride.
We’re trying to figure out what we will need to eat to make it 12 hours on the bike, so our next training ride this Saturday will involve more experimenting as we’ll go slightly longer – closer to 120 miles. My initial thoughts are using Quest protein bars, Super Starch snack bars and powder, KetoCaNa (no more than 3 servings), and perhaps some beef sticks or something more substantial about 6 hours in when we start to feel truly hungry. I think the hunger is largely psychological because if we are in ketosis we should be able to go that long with minimal food, but for now it’s how we are feeling when we ride so we will need to prepare accordingly.