It’s like you’ve looked at my ride files from the past six years since putting a power meter on my Rando bike. 
Good stuff from you and @GoLongThenGoHome. Keep posting and educating / informing. Audax / Rando scares folks because the distances are so extreme, but when they finally realize it’s just a chance to eat a lot of food with some quirky friends, they finally get won over.
If it’s dry, you can ride a road tyre. The wider the tyre, the more comfortable. If there are longer rough sections, it might be worth letting some air out, and topping up again after. This is something where it’s worth knowing the terrain.
Nutrition was a big learning from the 400km. Because of the heat, I didn’t want to eat or drink anything. Solid stuff was not going down, so I kept eating liquids (gels/drink mix, soda, etc). Given the length of the event, it was the bare minimum. So definitely something to improve here.
Also, given the heat, I took a camelbag, which ended up being a burden. The heat was trapped on my back, making me feel even hotter.
Agreed, when it’s really hot (for me that’s over ~28°C 
) anything on my back just turns it into a surface that sweat can’t evaporate heat from. I put a hydration bladder in a frame bag. Random odds & ends that aren’t bike-specific go in my top tube bag. I’ve also seen on another randonneur’s bike what looks like a well made custom 3L jerry can that sits in the bottom of the triangle, with a hose up to the aero bars.
That was my plan for my first attempt at a 600 a couple of months ago. Conveniently the route went within 2km of my home at 180, 270, & 360km. I stopped for an overnight break at the 360km mark, with full intentions of getting back on the bike after 6h stationary. After my alarm I procrastinated for about an hour before I had the thought, maybe that was my body telling me to not get on the bike. So I DNF’ed. Wish I knew @marktron’s tip beforehand (bold is my emphasis), so thanks for that, I’ll give it a try, maybe the day after a 300 BRM:
Re: 600K and up rides - There is nothing that can prepare you for riding a second day after absolutely draining yourself (doing 350K or more) the first day. Period. In big bold letters. Except experience.
I DNF’d my first attempt at a 600K for the same reason everyone else does. You wake up after just a few hours of sleep and your entire body tells you “HELL NO.” This is the reason PBP won’t even let you register without a successful 600K in the books. You just don’t know till you know.
When I do our club 600K now, I purposefully coordinate with the new riders to meet me for breakfast at a specific time on Day 2. This “forces” them to get out of bed. No one wants to be seen wimping out, so once they are out of bed and have some food / coffee in them, it’s easier to convince them to just easy pedal for an hour or two “to see how it feels”.
This is always bad news, as being close to home is too tempting to stop. I always do 600km (and longer) events, where the easiest thing to do to get home (after a sleep stop), is to complete riding the event back to the finish.
Depending on access to water, if you can’t stop anywhere to buy it. Always worth knocking on a door and asking if you can fill your bottles up. Otherwise get a TPU bottle with a filter built into the lid. With the latter you can drink from any water source you find (as long as not badly polluted), and they squash to nothing when empty.
Honestly just practice. Doing long training rides at 0.6 or so helps too.
edit: I’ll add that having the experience where you finish much faster and feeling much better at the end despite starting riding way slower, was a useful learning experience to draw from for me.
Yep. I’ve only had one ride where I didn’t feel like death upon waking up for day 2. You just commit to starting to move, and once you’ve been on the bike for 15-30min you feel better. And if you don’t… you’re already on the bike anyways lol.
I’ve heard this too! 
Yes I was disappointed that I didn’t go back out, but I realised later that the ~375k I did the previous day was actually a really good day out. Wasn’t nearly as smoked as when I did a 400km “café ride” last year.
What bikes are you riding, guys? Especially for long-distance.
I’m trying to decide if I should start looking for a replacement for my 2020 Roadmachine.
The Mille Cymru 2014 was a brute. There were a number of people who were caught out by the headwind on the way home. It was my first year of audaxing and a real baptism of fire to the bigger distances!
I look back to those days and wonder how the heck I managed to do what I did. The only thing I know for sure is that you have got to want to do it. If you aren’t aiming to get round as fast as possible I don’t think it matters what bike you ride as long as it will cruise along on the roads. I don’t think it matters what you wear as long as you have enough clothing if you have a mechanical. I also think that structured training does less for audax fitness than just building up through the distances - because audax fitness has bugger-all to do with FTP and everything to do with mental toughness. Riding a intervals is absolutely not the same kind of mental toughness as being on a bike, all day, all night (until you fall asleep in a hedge) and then all day again. I am probably fitter now in fitness terms than I ever was when I was audaxing every weekend, but my confidence in doing the distance is at an all time low and I’m scared to death at the thought of doing a 200 this weekend that I first did in 2013 on a crappy aluminium bike two sizes too big, with no winter clothing, no GPS (I memorised the route on google maps!) and a huge crash halfway round. Now I have a good bike that fits, good kit, over a decade of experience and tens of thousands of kilometers in my legs…..but it will be all I can do to get to the start, never mind the end.
The only advice I really have I think is that you need to want to get round. I have seen ladies, and gents, twice the size and half the power of mine finish audaxes I couldn’t even dream of doing now. I’ve seen guys with twice my FTP pull out halfway or finish as broken men.
@Crytos2000 Most frames will do just fine. Pay more attention to tires & seats…select wider tires & a more comfortable saddle. (actually, maybe that’s exactly what you mean since I think the Roadmachine can only handle 32mm tires)
Also, if you can find a way to rig up some aerobars, either a hybrid integrated cockpit or some clip ons, I think you’ll find that it can feel sooooo comfortable to ride on the sticks from time to time. Generally, more riding pos’ns is better.
I did my first 12hr time trial on a 2012 orbea ordu. That’s pretty much the pinnacle of cycling discomfort. So that’s proof that you CAN do a 365km ride on a very uncomfortable hunk of carbon. A 2020 Roadmachine will be way better than that.
Actually, I tweaked my roadmachine to a good extent now. It has 50mm Yeoleo wheels, 30mm tyres (stretched to 32mm WAM), 40cm handlebars, and the fit is good with an SLR saddle. So, there aren’t many more ways to explore this one. Tyre clearance is indeed the main issue to be able to run larger, all-road-friendly tyres.
Agree with you that you can do long distances on a very uncomfortable bike. The recovery is only longer 
I wonder every winter when my fitness is at its lowest, how I do the long audaxes in the summer. I’ll be entering the Scottish 1300 in January. Once entered I’ll have the target for me to put the work in to be ready, both mental and physical.
Does anyone know of any good forums that discuss Audaxers / Randonneurs / Ultra Cycling? I like the trainerroad comunity i search for someting similar with these topics.
I’m manning one of the controls for that one so I will see you there. 
You better put in an extra dash of training to make sure you’re ready for the final kilometer as 1301 is the listed distance.
Glad to see that the prelim route doesn’t take the A9 like Andy uses for LeJog. That wasn’t much fun when I did it last year.
