I once did 250 km and change in a single day (a trip with Amsterdam as start and end counterclockwise around the IJsselmeer). When I was 21 and probably the fittest I've been in my life. Afsluitdijk seemed like it would never end, 30 km straight against a terrible headwind (but the whole trip has hardly any elevation change). I peed green stuff and had major skin damage on the inside of my thighs afterwards. Having to go up two flights of stairs with my relatively light racing bike at the end nearly did me in.
900 km in a day sounds like an incredible feat to me and I'm super impressed with it, but I would really wonder about the kind of impact that has on your body.
I slept for more than a day after that trip and I swore I would never do it again (and I didn't).
I have attempted twice to ride from Hannover to Berlin in a single day which is approx. 280km.
First try I made 140km. It was a hot day and the main issue I had was that I sweat more than I could drink. Also it was getting night and I was afraid of not being able to get a train anymore so I abandoned.
For the second try I started at night (2am) to make sure I had a chance to make it in time. Around 4pm after over 180km I had to abandon because the cycle path ended and it was too dangerous to drive on the road with all that traffic.
Anyway it was a very pleasant experience as you pass many nice towns and other sightseeing. I stopped countless times to take pictures.
Riding 100km, or even 200km is less harder than many expect it to be.
100km is well within the reach of pretty much everyone, assuming only mild amounts of fitness. In Cape Town every year there is a biking event that gets around 35000 participants, and is a 110ish km loop including 4 noticeable Hill climbs. Minimum age is now 12,but in the past children as young as 8 have finished, and there are plenty of older riders in their 70s and beyond. Reasonably fit folk do it with no training, often on a borowed bicycle.
Heck, I did once 180km on a mountain/cross bike. It was around Lake Geneva, normally racers do it in sub 4ish hours time, it took me 9.5h. Wind was the biggest enemy, when doing circle eventually you face it. I did little to no biking beforehand, being generally fit from hiking I managed somehow, but last 50kms was sufferfest. And last 1km very steep uphill in Lausanne I had to go down the bike 4x, but refused to take public transport.
The biggest issue, aside from general tiredness at the end was neck/shoulder pain. It just isn't healthy position to be in, and that's for mountain bike, for road bike it must be much worse. Impotence / fertility issues are also frequent for devotees from what I heard, even with appropriate saddles.
My boss had serious neck pain issues that doctors were baffled with and unable to cure. Told him to stop road biking, refused to do so. But eventually he stopped and problems disappeared for good.
Once in a lifetime experience, glad I did it but sure as hell not going to repeat it. Plus I've found more interesting sports for me.
This is something that really bugs me: how many people I see on badly fit bikes, starting with inappropriate frame sizes but also the most painful postures and handle bars that are either too narrow or too wide for the individual, saddles set too far back or forth, cranks that are too long or short etc. This is especially weird for high end bikes: if the place you are buying your too-expensive bike from ensure that they know how to fit the bike to your body, it will make all the difference once you start riding longer trips.
100 km is doable for basically anybody, I did 100 km when I was completely out of shape and weighted 130 kg. The main problem was PITA from the seat, not exhaustion. I think doing 10-15 km/h on a reasonably flat terrain for the whole day wouldn't be a problem for vast majority of people.
well, I didn't really check scientifically, but a friend said: yeah, you're heavy (110kg but going down sloowly) and you still move a bit, so clearly on flat terrain, you can just put those muscles into going forward. Where he probably has a point.
The problems start uphill - I only had a 5 gear bike and went for a simple 60km roundtrip stopping at some relatives. All went well, until I had to move up 100ms. With cramps (the bike was too small), I walked the last km.
But that hill (6% for 2km if you take it in one go) still is hard with a suitable gravel bike now (at 105kg).
I'm at about 100kg now, walking and running got much easier but I don't see much difference on bike. I mostly cycle with my wife who is much more fit and has basically perfect BMI, but has knee problems. She has more problems going uphill than me, so we walk up steeps hills.
May I suggest trying an e-bike for your wife? Even at the low assist levels you will find noticeably less pressure required on your knees and that can make all the difference. I have a close family member with knee issues and there it helped tremendously.
Tried to persuade her many times, she doesn't want one cause they are heavier than normal bikes and taking it from our flat outdoors and over obstacles in the city would be harder.
That makes good sense. Hm, let me think about this for a bit, maybe there is a way to get something light fixed up that still helps with knee injury. Because in my experience it is only the 'getting started' part where you need help, not once you're rolling.
I kinda agree it's rarely distance being the problem it's all the other side effects. Seat, or something wrong on the gears, or wheels, or wind or terrain.
With a well adjusted, well maintained bike on a flat lane without wind most would simple push and glide softly.
I drove my bike through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. The only country with good cycle paths is the Netherlands. In France I even ended up on the highway because the road just changed. And I had the same experience as you in Germany. It's dangerous to cycle next to cars who are driving 90km/h.
> In France I even ended up on the highway because the road just changed.
What kind of GPS navigation system did you used? It can't imagine a single place in France where the highway is the only available road, since there is a lot a really small roads everywhere. (I did an almost 3000km tour of France a few years ago, and for instance Google maps is an absolutely terrible tool for this kind of use).
But this was a long time ago. I think somewhere around Metz.
The road was something like a primary road which turned into a highway. A paper map indeed confirmed the road changed into a highway.
Ah ok! Primary roads do indeed turn to highways, and without a GPS I can understand how you ended up in such road in the first place, simply by following the direction signs.
That sounds like a fun ride. I know the region well and the scenery there is quite amazing, too bad that - as you noticed - bike paths in Germany are still optional in many places. But near the bigger towns you can usually ride safely.
The longest I've ridden is from Long Beach, CA to San Diego, which is about 170 km. Started at 5am and arrived at 5pm. I remember the first half of the trip to have nice scenery. I don't remember the second half at all, as I zoned out and contemplated the mistake I had made as I kept pedaling.
Ah yes, the 'what was I thinking' feeling... That's uncomfortably familiar. I don't remember any scenery from anything past Hindeloopen (on the Frysian side of the trip) either, but it had become dark by then, though I don't think it would have mattered much.
Retrospectively, I was woefully unprepared for that trip, not physically, but gearwise (food, drink, spares). I had planned to stay over in Friesland somewhere and then figured I would rather sleep in my own bed. That was probably a miscalculation, but that first half went pretty smoothly so I totally underestimated how bad the second half would be. Going onto Afsluitdijk that was pretty clear but by then the way back was long enough that I decided to go on.
The lack of spares in the end was probably and advantage because the bike held up perfectly (an old Peugeot 10 speed) and it would have just added more weight. But the lack of food & drink was really bad. I Ended up in an all-night gas station at some point to get some water, they were quite surprised to get a customer on a bicylce.
About 12 years ago I rode from Kanata (west end of Ottawa) down to Kingston— about 145km, I think. As training for it, I had done a few 80km days and one 105km, but the final ride was still a major step up and similarly wiped me out.
The funniest memory I have of the whole experience was how delicious the dinner was that I had at a little greasy spoon in Westport, about 2/3rds of the way there. Similar to camping or being on a canoe trip, it's just nuts how good food tastes when you're physically exhausted and starving. I went back to that diner later with my then-fiancee, and the food was considerably less appealing without the benefit of having cycled 100km to get to it.
My mother's family has an (apocryphal?) story about an ancestor whose unit during the civil war caved and slaughtered some of their horses for food while starving.
It was the best meal of his life.
After returning home from the war, he determined to raise horses for meat. The first taste-testing, as the story goes, was underwhelming.
There was a huge scandal about a Dutch meat processing company replacing beef with horse meat without mentioning this on the label or in fact anywhere else. The CEO went to prison for that (and the company went bankrupt). It's funny that if the taste is that different that nobody noticed this earlier on.
As a kid I interpreted the story to mean it wasn't very good, but in retrospect I suppose it could've been ~indistinguishable from beef and it still would've been a big disappointment for someone who expected it to be the second-best cut of meat they'd ever eaten...
Plenty of people that eat beef would really not like to be told they ate horse meat after the fact.
In wartime in NL anything that had protein was fair game, including dogs and other pets, I don't expect that it would be different anywhere else and I'm pretty sure that after a diet of flower bulbs and such those would have tasted just fine. There are some pretty harsh jokes around that theme.
Ah yes, the Pferdefleischskandal. Apart from the lie on the label (Etikettenschwindel) I'm still ambivalent about it. Because from time to time I pass butcher shhops advertising horse meat, and in larger supermarkets it's a speciality canned like corned beaf, usually from Poland.
So they got added value with their Gammelfleisch! What's not to like? :-)
What I understood from the horse meat scandals lately, replacing with horse meat is often the problem with where did they get the horse meat? If it's not proven to be from horses that hasn't been used for riding or racing, it can contain medicines we humans are not supposed to eat.
Yes, and food labeling laws are pretty strict: it should contain what it says on the tin, no matter where it came from, and you need to have a proper administration right back to the source. This has become a criminal offense since the mad cow disease affair.
Horse and beef really taste pretty different (I've had both, in a number of different preparations), but I suspect that mixing the two together would render the final result close enough to beef that the psychological effect of expecting to eat beef would allow people to taste it as just beef -- sort of like those blind taste tests of wines where they added red food coloring to white wine and people (if I remember right, even a couple of wine experts? I dunno, I'd have to look up that study and it's late. :) ) interpreted the taste as a red.
Sounds painfully familiar. Did something similar long ago. Bangalore to Bidadi (on Mysore highway).
The onward ride of 50KM or so was very pleasant. I later realized it was because of a gentle down gradient. As a consequence, the return leg was a terrible misery. So much so that I hauled myself and my bike in a tuk-tuk for the last 10KM or so.
For me the sweet spot was 80KM. To be able to fully enjoy the ride and not feel miserable for next few days.
As a teenager I did something similar. Lived up in the mountains in Norway. Started the ride with ~10kms downhill. Decided that day would be the day I broke 100km for the first time. After biking a further 80kms on the flats, I had the steep hills back home left. I got about halfway up before I had to get my mom to pick me up. Then I did small laps in the village afterwards to still reach 100k, heh.
Agreed. I've done Seattle to Portland in 2 days a few times (200 miles total, which I split as 120/80) and while I'm glad I did it, I've realized that I like 30-60 mile rides far more than 80+. It wears you down.
“I remember the first half of the trip to have nice scenery. I don't remember the second half at all, as I zoned out and contemplated the mistake I had made as I kept pedaling.”
Time on earth kind of quote right there, my friend.
Reminds me of my own "contemplation" on the way back out of the Grand Canyon. Getting down there is hard. Getting back up is way harder. And the only "food" I took with me was a six pack of beer, so somewhere halfway back up my body ran out of glycogen and I couldn't even maintain my body temperature. Thought I was gonna die, and realistically I could have died, actually. I was there alone, and had I sat down to "rest" that could have been it. Moral of the story: if you're going to attempt something physically demanding like this, at a minimum have plenty of energy dense food, water, and a thermal blanket with you. That's how I pack for longer hikes nowadays.
When we were kids, one of the adults in our Boy Scout troop would read stories from this book [1] each week, to encourage us to follow the motto, “Be Prepared”, when it comes to hikes and such.
Unfortunately, as you suggest, your story is commonplace and doesn’t always end well :/.
The takeaways I remember: (1) never hike the Grand Canyon, or any place with high exposure, in the summer, unless you’re extremely prepared for extreme weather (2) always pack the ten essentials [2] (3) when attempting a long or arduous hike, always inform an accountable third party of when and where you’re going.
Hopefully this helps somebody avoid a similar situation in the future!
My husband and I went there in December, which I highly endorse. It was frigid when we started, cool when we got as far as we thought prudent for a day hike, and we were sweating and down to t-shirts by the time we made it back up top.
Time management: think about how long you want to be out. Divide by 3. Once you hit that first third, turn around. I follow this rule on my bike as well when riding downriver if the train situation is uncertain. I do not appear to be nearly as well-trained as the rest of you commenting on this.
Years ago I hikes around Annapurna in Nepal. Going through Thorong La (spelling) pass goes up to 5400m and can have snow any time of year. I saw several unprepared hikers who had simple summer gear with them only. The locals hike this route in flip flops sometimes. Fee years after that there was the big earthquake which killed ppl at Mt. Everest and around the same time that Annapurna area got around 2m of snow in 24h. Several ill prepared hikers got lost and died in the snow storm.
More like bread and bread-like things. Sugar has to pass through your liver first, so it's not instantly available. Nuts, which are often recommended, are also energy dense, but harder to fully digest, unless you chew them really freakin' well, which nobody does.
I did Vätternrundan in Sweden in 2019. 300km, used 8:44, so avg speed around ~35km/h.
The moment we finished, we all fell asleep in the grass. So weird how the body can go on and on, but the moment it knows it's done (/safe), it shuts off.
Him holding the same speed for three times as long and solo is mental.
That's a very decent time. The good thing about a group is that you can rotate point, that makes a pretty big difference assuming everybody is in roughly equal shape.
Endurance is not really about general fitness, but about adaptation to a specific activity, road cycling in this case.
I’m an amateur, not serious cyclist, did 15k km in past 5 years. I’m not particularly fit (10km run in ~1 hour). Longest I did was 230 km at 25 km/h and it wasn’t really that memorable. I could have easily continued. But when I started cycling, and wasn’t really less fit, I could have barely cycled for 50 km.
> Longest I did was 230 km at 25 km/h and it wasn’t really that memorable.
Once you start doing that trip at 30 or 35 km/h you'll find it a lot more memorable. Target for a distance like that on flat country should be in the 5.5 to 6.5 hour range when you're in mostly flat country on a proper bicycle.
In the end it’s about %FTP for a certain time. For me, 230 km at 25 km/h is ~50% FTP for 9 hours. If I were to ride at 90% FTP for multiple hours, which I think is at the border of what's humanly possible, I could do ~33 km/h, so 230 km in ~7 hours. If I were to raise my FTP by 40% to 350 W, leisurely 50% FTP would be ~29 km/h and 90% FTP would be ~36 km/h, so 230 km in ~8 and ~6.5 hours, respectively.
What's constant regardless of FTP is the ability to ride for multiple hours without getting saddle sores, joint pain, or running out of energy, which is what endurance is about in my opinion.
Hardly anyone does extreme endurance activities every day. The oxidative stress, tissue damage, immunosuppression, and inflammation can be pretty severe but with adequate recovery protocols there are unlikely to be persistent health problems beyond a few days.
Long term high volume endurance training can also cause calcification effects in some older athletes.
I had a friend who was really in to endurance sports for a while. He gradually kept ratcheting up the distance and frequency. At the time, he talked about it as chasing a feeling. I saw him once after he'd run something like 35 miles in a day and he was really relieved that he had found his limit at that distance. He was worried that he was going to end up one of the ultramarathoners running 50-100 miles in a day.
So yeah, if he's at all representative, I don't think it's health that they're chasing. The most I've done is a couple of sprint tris and a few 50-mile-per-day bike trips. But even that for me wasn't about health; it was about challenge.
Food is simple. Just about one Banana and an Apple, and about 1,5L fluid(3 cans) every 100km. Which means you don't even have to have them with you, since you can buy it everywhere. OFC that depends on where you drive. And on the speed.
My personal fastest 24 hour split was about 600km, while riding the first half of the Paris-Brest-Paris brevet in 2019. I had my first sleep after that in Brest and took much longer breaks for the return journey for a total ride of 1240km in 78:02:21 (with ~26 hours spent stopped).
I'd done many 600km brevets before that comfortably in 35-37 hours with a ~4hr sleep in the middle, but at PBP there were thousands of other strong riders and it was fun to work together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randonneuring is a lot more "normal" of a way to ride your bike all day than the Ultracycling approach in the article. Instead of grinding out laps of a racecourse solo, ride from town to town on pleasant backroads socially.
Mentally I don't really suffer anything, though I did cry like a baby while riding through misty valleys at dawn the third day. I had realized I'd crossed into Normandy, and got emotional from working out from first principles why I new that detail of french geography. In the first town I passed through in daylight the locals were hanging up large banners for their 75th Anniversary of Liberation by the US Army.
I had a few serious physical setbacks from my ankle, losing a cleat bolt, a wrong turn — but it was easy to run into old friends out on the course to regroup and make new friends along the way helping each other out of predicaments.
I lost a lot of my endurance abilities from Covid, so when I do it again I will definitely be shooting for a different goal: https://adrianhandssociety.com/
Haha I just kept gallivanting around Paris afterwards, I spent 10 days in France and cumulatively slept maybe 30h total.
I hadn't done much riding that summer because of a broken ankle and actually re-fractured it mid-ride from vibration/stress while descending into Brest. The biggest trouble was that it was impossible to get any ice for it, but I found nice self-adhesive bandages to immobilize it the next day and was fine completing the ride.
Oh, that kind of complication certainly doesn't help. I hope that healed up properly, ankles are quite vulnerable. And sometimes what seems to have worked out well catches up with you later on.
It’s not really, ask all us audax riders. it’s surprising to think that 250km in a day was so life changing when I/we do 1200km in 3 days regularly and at a leisurely pace
900km is 15 km further than the longest RAGBRAI (550 miles) ever. And that is done over 7 days.
I've ridden the full RAGBRAI three times and know from personal experience that your body turns into an insatiable caloric furnace after the second day. Pancakes, pasta, ice cream, steak and pork chop sandwiches, gallons of water and of course, nightly carbo loading. All grist for the mill.
But this, this is at a whole other level.
800-900 calories per hour == 19,200 to 21,600 calories in 24 hours. Which, btw, does not turn off just because you stop. It probably took 2 days just to taper down his body's panic alarm. Not to mention sleep and muscle recovery.
You should look into the history of the Trans Iowa race[0]. It was a single "day" event (if you don't hit certain checkpoints in time, you're out) and was usually around 330 miles (530 km)...on gravel roads of all qualities. There was a separate division for single speed bikes. It was insane.
Not to dismiss RAGBRAI, though. It is a different kind of challenge - biking 50 miles in a day, especially with frequent stops, is no big deal. Sleeping in a tent, waking up, and doing it every day for a week especially with all of the nighttime activities is a different kind of challenge.
From my experience of doing two trips across Iowa, the challenge has almost nothing to do with cycling. For many people, RAGBRAI is a challenge in taming their alchoholism. The bike riding is easy if you don't drink.
I feel like this is greatly exaggerated. I did half of that in 3 days (500km) with the last day being 250km (because I was sick of doing it) and I didn't feel any such "caloric furnace". I ate a couple of pbjs each day and then had some rice and beans for dinner. I didn't do this very intentionally, I just didn't have much choice (I did this ride in Africa, where there aren't many ice cream shops).
It's universally understood that a century is one of the easiest "feats of endurance", which is why you see people far into their 50s and 60s still able to do them.
>> I feel like this is greatly exaggerated. I did half of that in 3 days (500km) with the last day being 250km (because I was sick of doing it) and I didn't feel any such "caloric furnace"
I think this depends on your fitness, especially your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds and the shape of your lactate curve. Less fit people burn a lot of glycogen even at lower wattages which results in crazy hunger when your glycogen stores are depleted. Trained people are able to burn mostly fat at relatively high wattages and even skinny people have a lot of energy stored in fat.
Personal anecdote: I decided to use the pandemic to get back into shape. When I started accumulating endurance kilometers, I had to eat a carbo-gel every 30 km and I still felt really hungry after the ride and I had to devour enormous portion of pasta immediately. Now I can easily go 100 km on empty stomach and I do feel kind of hungry after that, but nothing exceptional.
True. It takes a few years when you don't get much faster anymore but eventually the body settles into a habit of simply not running itself as deep into super low blood glucose levels anymore as it used to, thanks to shifting the threshold where fat conversion is phased out upwards. You still arrive from a 5h+ Very Hungry (which is part of the joy because everything tastes so good!) but not quite as badly as you used to from a 2h.
Both very true but also overrated, in a way. When it's cold enough to avoid overheat without sweating and the body is sufficiently used to the task at hand to not trigger much sweating proactively from exertion that's actually just barely enough to keep you warm you can get by with surprisingly little drinking. One rainy day on an 11h ride I only increased drinking frequency in the last hour or so when I realized that a bike with empty bottles would be easier to carry up the stairs.
When I did coast-to-coast USA in 1984, I was sometimes "too tired to stop" and drove all night. Maybe even 500 km if the wind was good. I did not count kilometers, because I was deliberately unsporty and a smoker too. Then I could check to a motel early in the morning and get extra day for free. https://youtu.be/nmNpqdZY3Do
From Montreal via Yellowstone to Hollywood. Places that I knew something of in Americas.
Not particularly eventful and challenging task because I was a veteran already. For example I bicycled from Finland to Yugoslavia in 1971, which was a shit-show extreme.
Holy cow, that must have been quite the adventure. Back then the Iron Curtain was in full force and that alone must have given you plenty of challenges and then there is cycling in East-Block traffic for the better part of that trip.
Do you have pictures from that trip? I'd be very interested to see what you encountered back then (assuming you were allowed to make pictures).
Indeed. I was going to make full circle via Italy and France and Holland etc. But got a bad cut to my chin in Italy and took the train and ferry home with face taped up.
I had minor accident in Italy and I ended up in hospital and someone stole my camera.
Roads were bad, of course. But there was not much traffic, except lorries and army vehicles. Civilians used oxcarts and bicycles.
Funny thing is that my Communist Party Youth Club Card made things easier. But later in USA Visa application I had to lie about six times to the question "Were you or your relatives ever connected to a Communist or Nazi organization".
Why communists and Nazis would be equivalent is an interesting question all by itself. We've had a communist party (some vestige of which still remains today) here in NL.
I remember the ox carts (and more frequently, horse drawn carts) from only a bit over a decade ago in the poorer parts of Romania (anything outside the major cities). The 'Communist Party Youth Club Card' is probably a collectible now :)
Thank you for the unique story, pity the thief made of with your camera, stealing from a hospital has to be a moral low.
I can add my personal longest-day story. Short background: I started bike touring back in high school, and had done several multi-week bike tours[1] before doing my longest day many moons ago.
It was a flat 400k randonnée. Two starters, we stayed together for the first 100k and then he took of[2]. I was pretty fine for the first 300k[3]. I had had a hamburger at 150k and a pizza and 250k, in addition to some bananas and snacks, so I was in good shape enerywise. But then it got dark, and started to rain, and I was getting tired.
Tired to the point where I actually fell asleep while biking. Probably just for a second or two, but I had drifted into the opposing lane. It was after 11pm on a lightly trafficked road, but still. And I could just as easily gone into the ditch. I became wide awake at that point, and then pretty much limped home for the last few hours, getting home at just before 3am after having started 5am the previous morning.
I did do a few more 250-300k rides the following couple of years, but I realized I also had found my limit when it came to long-distance one-day rides[4]. This summer I did a very nice 650k, 9 day tour on my Brompton. That's more my style these days.
[1] Generally averaging 90k per day (with rare days up to 150k) at a leisurely pace.
[2] In the end, he finished like 5-6 hours before me, IIRC.
[3] I had done both a 200 and 300 during the previous six weeks so was in pretty good shape.
[4] It's probably been 15 years since I did more than 200k in a day.
A Brompton is a surprisingly good bike for a folding bike. I have one that I always have with me in the car and it has done quite a bit of mileage. Initially I was super skeptical about stability but once you get the hang of it it is actually pretty easy and remarkably quick for such small wheels.
I think that his performance on the TransAm bike race is more impressive. He rode 440km every day for 16 days straight across the USA. Aside from all the elevation change and weather, he did it fully self supported, meaning he had to carry all his food, sleep gear, etc.
The TransAm / Tour divide are pretty incredible races and fun to watch everyone's GPS trackers virtually on trackleaders.
For a point of comparison I took 72 days (3 rest days) to complete the transam. I averaged about 60 miles per day, and was generally wiped out by the end of the ride. I would consider myself in average shape, so a reasonable approximation of what normal people can do. Trans am racers are a cut above.
I would imagine, distance aside, that sitting on a bicycle and moving is actually easier than sitting on a motorcycle and being mostly stationary. Whenever I would get off a motorcycle after a long ride I quite literally have to unfold in stages until I can even walk normally again, I have never had that kind of problem on the bicycle, even after lots of hours in the saddle.
For me personally it's not even physical, and I don't even drive long routes, 400km roundtrip at most. But I'm just mentally numb after doing that. I think it's because I drive fast on the highway so I'm alert all the time, super taxing even after < 3 hours on the bike.
This is easier on dual sport motorcycles where it's easier to shift position while riding, as well as stand on the pegs to stretch out (at lower speeds of course).
My longest days of riding were around 650 km and I was totally exhausted by then. I typically shoot for 250-300 a day maximum.
FTA: “In testing I knew that it was around 25 watts quicker”
What does that mean? My best guess is that, at speeds around his target speed, it takes 25 watts less power to ride at that speed, but that seems too huge a difference to give up on to me (https://cyclingtips.com/2021/07/1026-km-austrian-ultra-cycli... says the guy doing >1,000 km in 24 hours had a normalized power of 275W, so, assuming the two riders to be of similar weight, that would mean giving up about 10% of power))
This man must have some really top tier chamois cream. I’ve done a bunch of centuries and by far that is the worst part for me assuming you’ve got your nutrition nailed down.
If you're interested in long distance riding check out Brooks leather saddles. They shape to your body after breaking in and feel amazing. I don't need to wear bike shorts with them any more.
Interesting that cycling 24h record 900km is less than 2x of skateboard record 313m/503km. From my amateur experience with both, would expect cycling to be 5x-10x of skateboarding.
https://24hourultraskate.com/#records
I am also surprised at how far the skateboarders can go, but to be fair your estimate of 5-10x is way too large.
The cyclist in this case averaged 37.5 km/h, which is really impressive over 24 hours. 5-10x slower would be 3.75-7.5 km/h, so somewhere between a very slow walk and a very, very slow jog.
Plus, the skateboards they are using are not going to be regular ones but purpose built and similar to downhill longboards.
yeah i guess it's just feels like 10x when I ride on skateboard on bike path and cyclist zoom by.
You're righht on special skateboards, I have couple long distancne boards and they special brackets low to the ground with larger wheels. Makes huge difference over standard skateboards or longboards.
It's very niche market, making those boards relatively expensive https://www.gbomblongboards.com/ But for 10+ miles rides worth it.
3x slower than this cycling record would bring you within the range for endurance running; 10x slower would be an ambitious (but far from record setting) hike of 90km.
Great story, about someone trying for a record length one day bike ride - interestingly, it's not say Sydney to Brisbane but looping many times on a loop around 5k length. And I learned about the concept of bike packing.
I’ve been getting into cycle touring throughout the pandemic. The longest I’ve gone in a day is ~100km through varied terrain with plenty to see along the way. The thing that blows my mind about this attempt is that it’s cycling ~225 times around a fairly mundane loop in a random Gold Coast suburb.
I can only imagine the mental fortitude required to stay focused for so long.
Different people have different motivations, so I can imagine that this guy was driven by the goal… goes to show how different people are motivated by different things. Regardless, a super impressive achievement.
As an average fit cyclist, I did 100km as an experiment and that did not feel too hard physically. It took about 4 hours but I could barely walk after it.
Ironman distance is 180km and I think I could do it no problem if the terrain is relatively flat. The challenge here is not the distance or energy but just sitting in the saddle for as long. Not to mention that in Ironman race you have to run a marathon after this ride.
On that subject: a good saddle really helps, and the saddles that are on regular bikes are really bad for long rides, way too soft so you'll end up with lots of friction.
Man looking at some of the comments here about distances, my longest single-day bike ride was 50 miles of mostly flat but some decent hills Claremont, CA to Sherman Oaks, CA. I didn't do a super-strenuous pace and did things like stop for a leisurely lunch at Souplantation in Pasadena, but it was still pretty much a full day ride (although Google Maps claims it can be done in 4h16m). (I also think my route was not quite the same as what Google is suggesting since this was pre-Google maps. I had my Thomas Guide in a backpack in case I needed to consider route options.) I really should pull my bike out of the basement once it gets a bit warmer and start getting some distance in again. My last significant bike ride was on a Divvy from downtown Chicago to Oak Park (about 8 miles). I had to do a check-in check-out halfway through because of Divvy's restrictions on how long you can have a bike for a single ride.
I have ridden 230 (hilly) km in a day (10.5 hours from start to finish, 9 hours actual pedalling time). So I'm going to guess that the conclusions are similar to mine, which are that it was tough and one simply can not eat enough salty potatoes.
Potatoes! In 1988 I rode from Portland PDX up to Astoria and down to N. LA in 17 days, with maybe 30lbs of gear. Camped every night. I was very poor. Lost my wallet the first day, noticed 50 miles out. I returned to where I thought I lost it, nope, had to spend the night in a homeless shelter in Vancouver across the river before I could get a wire the next day. (I learned a lot about life talking with the "homeless" people in that shelter. They took me in, as I was just another variant of "hobo" to them) The next day I retraced my previous day's path, so add on another 100 miles, maybe 1400 in all.
After about 5 days, I could no longer afford the required volumes of regular food. So eg. half gallon of chocolate milk and a lb of sharp cheddar cheese for dinner. I always thought I'd get bored eating that much cheese but I never did :-). I treated myself to regular food for lunch. I also lost 15 lbs on that trip.
One of the best experiences of my life. I do remember being bored with chewing though.
To be clear, I'm not bragging here about an "accomplishment". It wasn't. RAAM, or PBP, those are accomplishments. The fellow who did the Tour de France route this year unsupported is a monster.
The article is even more insane. He was trying to do that on rice cakes. Eventually the calorie deficit got to be too much and he had to switch to brownies.
I didn't read it as if they switched away from rice cakes but that they used brownies in another event. Rice cakes in general are pretty great as on-bike nutrition and used by world tour teams.
Ah yes, that really helps, you can keep each other out of the wind and rotate the leader. That would certainly help your average speed. Still, quite a trip.
The difference between 100km and 200+ is significant, most people could probably do 100 km trips if they tried, my mom did these until she was well into her 70's, but around 150 or it changes and 200+ is really a different game. I'm not sure what the cause of that is, it's definitely not a linear increase.
I don't think there is a real barrier between 100km and 200+. It's more a conditioning problem. I have seen many people who don't look especially fit successfully complete 100 mile rides here ("centuries"). A big part of the conditioning is teaching your body to burn both resident fat and the easy to eat things you get on the ride, either from the sag stops or from what you carry (or buy). I taught my body to do this every year, for many years, by going on a long ride in the spring and deliberately provoking a bonk. After that, I was good to go for the rest of the 8 month season.
Now, for not necessarily thin people, this requires mostly flat terrain, but in the Eastern US that's not uncommon.
If the route has a lot of vertical gain, well, you need to be fairly thin. Then it is pacing, staging your eating, and mindfulness.
If you examine the times posted in every Tour de Tucson, for example you'll see many excellent times by people into their 70s and beyond. I am very admiring of your mom, BTW.
There is, probably everybody knows, a community that embraces the contradiction of your observation with a tremendous gusto that is its very reason for existing:
"and receive equal recognition regardless of their finishing order"
I really like that. Much nicer than the behavior you get when the finishing order matters, especially when on public roads, and I don't see how you could do trips that long without doing them on public roads and still have something interesting.
But the riding on public roads is what all of us ever did. Not "especially". For 45 years I have been a member of the cyclists who just ride on public roads.
Since COVID I have not done a century but I feel an overwhelming need to do several now, on public roads.
The amount of time it takes to complete whatever distance it is is immaterial.
Cycling tracks are boring as hell. I've tried that a couple of times but it really isn't for me. The upsides (no other traffic, safety) do not begin to offset the downsides. The same goes for digital solutions.
But what I probably should have written better, is that on public roads means 'open to the public' as well, and the way groups that are on racing bikes tend to upset traffic even though the roads are open can be quite irritating. I've seen groups of guys on fancy bikes block traffic, make the bike paths very unsafe for oncoming traffic and cycle on the main roads as though other traffic did not exist. That's fine on a closed course but not when the roads are open.
I've done 400km in a single day (19hr with stops), all gravel, single track, and forest trails. This ride always ends up being almost more mentally challenging than physically challenging. Even with the differing route conditions, I can't imaging having to do this ride but averaging over 2x as fast of a pace.
In military school (rop) I rode from half moon bay to Atlantic city NJ with a team of 12. It was a lot of fun, had more than a couple century ride days. If you ever want to see the United States from a totally different perspective, ride a bike across it.
My personal best has been 214km in 18 hours (Alaybey, Malkara to Taksim Square, Istanbul), the very last leg of my 13k+ ride between Lisbon and Istanbul. Can't imagine what it takes to ride 900km, seems to require superhuman strength
I did 900km (~560miles). No... I did 560km (not miles) one time (350 miles) in a ... car - (LA <-> SF) alone (hence less distraction), and I was ... tired, and this amazing athlete did 50% more on a cycle... I'm a worm.
Speaking personally, you try to wait for a proper bathroom. Failing that, you spend miles looking for just the right secluded spot. Boys have an easier time at it. Male pro racers are known to kinda... pause pedaling, and aim away from the bike. In women's races, the leader calls the pit stops.
Eating is the easy part. With care, I've managed to eat a burrito without missing a beat. I've squeeze/slurped body-temperature spaghetti and meatballs out of a ziplock... unwrapping bars and eating 'em one-handed is more common, but god it's nice to eat real food. Gas station hot dogs are usually a guilty pleasure, but on a ride, you can easily justify the salt replacement!
900 km in a day sounds like an incredible feat to me and I'm super impressed with it, but I would really wonder about the kind of impact that has on your body.
I slept for more than a day after that trip and I swore I would never do it again (and I didn't).