24 hour time trial advice for a new-b

Training
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I’m doing my first 24 hour in a little bit. Anybody who has any 24 hour time trial advice, let’s hear it! :smiley:

No advice is too mundane…not that I promise to take any advice (I’m not going to fuel the ride with nothing but marshmallows and olives even if 20 people tell me too!)

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bike for 3 hours, take a 5 hour nap, repeat… :slight_smile:
I have never done one, not i plan to.

So best of luck!

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Bike 4 hours, nap 4 hours and repeat.

Then you will not be last (unless you are much slower than Joel)

I may not have done one either…

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These are super easy. Typical coffee shoppe rides are difficult, but not a 24 hour time trial.

I encourage everyone to do one.

Smashed the course record, which was > a decade old. Achieved RAAM qualifying standard on a course where nobody else has ever been able to. Totally wrecked myself.

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NICE!

Congratulation!

What was the final millage!?

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I road 396 but only 383 of it was under the 24hr time limit. Should be getting my national championship jersey some time…next week maybe? I think the emberrassing truth is I’m such a lard butt among that crowd that none of the jersey’s at the race would fit me. Give me an XXL, please. Always fun to ask that at the podium ceremony.

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Thats a solid amount of miles in 24 hours…
awesome job…
so how was the schedule and nutrition like?
I have heard that when people do 24 hours running in chunks (like the backyard marathons that you run 4.1 miles every hour and rest the rest) people are destroyed by the rest more than the actual run. I would like to hear how it is on a bike ride.

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Here is exactly what I did…three things only:

1.) A liter bottle with 640 calories of Maurten
2.) Two 100cal maurten jellies with 100mg of caffeine
3.) Two 9oz flasks with 280cal dextrose/120cal fructose/0.125 tsp sodium citrate

That’s nutrition for 5 hours. Drink the Maurten over the course of two hours. Drink 25% of the 9oz bottles every 20 minutes. Try to take down a Maurten Jelly every two hours. Had 5 of those nutrition sets mixed up before the race…so I would roll up to the car, throw open the hatch, dump off the empties & re-up with the next set.

I also drank 1.5 mini cherry cokes, ate 4 little cups of pringles, ate a coconut almond butter cliff bar, ate a few olives, and that’s all I can remember.

Talked to the guy who created the race beforehand & he gave me the advice that it wasn’t a good idea to do it without a crew (in retrospect, true) & if there is no crew stay on the bike always. That’s the way it went down. I took a leak, I stuffed my face, I filled my water, I put air in the tires, at one point my back wheel came off & I fixed that…so plenty of crappy ‘stopped time’ but I never rested.

Physically it was not ‘on the limit’ but mentally it was tough. Imagine a big chunk of flint that is your resolve. Every lap you knap a flake of that chunk & that flake lays there and says, ‘Please quit.’ Next lap, there are two flakes in the pile & your resolve is just a little bit knapped away. With 9 hours to go my resolve was flaked away enough to be outnumbered by all those flakey bits piled up urging me to quit. Not for any good reason…I was right on schedule…not cramping…not injured. Just kinda the same type of thing that urges you to take a drink when your thirsty. No real reason to it. Just a building urge to do something (or not do something in this case).

By the second to last lap I was hanging on by a thread! :smiley: It was a really, really mentally emptying effort. But I hit all my goals…even the reach out RAAM qualifying total.

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OK I am curious, where is this 24hr TT? I have done a 12 hr, (236m) averaging just under 20mph. (National 12hr last year on B12 course). It was not a 24, but here are several tips

  1. Find a pace you are happy to hold, and constantly tell yourself not to get carried away. I actually coasted for 1hr 25 mins down hills having pushed slightly up them. That took my average power from 160 to 145 for the 12 hrs.
  2. Use hr and power. Through practice (100s , then slower for the 12) i fnd a combination of HR and powerthat sat nicely and consistently. I sat at that. if either wandered I wondered what was going on (in one 100m TT my HR would not come down and it turned out I needed a pee).
  3. Fueling. Get your calorie intake/hr soprted well beforehand, and get used to it. I survived my 12 on energy bars, bottles of H5 and gels. There are three issues here
    a) can you survive on those, or do you want some “proper food” as well?
    b) can you eat on the bike. Cake sounds lovely but impossible to eat on a TT bike. I even had problems unwrapping marzipan. First picture is drinks and food on preparation (all numbered). Second is all the empty wrappers from what I consumed.
    c) Put alternative foods in your base location, so you can grab some
  4. Have a plan for what you will eat and drink, at each stage. All numbered and organised so when you stop, you can just pick up what you need next. (I ran with two bottle cages 750cc and two bottles off the back (500cc) and a bento box with pre-halved energy bars and gels
  5. Have a bloomin’ good support team. People you can trust, whoo know your routine, know what you need, can provide that when you need it, and can act as morale support when the going get tough.
  6. Consider a bike change for the night. there seems to be three strategies a) put lights on the TT bike at a stop b) swap to a second tt bike with lights already fitted, c) Swap to a rd bike with lights. Personally I would want really good lights for the night stage as I would hate to hit something in the dark.
  7. Having done a few 24 hour endurance events of various descriptions, (Squash/long distance walks/ etc.) you will have tough times. Surprisingly a 20 min nap can do wonders.
  8. Know the route. I assume it is a loop circuit so you can get to know the roads. If it is not and its an end to end, then you absolutely must have good navigation tools. My phone battery was ok for the 12 hrs, my wahoo elemnt was down to 15% or so. I hear some people to a swap of carry supplementary power pack for their devices.
  9. Make sure you are really comfortable in the position. And you can hold it for a long time. I practised with 50 and 100m TTs and then progressed to 5 and 6 hr rides, to be sure I was OK. At planned race pace making sure I knew I could carry on at the end. I raised my TT bars by 20cm. That was fine.
  10. Prepare for eventualities - punctures, chain, hot day, cool night. Think through everything. Planning, planning and the abilty to improvise if necessary.

By the way I was only stationary for 7.5 mins in that 12 hrs (and I was actually unsupported so had to stop at the unsupported rider feed station 3 times to re-stock). The more you can keep moving teh better your average will be, but don’t sweat it. If it is windy, just stick to power and hr plan and let the time be what the time will be…

Like I say, most of this comes from doing a 12hr TT. I hope this is a useful starter for 10. (or 24 :slight_smile: )

(Of course I have never thought about doing a 24…)

I hope this helps…! Good luck by the way.

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food from 12
food from 121494×2656 1.3 MB

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[quote=“Brennus, post:6, topic:42580”]
396
[/quote] Nice mileage :slight_smile: Impressed.

I chose a 30 min drink pattern, rather than the 20 min. Why? Well I used to do 20min when I did ironman, but I found that sitting up, having a drink and eating half an energy bar, lost time, so I reckoned that if I did every 30 mins I would lose less time. Also it means a drink and half a bar each time… with a gel on the hour. So the regime was simple, and almost impossible to get out of sync or confused.

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My advice… Don’t do it :wink: That sounds like a miserable, miserable day.

But then again don’t listen to me! I am firmly in Jonathan’s camp when it comes to long races: I much prefer going all out for 3 hours than noodling for 12, and I haven’t ever considered doing 24 hours.

I feel going long is a test of mental resolve rather than physical capacity. And you can test your mental resolve equally well by going hard for 3 hours. Try to hold upwards of 0.85 IF for 3 hours and you’ll be amazed at the tricks your mind will start playing to convince you you can’t do it.

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@dmalanda I already did it. Smashed the course record which had stood for 11 years. Achieved RAAM qualifying standard which nobody has ever been able to do onthat course. Won a national championship.

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Good job, well done!

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What nation?

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Got my jersey!

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Awesome buddy. What mileage did you have to do to win that…?

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396 miles.

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