I’ve been using Garmin lap counter for measuring my nutrition. Pressing the lap button every time I eat, so I can easily see how much time since my last meal. In the past I tried setting a timer at some interval, say 30 minutes, but that proved too rigid for me. With lap counter I can easily vary the interval depending on how I feel like. Though I generally target eating a bit every 30…40 minutes.
The downside is that I need to remember pressing the button. But I’ve become much better at this over the last few years.
As an added bonus I get a log of my eating schedule
to be honest it amazed myself. you know when you stop at the gas station and you are thinking that you are doing everything as fast as possible…and then 20-30min has passed.
Actually I had following stops.
3h38 min in - 21min stop - gas station - coffee and hotdog
7h20min in - 37min stop - gas station - coffee and wrap + chocolate + WC
11h41min in - 1h4min stop - stopped at a b&b Warm meal and some food prep for the night. Also a toilet stop!
19h52min in - 12min stop - gas station. refilled my bottles and had some food (honey sandwich) that
I prepped during previous stop.
As all the gas stations were closed during the night then I didn’t had any stops for 8h during the night time. Luckly I was prepared for that. I mounted WolfTooth 2 bottle holder so I had 2 500ml and 1 950ml bottle filled with liquid.
I train for ultra bikepacking and have done a couple of multiday events (The Lost Elephant Jumbo). CUrrently I am training for a 2023 Tour Divide attempt.
I’ve been mostly using plan builder and HV options. But lately I have been doing what was suggested earlier in this thread, to do 2 high intensity interval sessions a week and then some easier longer rides. It’s clear that TR doesn’t have a focused ultra plan, but if you have the principles in your head you can make your own plan. Tapping into Train Now for the interval sessions is what I have been doing the past couple of months. I also travel a lot for work so I need to design each block around my travels which end up being recovery weeks/days of sorts.
I also think that core strength work is really important for bikepack racing. Especially for older riders whose backs etc can really take a pounding in these events.
The best coach youtuber I have come across for bikepack/ultra training is John Hampshire. He coached Jenny Graham to her Round the World record a few years ago. His style is pretty simple and bland, but he has good content, shares real ultra training plans, teaches you how to develop your own plans.
He also has some good advice on pacing. The advice Jonathon recently gave in the TR podcast was a bit off for ultras. Hampshire gets into pacing hills which is really helpful. Basically up your effort a little on long climbs. Coast on descents as the aerodynamics make pedaling a poor use of energy.
In terms of fueling these ultras, I tend to stick with real food as much as possible. Sandwiches, dried fruit etc. On multiday events I cold soak oatmeal in ziplock bags. I’ll also cold soak backpacking meals. This is mostly for events that are seriously deep into the mountains where there are no gas stations. I often take a bag of Skratch drink mix or simply a bag of sugar for additional calories in my water.
effort. To me pacing is all about effort, not speed. for multi-day it is about z2. Being able to speak with relative ease and hold a conversation.
Hampshire uses speaking as the simplest way to watch your pace/effort. On a climb you push this a little and then on the descent just recover.
Combine this with the Smart Eat. so when one gets an eat prompt, you hit the lap button. If the # of calories doesn’t jive with the number of laps, you know you’re behind…
Using the lap button or a timer sounds great in theory, especially for 1 day or single effort races. But have you been able to apply it successfully to multi=day bikepack or self supported races? Or have you heard of others successfully doing it?
It’s a hack for sure, but even the out of the box isn’t going to do much beyond report on the end of ride screen of what you reported as being consumed from a calorie / fluid standpoint.
The way I treat it is I don’t ignore eat prompts even if I’m within 10 minutes of ending a ride. It’s something Amber Pierce said “Eating during the end of today’s stage isn’t fueling today, it’s preventing you from falling behind for tomorrow’s stage.” If you’re confidant about being compliant with prompts, the Garmin head unit will record that information to Connect. I don’t know if that is something you can look at in ride history if you haven’t had a chance to sync with “the cloud”.
At the end of the ride my 530 prompts for water and calories consumed. That gets recorded in the FIT file, and any analytics platform can read and display that data.
I like just listening to my body on very long rides. I’ll always aim to regularly eat but also over time I think you learn to go a few hours between meals then eat a whole load when you hit a resupply point.
Main thing for me is that if I’m not having a good time then I’m low on calories. I’ll then focus on eating every 20mins or so until I’m cheerful again.
This is such a great summary, and is basically how my previous coach organized my training for my 3-4 day bikepacking events. I did 5-6 rides per week, but less lifting - but 100% agree the lifting is more important than that little extra bit of volume and I am changing that up this year.
@samus - Other than the tapering before the event that you mentioned, do you periodize this pattern at all, or is it months of the same - i.e., do you do things a bit differently over the winter base period?
I need ALL of the macronutrients for multi-day ultras and long training rides! I need sugar for brain function and unavoidable quick power spikes, fat for its high caloric density, (it’s the best calorie to weight ratio when you have to stuff your bike full of food for multiple days), and protein to prevent muscle wasting. You are going to need every energy pathway you can get, fat or carb.
I can’t stomach high sugar/high carb food/drink mixes for long periods of time. Perhaps you can train your gut to accept it, but these mixes and gels get really expensive - especially for weekly 8 hour training rides. Also, gas stations don’t stock them. > 90g carbs/hr might be perfect for shorter highly glycolytic events like XC and for people with huge watts, but is it really necessary for everyone? Most women in particular - even at the highest level - are not putting out 300 watts normalized power for hours on end.
On the flip side, as Coach Chad has explained many times, the trade-off for fat adaptation is that your quick carbohydrate access energy pathway diminishes. Maybe being fat adapted works on flat to gently rolling pavement. But in the off-road ultras that I do, where no matter how hard I try to avoid them, the terrain forces multiple short spikes above threshold. Plus during ultras my cognitive capabilities and reaction times decline (especially on low sleep), which is dangerous, and the brain runs on sugar.
Another consideration is that for multi-day ultras you are resupplying off of small convenience stores and greasy spoon diners. For that to work, you need a gut of steel. I have noticed that the most successful ultra-endurance racers can tolerate just about anything. A typical menu for me (vegan) is a large number of Clif bars (or other dry mealy bars), protein bars, a large bag of sour patch kids, Potato chips and/or Fritos, Fig cookies, nuts, dried fruit, Red Bull, coke or a Naked juice with protein, and if I’m lucky, a couple bananas and a burrito or two.
There is usually a point in time when I’m underfueled and my gut is not accepting much. You just have to expect this, let go of nutritional perfectionism and pedal easy or rest until the feeling passes.
Just posting here for some reassurance that I’m on the right track and not dooming my effort to complete a 320km event in June '23. The route is there and back along a cycle route in Devon from the South Coast to the North and home again.
My current plan of action is a 6-week lv polarised plan then the 8-week lv version. This is supplemented with 1 or 2 extra z2 TR workouts a week with the aim to do most of them outside (even if cold grim but if it’s very wet indoors instead). On the off days, I’ll also do some kettlebell/bodyweight stuff just to improve strength as I will be on the bike for a long time at my target pace.
The 8-week plan will take me up to the end of January where hopefully the total of 20 weeks polarised will have built a bit of a base so will do sweet spot base 1 & 2 then reassess. Again as with polarised if I have a day to ride I’ll be adding z2 outside workouts, plus strength stuff.
Once spring happens my weekend ride will be just off plan and going long and slow. Not sure if I should be adding another polarised block at the end of Jan or going straight to SS? I’m finding the polarised plan really good for compliance right now and not digging myself into a hole.
That should work just fine. Ultra-endurance isn’t as much about fitness(yea, you gotta have it) it’s more about the mental and nutritional aspects. Get those 2 in order and you can pretty much ride your bike how ever you feel.
I don’t have winter base training because I race in the winter. During the winter I generally don’t do my long rides outside (for obvious reasons) other than the races. If there’s a nice day I’ll try to sneak out for a very long ride. Long rides on the trainer indoors–I would rather die. Endurance adaptations tend to stick around longer so I don’t fret about losing too much of them during the winter (and again, I also have my winter ultra races). Last year I barely did long rides during the winter beyond my races.
I think this winter I might work in one Z3 interval session if I can’t get out for a long outdoor ride. So each week would look like (1 Z5, 1 Z4, and 1 Z3) plus lifting. You could say that in a way my winter is periodized because I’m mostly doing indoor threshold work. Almost all of my weekend focus is going to be on testing gear and setups (a huge part of winter racing) and going out on the MTB trails to practice technical riding in snow.
Right now I am off-season and lifting 4-5x a week for much longer sessions with the occasional long weekend rides. These past two months I’ve gained a stupid amount of muscle and I’m curious to see how it will play out in the winter season. (Winter ultras do require a bit more strength–there’s a lot of pushing.) I’m also making great progress rehabbing an injury during my lifting sessions. Once I get my trainer back from a friend I’ll be returning to the XL training plan with the modifications I just mentioned (swap long weekend ride for Z3 threshold when the weather is bad). This is all a bit experimental.
I think doing a little less volume in favor for lifting produces a more sustainable training schedule. A lot of cyclists find themselves trying to ride the line between optimal training and overtraining while neglecting the gains from this whole other training axis. TR podcast and Dylan Johnson always harp on lifting because the research is clear. There’s pretty much no downside and numerous upsides: makes you faster, increases endurance, helps prevent injury and overtraining, increases bone density, and so on.
I also find polarized to be great for compliance. It’s logistically easier for me to fit into my schedule.
Once spring happens I think you should be focused on getting some very long interrupted hours in on the bike, outdoors. I do this with a hacked together TR polarized MV plan. I just take all the little endurance rides and replace them with one gigantic outdoor ride on the weekend. I don’t care for SS. 1 VO2Max, 1 Threshold, 1 very very very long ride per week. Each long ride I try to target something different. Terrain, climbing, heat, so on.
True re: Chad’s advice. But there’s not much science out there at all on ultras.
I just know with certainty that for me, fasted or under-fueled long rides do me no good. I feel like crap during the ride and come home to my partner feeling hungry, exhausted and grumpy. (Cue Bruce Banner voice: Don’t make me hangry - you won’t like me when I’m hangry!)
I’ve also experimented with “gut-busting” long rides (which for me is ~300 cals/hour), and I’ve felt awesome on the bike and came home happy and energetic, and then I don’t overeat afterward.
For the most part I make sure to fuel every ride well. And in every ultra I’ve done, there comes a point where the digestive capacity slows down and I can’t eat for hours and I’ve survived and finished just fine. So for me there is literally no use for fasted training. I do plenty of long rides capped at z2, which most likely is making the same adaptations.
No doubt, some people seem to do fantastically well on the whole under-fueling thing, but for me it’s a big nope. It’s good to experiment with both extremes and learn what works best for you from a performance and recovery standpoint.
Warm meal and some food prep for the night. Also a toilet stop!