This will also be very, very dull. But potentially useful for anyone else daft enough to have a crack at 12/24hr time trials.
I’d planned to do a 12hr in the run-up to the Mersey Roads 24hr, but it was cancelled at the last minute because of roadworks. Frustrating for the organisers, but a real kick in the plums for the riders, especially as I guess some of them would have lost quite a lot of money on accommodation etc. What I also lost was a chance to test my kit and learn some lessons about fuel, strategy and where my legs were. All of which would have been priceless.
In the wake of my 24hr horrorshow I nearly pulled out of the 12hr that I’d entered, but wiser minds persuaded me to give it a go. It’s this one and it looks very flat: https://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk/events/41753-rttc-national-12-hour-championship
Chchchchchanges
There’s no point enduring a horrible experience if you’re not going to learn from it. So I’ve made quite a few changes from the 24hr.
Stan is still a total bitch. The design compromises forced on him by Boardman mean he’s absolutely foul to work on. The front brake is a sod to dial-in, the rear brake is an utter cnut. There’s a pissy little grub screw which (I think) sets the pad distance, but it seized, then ate the tip of a torq key. No idea if it did anything, but it’s fucked now until I can find a way to extract it. A fraction of a millimetre of cable pull one way means the pads rub on the rim, a fraction (and I do mean a fraction) the other way means the tyre rubs on the actual fucking calliper, because that’s how little clearance there is. It’s horrible to fiddle with, but I don’t have time to send him to a professional (who will curse my name and ban me forever).
The gear skipping I had on the 24hr was down to a stiff link in a brand new chain. It’s probably fake, as is the replacement (which also developed a stiff link after a handful of miles). So he’s getting a brand new chain from the LBS.
I’ve swapped his entire cockpit for a carbon setup from Aliexpress.
So far it’s behaving itself and not shuffling about, like my old bars. The extension for a Garmin is handy and has a bracket on the undesride for a light. I don’t totally love the forearm support on the actual bars – I’d prefer something flatter, rather than the raised inner sides (which you can just see before the ends) because they don’t exactly match the shape of my arms. Not a deal breaker and comfy enough though – these are a standard profile, so I don’t have a lot of choice, beyond fitting basic ski-bars and TBH, I can’t be arsed to do his gear cables again.
I’ve also gone back to bottles and ditched the backpack. Too difficult to drink from when riding hard. I’ve added a behind the saddle two-bottle rig, plus a bottle mounted on the stem cap.
Food and fuel….
Well now. I’m still working on the basis that I’ll need over 100g of carbs per hour, my plan is to have a 500ml bottle of this stuff per hour. That’s 60g of carbs. It tastes quite nice – a light flavour and not sickly or syrupy. Plus NO FUCKING ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER! I can carry three 500ml bottles and I’m hoping to resupply every 3 hours. It’s almost double the carb count of my favourite iced lemon tea, because it has two types of sugar and they’re absorbed differently. I did look at Torq energy drinks (used them before, taste nice, no sweetener) but they only have around 35g per 500ml.
I also have these pouches, in bananananana and mango flavours. They’re pretty small, but pack 22g of carbs.
That’s 82g of carbs per hours for minimal volume of actual food. Add in a guava block (34g) or a lump of flapjack or even a mini pork pie and I should be good. I can easily carry 3hrs worth of food/drink, plus a bit of spare food. I did look at Clif Bars, but they’re far too challenging to eat under load. I also tried some sport science bars from Amacx – they tasted a bit odd and made my tongue feel funny. Hey, guess what? They have ARTIFICIAL FUCKING SWEETENER in them! In an actual bar of food. Just put some sodding sugar in the damn thing guys. FFS.
I did an unplanned 148km trial ride today. I tested one bottle of the energy drink (plus two of just water) and rode at roughly my anticipated race pace. Managed the whole distance at an average speed of just over 32kmh – and you’ll notice that the first half is all up hill. It also has a few cheeky little bits of gradient. I know this road very well and it’s fairly fast, but the constant change of cadence means it’s still challenging for a TT.
Didn’t set out to fuel as if it were a race. At about 50km I had an iced coffee, Magnum and a bottle of Coke, then a pint and a packet of crisps at 77km. But that was all, apart from one bottle of sport drink which was gone within the first hour. The last half was done on just water. Managed just fine and kept the pace up for 4:35hrs, which sort of proves my theory about being quite efficient. In other words, I burn built-in fat without the need to frantically stoke the furnace like a steam engine going up a steep gradient. Obviously I’ll need to take on something but I reckon sport drink, banananana pouches and a bit of solid food will do the trick.
I thought I’d fixed my chain the yesterday – took out the stiff link and replaced it with a joining link. But nooooooo. It started well, but by the time I got home it was already starting to clunk again. Took the chain off and found two stiff links starting to develop, so I binned the chain and ordered another. Will also visit my LBS in the week and get yet another, just in case.
There was one moment when I thought the front brake was binding. It was, the cable had popped out of the noodle. An easy fix.
The front bottle bracket was ok, although it tended to gradually droop. In turn, that meant the bottle was occasionally yeeted out of the holder. Fixed that by angling it slightly upwards and mongoing the bolts. Since then I’ve added threadlock to the bolts and re-mongoed them. So that should be ok. Better to find that out now than on a Welsh cross-country A road.
Rear bottle cages behaved impeccably. I suppose I could try 750ml bottles, which would give me an extra hour of drink, but the weight might mean they too end up bouncing down the road. Smaller bottles are less risky.
All in all, the test ride was what I needed. It proved I could keep up race pace for a good proportion of the time and it gave me a chance to check my kit and fix minor niggles. Riding with a full load of fuel should improve things on the day, but I’m not panicking about sticking to a rigid eating schedule – I’ll trust my instinct. Finished feeling fine and not worried about needing to do the same for another 7.5hrs.
Now I have just under a week to rest and build up glycogen stores. Basically I can eat as much chips, cake and rice pudding as I like for 48hrs before the race. This is a REALLY IMPORTANT THING that I totally failed to do before the 24hr, because I’m an idiot.
Well Chuffed Cycling 