Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => Audax => Topic started by: LEE on 04 October, 2010, 12:35:47 pm
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Being a bit of a plodder, I need to spend a minimum amount of time in controls in order to bank time on Audax rides. I haven't truly mastered it yet (and haven't needed to on UK Audaxes of up to 600km).
PBP seems to have the potential for losing a lot of time in controls though, just the sheer number of people coming and going.
Is it possible to adopt a N.D.A. (No Dicking About) strategy in the controls?
By this I mean, how long does it take to just park your bike, get your card stamped, get a water re-fill and get back on the road again?
Are there shops/supermarkets available as alternatives?
Are shops/supermarkets sensible alternatives or do the controls offer something worth queueing extra for?
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Being a bit of a plodder, I need to spend a minimum amount of time in controls in order to bank time on Audax rides. I haven't truly mastered it yet (and haven't needed to on UK Audaxes of up to 600km).
PBP seems to have the potential for losing a lot of time in controls though, just the sheer number of people coming and going.
Is it possible to adopt a N.D.A. (No Dicking About) strategy in the controls?
By this I mean, how long does it take to just park your bike, get your card stamped, get a water re-fill and get back on the road again?
Are there shops/supermarkets available as alternatives?
Are shops/supermarkets sensible alternatives or do the controls offer something worth queueing extra for?
I think you can bounce controls within about 15 minutes if you have to (or at least I could have in 2007). However, for me at least, on long 1000+ rides, controls are important in breaking down the ride into discrete stages. I found that during PBP and LEL I was having a full food stop at every control to make it easier to cope with the psychology of knowing you still have 800km left to ride. Treating it as a collection of shorter rides that happen to abut one another made things easier to deal with. I also ended up having more shower stops than strictly necessary, just to 'reset' the ride. Remember also that stages between controls on PBP are closer to 80km or so each rather then the 40-50km on many domestic audaxes.
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how long does it take to just park your bike, get your card stamped, get a water re-fill and get back on the road again?
It can take 10 minutes or more. There are bike parks that aren't that near the food/control. The signage in the stops is usually very good but sleep deprivation means you won't see the 4' square florescent sign and will spend a couple of minutes talking in pigeon English to find out the obvious
And there are plenty of opportunities to stop when not at controls. Some of the controls were good for food and some of them were crap. I got to Brest quite late and they'd run out of beer and the choice of edibles was limited. So I used a cafe just up the road which was doing a cheap plate of spaghetti with lumps of cheese and jambon on it.
You might think you are slow but there are Americans on unsuitable bikes who seem to get round and they are slower than you. Also there are lots of groups to join at any speed which will up your average when moving
Stopping and hanging around in Cafes is part of the fun of PBP
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Shower Stops?
That sounds promising. Do you need to carry wash-bag/towel or just drip-dry?
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A couple of euros for a dry towel and some shampoo at most of the controls last time.
Or free if you borrow the wet towel with skidmarks left in the shower room.
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Hi Lee. 15 mins sounds about right to me (based on 2007 only) as a minimum.
I was actually surprised at how little time I spend at controls following all the horror stories I got pre 2007 from anciennes about how I could spend 1 hour + at controls without having achieved anything more than getting my card stamped.
After a couple of controls I learned not to dismount and park my bike until i found the location where the cards were being stamped. If I did this it helped avoid a long walk in silly shoes, and if I remembered to take my bottles in with me and texted home while in the queue, I could be in and out quite quicky.
I found that if in addition I ate at the control, the additional time getting from card stamp location to food + time queuing/eating/chatting probably meant an hour in total. In some places I needed a rest and was happy to be off the bike this long, at others I didnt bother. The only place where I felt I was a long slow queue for food was Carhaix (out) and as a result I deliberately scoped an alternative commercial establishment for the return leg. That approach heped me get back to Loudeac before dark on the return which really perked me up.
If you are serious about the NDA approach, I know that some 80 hr riders last time earmarked medium/large towns close to controls to use for a quick feed (supermarket cafes were mentioned) and they then bounced the controls. Means stopping tiwce of course but probably quicker overall.
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In 2007 I found the controls to be very sociable places to be and greatly contributed to the event. I would not want to 'dip & go'. I met people I knew there, people who started before me who I'd caught up with, people on their way back. People i'd met on the road earlier. People who I'd not seen earlier but knew from other encounters. set off in one of the smaller groups, that is the vedettes or randoneurs and the controls will be less busy for a while.
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In 2007 I found the controls to be very sociable places to be and greatly contributed to the event. I would not want to 'dip & go'. I met people I knew there, people who started before me who I'd caught up with, people on their way back. People i'd met on the road earlier. People who I'd not seen earlier but knew from other encounters. set off in one of the smaller groups, that is the vedettes or randoneurs and the controls will be less busy for a while.
Same here.
What is scary is the rate time goes. An hour can zip by but remember you have 40 hours to get to Brest and 50 to get back to Paris so it's not that hectic.
H
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What is scary is the rate time goes. An hour can zip by but remember you have 40 hours to get to Brest and 50 to get back to Paris so it's not that hectic.
H
I know I wasn't allowed to have a quiet doze beside the road, but was summoned to my feet and sucked along in your ample slipstream to the penultimate control, wherever that was.
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I tend to faff at controls and lose a lot of time so my personal aim for next season is to get more disciplined.
The controls on PBP can be very sociable (more on the way out than the way back when the background noise is mainly snoring) but the food queues can be a problem. I recall waiting more than an hour in a queue at Loudeac, mainly because half of the town seemed to have decided to eat at the control as well! They should restrict the catering to riders, IMO. Next time I plan to eat mainly on the road during the day.
Another tip I learned the hard way is that it's sometimes a good idea to go and book yourself a bed before getting your card stamped or eating. At the popular controls there can be an hour or two's wait for a bed so the earlier you get on the list the better your chance of getting some sleep. Again at Loudeac the waiting time was so long that I decided just to ride on and my plan, such as it is, for next time is not to stop for sleep until Carhaix.
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I didn't manage to find any showers in 2007. I didn't find any beds either. I slept on floors etc. I must have stank by the finish.
Getting a bit faster and being a bit more organised about controls made LEL and MC much more pleasant events. A shower every day makes a huge psychological difference.
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I didn't manage to find any showers in 2007
one in Dreux (occupied; had a shave in the sink next to it) and lots at the finish that I'd happily have slept under all night; Mrs Zoom still complained that I hummed the next day (I actually sweated God knows what all week at night on holiday the week after :sick:)
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I didn't manage to find any showers in 2007.
I got a shower every night, but we did stop at some unorthodox times to avoid the rush
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I would suggest that looking for a cafe anywhere in town but before a control is a good idea - even if you only grab a coffee - the bonus of a clean LOO with no queue is worth at least 10 minutes at the control . And if they do a quick plate of carbohydrate too then you have had a real winner
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Get faster. Plenty of people complete PBP getitng fast enough can't be that hard. If I can do it...
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For me anyway, however much faster I rode, the buffer would just be used to sleep!
If I come in any sooner than 85 hours I'll feel my strategy has gone badly wrong...
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The secret in PBP controls is a weird form of multitasking - sleep while you're queueing, eat while you're on the toilet, that sort of thing. And treat all these activities as rest - that is, not pedalling.
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Get faster. Plenty of people complete PBP getitng fast enough can't be that hard. If I can do it...
Ah yes; the "Plenty of People ..." argument. Always a vote-winner.
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Get faster. Plenty of people complete PBP getitng fast enough can't be that hard. If I can do it...
Ah yes; the "Plenty of People ..." argument. Always a vote-winner.
I think you are doing the OP and yourself a disservice.
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It would be interesting to know, for the 1/3 (very roughly) of starters who DNF'd, how many would have been able to finish if they had been able to pedal harder. i.e. those who failed because they were too "slow", as opposed to injured, exhausted, got sick, mechanical, what have you.
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Get faster. Plenty of people complete PBP getitng fast enough can't be that hard. If I can do it...
Ah yes; the "Plenty of People ..." argument. Always a vote-winner.
I think you are doing the OP and yourself a disservice.
The OP wasn't about training or fitness though. My aim was always to be fitter and faster.
An hour saved by not faffing about, or understanding the most efficient way to deal with the controls, means being 20km further along the road. I'm just trying to learn some good strategies for effective time-saving in controls. Time has a way of evaporating and, when you have many controls, a lot of time can evaporate. I'm fairly sure I'll be limping back over the final 300km, I need as much time in the bank as possible.
Multi-tasking sounds good, eating previously purchased sandwhiches whilst queueing and so on.
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It would be interesting to know, for the 1/3 (very roughly) of starters who DNF'd, how many would have been able to finish if they had been able to pedal harder. i.e. those who failed because they were too "slow", as opposed to injured, exhausted, got sick, mechanical, what have you.
The 1/3rd figure in 2007 was abnormally high! [I was reminded of this looking at the graph in the 2011 pamphlet - you can't fail to notice the huge leap in DNF %. Which I presume was mainly weather-related, but we've discussed this in other threads ... ]
i agree it would be interesting, but I think the sick/injured/exhausted will include riders who were having to push too hard _because_ they weren't fast enough. So it's probably impossible to say. What you can say is speed will alway help!
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I'm just trying to learn some good strategies for effective time-saving in controls. Time has a way of evaporating and, when you have many controls, a lot of time can evaporate. I'm fairly sure I'll be limping back over the final 300km, I need as much time in the bank as possible.
Another technique, not entirely unrelated to fitness, is to practice bouncing some controls on UK events. In 2007 I tried bouncing every other control on many rides so that my stages were effectively closer to 100km than 50km. This also helps with the psychological aspect of PBP as well as reducing the need for PBP controls to be desperate recovery periods rather than pleasant breaks in the ride.
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One thing I'm going to try is riding at least one 600 straight through.
Although I got only 90 minutes sleep on the Border Raid, it was part of a 3 hour stop. Bouncing through that would have totally changed the experience... might have also saved me the stress of trying to get the trike from Tebay to Sedburgh with about 7 minutes grace!
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If you want "as much time in the bank as possible" then I recommend riding faster AND mimial faffing. I have said it before. Start with the Vedettes or Randoneurs, not the Touristes. The first two groups are smaller and the controls are less busy until/unless you catch the group ahead of you. Less busy controls= faster passage through. If you goal is to spend less time at controls you are making it hard for yourself by setting off in the biggest group especially if you are not going to be at the front of it.
BTW I minimised my time in controls by riding with someone who chivvied me along and didn't let me linger. Same on LEL in 2009. We did what we needed to do: card:eat:loo. We didn't sleep or shower at controls, ate at everyone except Loudeac. We had a camp set up at 380/820 and used that twice then slept outside at 1060. Very few stops in between controls for longer than a few minutes.
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Spot on Andy.
H
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An hour saved by not faffing about, or understanding the most efficient way to deal with the controls, means being 20km further along the road.
Jack Eason said to me - more than once - something like "It's not how fast you ride on the bike, it's how slow you are when you're not on the bike" - as he plugged around at a steady 20-or-less kph and finished nevertheless.
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At PBP it can really pay off to do some necessary things outside of the controls. When your bottle is empty and you spot a local in his front yard, ask him to fill your bottle. Definitely faster as at a control. 5-10km before the control just head for a convenient tree or the bushes. Saves some time queing for the toilets. You could breakfast at a small bakery but many bakers can't keep up with the demand and they're sold out shortly after they open up. So even there you're having troubles with the size of the ride. Some restaurants outside of the controls will serve fast, others don't understand your urgency.
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I didn't really have an issue with queueing at controls. They are very much geared up to get randonneur-friendly food out quickly. But managing your time at controls is vital. Take your empty bottles into the controls and fill them while you're in there. I usually bought a large bottle of water and filled the bottles while eating. If you're going to add or take off layers do this while you're eating. I had a small bag within my luggage that I carried in and out of controls that had toothbrush, sudocrem, wipes, ibuprofen, contact lenses, glasses, etc so I always had the things I might need to use whilst in there.
Also, don't be afraid to leave your mates behind if they're faffing. They will forgive you and you will see each other on the road.
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I find you can save time with bottle filling by ensuring you do PBP during a period when it rains constantly. This worked really well for me in 2007.
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For me anyway, however much faster I rode, the buffer would just be used to sleep!
If I come in any sooner than 85 hours I'll feel my strategy has gone badly wrong...
+ 1.
thats why on the few occasions Ive looked at the 84 hr start for 2011, I keep coming back to same conclusion that the 90 hr group is my best option.
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The secret in PBP controls is a weird form of multitasking - sleep while you're queueing, eat while you're on the toilet, that sort of thing....
But beware of going to the toilet when you are eating. This was an affliction a number of riders suffered in 2007.
H