5 ms·

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 a

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.

jacquesm 5y ago
Drinking is another matter though. You really need your fluids on a trip like that.
- tubby12345 5y ago
  quite true - i drank about a liter an hour throughout the trip and urinated pretty infrequently lol
- usrusr 5y ago
  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.
newby 5y ago
>> 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.
- usrusr 5y ago
  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.

jacquesm 5y ago

Drinking is another matter though. You really need your fluids on a trip like that.

tubby12345 5y ago
quite true - i drank about a liter an hour throughout the trip and urinated pretty infrequently lol
usrusr 5y ago
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.

newby 5y ago

>> 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.

usrusr 5y ago
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.