Feed Me Seymour!

RIP Die Wingerd Breakfast Ride. Gone but not forgotten

I heard with sadness this week that there will be no Die Wingerd Breakfast ride this year. Not only was it the closest PPA organised ride to my front door, but it was also the first timed fun ride/race that I took part in after we moved to South Africa. My fond memories are not just losing the convenient pleasure of being able to cycle to the start of a ride. Nor are they, as a fellow hubber commented, just because I'll miss the after-ride burgers included in your ride fee, although damn they were good. But that does at least get us towards the point of this topic: food. And that is at the heart of why I will miss the Die Wingerd ride.   

I'd been riding the road bike for about a month into 2008, but somehow had failed to pick up on the vital concepts of adequate hydration and nutrition. The 40km mark of the Die Wingerd Breakfast Ride handed me my ass in a big way and cured me of that oversight forever. God knows what I was thinking only putting one water bottle on my bike, and not filling up at the second water stop, but as we turned into the strong Cape South Easter with 20km to go everything died. It seemed an eternity to the water stop 5km or so from the finish, and I can still remember pretty much every agonsing and slow pedal stroke it took me to get there. My speedo never clocked above 12km/h over that stretch. To put this in context, the next year I barely dipped below 30km/h down that same stretch in similar conditions. It's not a tough stretch, I just did not have the energy to turn the pedals.

My buddy Niels, who I'd been cursing for talking me into the ride for most of the last few kilometers, found me slumped at the end, mumbling incoherently into my Coke. He scooped the bike and me up into his bakkie and drove me home, I think he may even have felt a little guilty at the state the ride had left me in. I passed out on the bed for hours, so long in fact that Yoli had to cancel our evening dinner with friends. I was also badly sunburnt too, another obvious thing I'd failed to consider was sunscreen.

At this stage, I was thinking, and Yoli was saying "how on earth are you going to manage 108km on the Argus in less than a month if 60km does this too you". And that is the real reason I'll miss Die Wingerd. Glinting in the surface of my first great cycling failure was an unexpected gem, my first great cycling lesson. It sent me back to the drawing board, made me work out what I did wrong, and figure out what was needed to fix it.

The next day, I went to my LBS (local bicycle shop) and asked them to help me with what I did wrong. I left the shop with a tub of Fast Fuel and an assorted selection of Gu gel packets. I was inducted into what probably every cyclist and athlete knows, but as a confirmed couch potatoe I'd never learnt. Hydration isn't just about drinking enough water, it's also about replacing electrolytes. And even with that, you're not going to get very far or very fast if you don't also put some fuel in the tank, which in general means carbs. The energy drink formula, I was clutching that day, and every other drink I've tried since have a decent helping of both. The transformation was amazing, every training session got quicker and easier, that less-than-month-away Argus was actually fun, and at just under five hours was way quicker than I'd dreamed of.
 
I've switched brands a few times since. For a while I was searching in vain for a cure for crippling cramps that have dogged my riding the last couple of years. I've come to understand my body better through training though, and with that has come the realisation that they are more about lack of condition and over exertion than electrolyte depletion. There's no quick fix for that in my energy drink, sadly.

My latest fuel of choice is Hammer Perpetuem Caffe Latte. Like most of them, it tastes pretty dreadful, especially after four or five hours of just that and the occasional super sweet energy gel or fruit bar. But the energy boost seems pretty good. I say pretty good because the most recent ride had some similar elements to that first Die Wingerd ride. A tortured last few kilometers, and me lying helpless and exhausted on our bed. Except Yoli's comment this time was "how on earth will you manage 1230km of Paris-Brest-Paris if 105km of riding does this to you". And as on that first ride, those same thoughts were also going through my head. Except this time, I knew what to do - analyse, assess, and fix.

My first attempt at the "fix" part will come in two weeks time on the 99er. An even more brutal ride, and so a very good test. I'm planning to drop the Hammer Heed spare bottle I usually carry, mix the Perpetuem double strength, and have at least one extra water fill up en route to counteract dehyrdation. I'm also going to see if Race Caps or Anti Fatigue additives make any difference (I needed to bump my web order up to get free delivery so figured why not give them a try).

My big nagging doubt is how this would work over a 4 day ride, where there is just no way to carry the weight of typical per-hour quantities of these wonderful rocket fuels. One step at a time though, that's a problem for a different day.