Help with my last activity please

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Ok, so this is my activity Intervals.icu
Dont know if u can watch it

Im fairly new to road biking. Started last summer, i was riding on sundays, then on december went to 3 to 4 days a week (usually 4). Im 50 but i have done sports all my life, however on the bike im slow, specially when i see people that have been riding for many years.
I signed up for this event on 4th of June, its 117 kms and 2800 climbing.

YESTERDAY i did a simulation of this. Riding for 126 kms with 2500 metres. I tried to simulate the food i planned to eat on that day. I read about max of 60g Carbohydrates per hour.

The riding went very good on the first part, felt great. I had done my normal breakfast 2 hours before. Well, a bit less than 2 hours actually.

My plan was a energy bar for every hour (39g of carbo, 22g of them glucose), drink only water for 1st 2 hours then go to isotonic drink with carbos for the rest.
I had also energy gels that i wanted to eat every hour. So after 30 mins i ate my 1st bar, 30 mins later a gel, 30 mins later another bar, 30 mins later a gel. Had drunk almost 1 litre of water at that time. Took a 200mg Caffeine pill. All going great.

Then after 3rd hour i felt like did want to throw up (but didnt), i could keep same speed than usual (slow anyway) but my heart rate to power went to the sky, i was now all the time into 150 bpm with not much power, when i didnt pedal (descents) the bpms didnt lower that much, they did it slowly, in general i was riding very fatigue but could keep on.

I didnt go on eating, just a gel every hour because i had this feeling of throwing up, and went back to water instead of isotonic drink.

Ride when for 5h 55 mins (21,5 kmh average, yes im slow lol).
My HR zones were almost 3 hours at more than 150 bpms, which i dont know if it was the cause of the bad HR/POWER at the end or not.

I had lots of climbings (2500mts) so i tried to kee my power below my ftp`at all times, only going over it on very short spikes or not much time if any.

My HR threshold is 166 but im not sure if i am really only aerobic if i am 160 a lot of time…because if felt ok, but the fatigue on the second part of the activity this was too much.

What are you guys thoughts? Maybe i should have eaten differently? What can i do to avoid the bad last part of the activity in terms of HR/POWER for my event?

Thanks a lot guys

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Can’t see the activity but you gave enough info.
Sounds like you tried to many new things in one go…
You’re a bit late in asking advice because there’s not that much time left to prepare.
What have you been doing the last 2-3 months regarding endurance work? Have you built up slowly to riding 4-5 hours endurance? Or did you jump from a “usual” 2 hour ride straight to this simulation?
If you aim to just complete the event in a more or less comfortable way, there is very good hope but just don’t try to make it a competition.
You will need to find out what your stomach is happy with because the event is too long to go just by liquid food. But that food can be anything that you and your stomach are comfortable with. Chances are that the gels caused the nausea. 2 gels and only one litre of water in 2 hours is not OK. The amount of water is about right for 2 hours but when taking gels you need more. My advice would be to cut down on the gels and keep one or two for the last quarter of the ride. Eat bars, banana’s, fruit, even some dark bread with jam (personally my favourite) that you prepared in separate easy to open packages.
The poor power/heartrate ratio is caused by:

  • Fatigue: your aerobic system isn’t up to the task of riding that long thus you get decoupling
  • The nausea: your stomach needs more blood/oxygen to digest the food intake that you’re not used to. You are taxing your aerobic system a lot with this food mistake.

I would suggest that you change your preparation routine. The next couple of weeks, do enough endurance rides around 3-4 hours and in another workout during the week, do some treshold work. During the endurance rides, experiment with food to find something that give’s you enough energy but is friendly on your stomach.
Trust that the combination of those will get you where you want on D-day. It is NOT necessary to do anything more in preparation then about 3/4 of the load you’re expecting that day. On the condition that you don’t take it as a race!
If you do the above, you have a very good chance of comfortably finishing this event and probably even in a better time then you think possible now. But first take 2-3 days of rest to recover from that bad experience. And keep riding untill close to the event but reduce length of your rides during the last 10-12 days to 1-1.5 hours. That will keep you fit while completely recovering.
And absolutely try anything you can to make that event a fun experience. Find a group that rides at a similar pace and tuck-in to reduce energy waste on the flat sections. Ride your own pace on the climbs!

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@MedTechCD thanks for taking the time to answer me.
Good advices there for sure!!! Sorry for my long reply

Just some clarifications:
I didnt take just 2 gels and 1 litre of water in the first 2 hours. This is what i took:

after 30 mins riding i took one energy bar of 55g, with around 40g of carbos, around 50% of them are sugars.
Then 30 mins later (1 hour in the ride) i took an energy gel, 22g of glucose.
30 mins later (1h30 in the ride) another 55g energy bar
2h in the ride another gel and a 200mg caffeine pill.
2h30 in the ride another (3rd) 55g energy bar.

I started feeling worse after the 3rd hour. My stomach felt like watered, and later the feeling of wanting to throw up came.

My plan was 1 energy bar and 1 gel every hour (splitting them into 30 mins time), so at should be around 60g of carbos per hour. So it was not just 2 gels and 1 litre of water.
I was concerned that maybe i put too much carbos on the beginning, but im not sure if that was the reason.

Im definitely taking your advices in my next longer rides about trying what food suits me better.

As far as your question about my previous trainings:
I started going out more often on december (4 times a week).

Before this it was once per week and typically was a 3 or 3h30 group ride but split in 2, with a 20-30 mins breakfast time, so really split into 1h30-1h45 continuous ride.
After December ive done a base period (1st time training for cycling so im sure ive made some mistakes), going more time and not having a break in between. Typically, 1h or 2h sessions on week days, and a 3h or so (but continuos) on weekends. Ive felt my endurance has gone up a lot.

Then ive build up to 4 hour rides without a stop, and a couple of months ago i started adding more climbing gradually and i did a couple of 5 hours ride (both started to felt my performance would go down after 4 hours). Both of this longer 5h rides included climbing with 1500 and 2200m (my then current record) respectively. In both my performance would go down after 4 hours specially the 2200m where the last ascent of 16km i had to go on a much slower rythm.

I now feel like a 3h30 1000m ride is an easy task and i can go on a good rythm and dont feel any drop in performance (like ive done 3h30 1500m ride at 195W NP when my FTP is 217W and finish strong even sprinting on short climbs).

The problem seems to be after 4 hours when i go down a cliff,this time (heat maybe a factor too as day started at 17ÂşC and finished at more than 30ÂşC).

This was my longer distance so far (126 kms), and longer climbing (2500m from my previous 2200)

Particularly Its good advice to do 4h ride once a week for the next 2 weeks then taper for the event. I just want to enjoy the event, try to be able to finish in a good way and not feel so fatigue at the end, but not competition as im slow anyway (competition against myself).

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I got what you said about the bars and gels in the first 2 hours but what I meant is that gels need a lot more water to easily digest, like 1 litre per gel. The intake of other food plus the two gels and only one litre of water combined with higher environment temperature are problematic for lots of people. I’m not a huge fan of gels, though they can be a blessing at the right moment. I would suggest to carry one or two and take them much later on the ride when the first fatigue symptoms settle in. But take lots of water with them. A lot of people have problems digesting them.
For the rest, your preparation sounds quite good and I’m pretty sure you will do fine. You just made one mistake now in your simulation by trying out a entirely new feeding strategy. The adrenaline on the day of your first big event and the fact that you can make use of others by drafting should be more then enough to finish this with a good feeling. Don’t make a big thing out of this simulation that went kind of wrong. Learn from your mistakes is the best advice I can give you and never try something new on important rides. Stick to the things that you know are neutral or positive. Eating too much is just as harmfull as not enough and in times of stress it can be even much worse.
One more thing: if you can choose, start early on the event. The more riders starting later then you, the more choice you have to draft on them. Start conservative and finish strong. The fatigue you feel after that is the sort of fatigue you can get addicted to :wink:

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Hi, again thanks for all your help, your detailed answers are awesome for me.
Yes, i made that mistake and tbh i thought i may do it but better do it on the sim day than on the actual event day, so i will test on other days 3 to 4 hours (its not really the same as in this lenght i never had any food problems until today).

For me the simulation was a success though, not a failure because i could complete the distance and climbing (both records for me). It could have gone better, definitely! but was ok and i could finish.

The start early advice is great as i was planning to start on the back of peloton but start early would give more chances to use more drafting, so definitely im going to do that.

Thanks for all,

David