Too fat to be a cyclist. Too skinny to be a weightlifter.

[VeganGraham]

I thought I'd start my food log again, as I'm sure there are people who would like to know what the vegan athlete eats in the week leading up to a 24 hour endurance event.

Today then, Friday;
Whole banana malt loaf with far too much margarine.
Two Tesco 1/4 pound burger things with two slices of bread.
About 1/4 of a 1kg bag of dried fruit & nuts.
I think I ate a 500g bag of Bombay mix too, but that might have been yesterday.
4 Alpro soya dessert pots.
At least a litre of flavoured soya milk.
A few plums.
Half a tub of Swedish Glace with a tin of mandarins.
That's it, so far.

Edited to add;
Portion of chips.
4 Alpro soya yoghurts.

[soniczip]

I thought I'd start my food log again, as I'm sure there are people who would like to know what the vegan athlete eats in the week leading up to a 24 hour endurance event.

Today then, Friday;
Whole banana malt loaf with far too much margarine.
Two Tesco 1/4 pound burger things with two slices of bread.
About 1/4 of a 1kg bag of dried fruit & nuts.
I think I ate a 500g bag of Bombay mix too, but that might have been yesterday.
4 Alpro soya dessert pots.
At least a litre of flavoured soya milk.
A few plums.
That's it, so far.

holy shit which event? i need to do 24 hours as well if it means you can eat that much. but listen, are you sure the bombay mix didn't contain any hallucinogens? how can you not remember that much. i envy you mate

[VeganGraham]

Whoops, I don't write this stuff down at the time and I remembered it wrong, it was a 250g bag.
I added on the ice cream and tinned fruit I forgot about as well.

I've only got my Garmin to go on, which is probably wildly inaccurate, but I'm using 1000Kcal a day commuting and I used about 12000Kcal in 16 hours of riding last weekend.

[VeganGraham]

Saturday;
32km mountain biking.

6 crusty white rolls*
2 Cheezly & onion sandwiches
1kg soya yoghurt
Some grapes
1l orange juice
About 1l soya milk

*Crusty rolls are the only white bread I buy. All other bread is wholemeal.

[VeganGraham]

Sunday;
Rest day, apart from a bit of brick laying.

Bowl of Shreddies with soya milk.
Bowl of shredded wheat with soya milk & sugar.
Two Tesco burger thing sandwiches.
1kg yoghurt
1l orange juice
4 stir fry sandwiches.*
The rest of the 500g of grapes left over from yesterday.
An apple.
Bar of licorice
Tin of pears with 500ml custard.

*I buy the pre-packaged stir fry stuff, chopped up onions, peppers, lettuce, beansprouts, etc. in a bag, then use it in sandwiches with mayonnaise.

[VeganGraham]

Well, the food log didn't last long did it ?
The rest of the week was pretty much the same anyway, lots of bread, fruit, yoghurt, chips and chocolate soya milk.

Sleepless in the Saddle 24 hour mountain bike race at Catton Park, Derbyshire.

My 3rd and final 24 hour solo this year.
Only two weeks after the last one, but I felt like I had just about recovered.
Less climbing than the other two, so better suited to me. I thought I was in with a realistic chance of a top quarter finish.
I stocked up on Torq energy gels and Clif Shot Bloks and decided I was going to make a serious attempt at riding right through the night, even though my support crew had made other arrangements for the weekend and I was on my own.

2pm Saturday and we were off with a short run of about 400m.
I was about 3/4 of the way down the field by the time we got to the bikes.
The course was very dry and dusty, I was lapping in about 52 minutes at best, with a short break after most laps.
There was a heavy rain shower in the evening. Riding through the woods, I ended up pushing the worst sections, even then I had to stop a couple of times to clear the mud from around the chainstays so the wheel would would go round. Other people were poking the mud out from their derailleurs trying to get their gears working again. I rode past on my Rohloff.

I rode more or less non-stop until about 10pm.
Despite my determination to ride through the night, I knew by then I wasn't going to do it, so I stopped for about 1:40
Off again for another few laps, then another break of about 1:20.
With a few shorter breaks and water bottle changes, I ended up stationary for over 5 hours altogether. Not ideal for a 24 hour race, but no matter how hard I try, my determination just seems to fade away when I'm cold, wet, tired and exhausted.

As always, I felt better once the sun was up and tried to make up time. I'd done something to my left Achilles tendon though and it was getting worse, making it painful to pedal.
If the maximum Ibuprofen dosage for children over 12 is 2 tablets per 4 hour hours, then two every lap for an adult hooligan is probably still well within the safety margin.

The rules are that you have to finish the lap you're on at 2pm to avoid a DNF.
By 1:30pm there were riders lurking in the woods so they could cross the line at 2:01. It was tempting to join them, but I was still disappointed with myself for giving up overnight, so I rode on past.
A quick bottle change, two gels and some shot bloks in my pockets and I was off out for my last lap at 23:48.

The support I get through wearing my Vegan Cyclists kit is fantastic.
Every time I rode through the arena there would be people in their pit areas or in the team changeover area shouting "Go Vegan" at me.
All round the course there would be random spectators and other riders shouting "Go Vegan" as I rode past.

19 laps, 238km in 24:50.
17th solo male. The results aren't up yet, but the solo number went to over 100, so it looks like I was top 20% overall, don't know about the veteran class.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/104755121
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/104756012

edit;
The results are up
17th/94 solo male
4th veteran. Only 20 minutes behind 3rd

[VeganGraham]

The Vegan Cyclists Race HQ in the solo camping area, ready to go with race bike and spare bike.



Clean dry kit hung up ready for a quick change overnight.



Food and drink laid out to grab easily.



There's more under the table.



Afterwards.

[soniczip]

ok, i've got some questions, but first: congratulations

1st q: how many hours do you have to spend on your mb to be able to finish a 24h?
2nd q: why two bikes? is the second a reserve?
3rd q: no crew at all? how could you manage?
4th q: what's your average food intake during a race?
5th q: can you do a 24h race if you are not an expert bike mechanic?

again, way to go

[VeganGraham]

I ride about 700km a month.
Most of that is commuting, which only adds up to about 90 minutes a day if I take the usual route.
I rarely ride more than two hours apart from races or trailquests. In fact, I don't ever do proper training rides, I just extend my commute on the way home.

The second bike is a spare. It's common practice, solo riders usually get given two number boards at sign on.
At this race last year, the threaded metal insert for the pedal came loose in one of the carbon fibre cranks. I just rode back carefully and swapped bikes.

It gets a bit lonely overnight with no support. I've got lights in the tent and all my food and kit's laid where I can go straight to it, so I don't miss the physical help too much, although it is nice to just come back, sit down and have someone hand me food and oil the chain for me.
The Army team came over to see me when they saw the tent and Land Rover, thinking I was army too. They ended up offering me help if I needed it. I know the MB Swindon crew as well, they had two teams racing, so I could always call on them if I had to.
I really missed not having someone check the live results during the race to tell me how I was doing.
I was 4th solo veteran, only 20 minutes behind 3rd. Who knows, with that knowledge earlier on and someone to motivate me, I might have cut my breaks a bit shorter and moved up a place.

I didn't keep track of my food, but I had two bowls of muesli in the morning, then, at a guess, about 25 gels, 10 packs of Shot Bloks, 10 bananas, 8 sticks of licorice, a few squares of chocolate, 2 cans of ginger beer, 12 litres of Torq and 5 litres of water during the race.

Bikes are pretty reliable these days, as long as you can do basic maintenance you should be OK. The best advice is to fit any new components at least a week before the event to give time for any problems to show up.
I adjusted my chain on Sunday morning, one of the disadvantages of running a Rohloff with no tensioner.
If it's muddy, you could easily wear out a few pairs of brake pads in 24 hours, so you'd want to be able to change them in the dark while cold and tired.

24 hour racing is far more about what's going on in your head than shorter races.
If you can ride a bike, you can race a bike for an hour.
If you can race a bike for an hour, you can race for two hours, and so on, up to 12 hours.
There's a line, somewhere over 12 hours, where it becomes more about motivation and attitude than fitness.

[soniczip]

it's an amazing world. i guess having a team partner riding the same race would have been even better. 700 a month is acceptable. i mean, any average cyclist could do it, even me i guess i think the most difficult part would be adapting my body to eat that much during a race. i usually only have water even during long rides, say 3 hours ... when i do them, which is not often. but i also guess i could start trying thanks for sharing

[haisuli]

Congrats! Good job, must have been very heavy set if just thinking how much you had to drink during the race... Awesome!

[VeganGraham]

700km a month or 20km a day is not exceptional, it keeps me in the top 700 out of nearly 6000 on BikeJournal.
I don't feel like eating at all when I'm racing, I really have to make the effort to force it down. Bananas and licorice are the nearest to solid food I can manage easily.

Thanks Haisuli, I'm only guessing at how much I had to drink.
Looking at how much the level has dropped in that 20 litre container in the pictures above, it doesn't seem all that much for 24 hours really.

[haisuli]

Yeah, I'm not the right person to estimate water consumptions, my record for a one day is round 60 km, I guess, hah, hah! And it took couple of liters water (and lot of time)!

[bob_summers]

Really great result BGW, was looking for you on the "live" results on the STW twitter, but didn't see you so assumed you DNS. So a nice surprise.

Re. training for these things... how do the 'big names' approach it? I followed Matt Hart's column in the magazine, he did a lot of back to back 200s IIRC.
A big race for me is 180-200km/6-7hrs and I like to have a number of rides over, say, 75% of the distance under my belt solely to trick myself into thinking it's not really very far. The last hour of a 7hr race is much easier if you were doing 6hrs in training. But transferring this to 24h racing....?

700km a month or 20km a day is not exceptional, it keeps me in the top 700 out of nearly 6000 on BikeJournal.

But take out all the roadies doing 500km+ a week in the pancake flat midwest states and you'd be well up there

[VeganGraham]

Ha ha, yes, they should have a separate category on BikeJournal for mountain bikes, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage there.

I don't really know how the top riders train.
I just had a look at a few blogs, Rob Dean, Matt Page, Charles Newton Mason, Nathan Judge and Zoe Frogbrook and none of them seem to give much away.

One good thing about 24s, is that no matter how slow I ride, it makes anything else seem easy.
Knowing that I can still push on, no matter how low I feel, for 24 hours, means I'm not afraid to push a bit harder during a 12 for fear of blowing up.