Boys, you all make reasonable and very well-meaning points.
But being the only one with the experience of BOTH approaches being discussed here, I feel I am in a better position to evaluate their effectiveness. Just hear me through - and read what I say below carefully and see what you think.
I rode through the LEL 2013 eating every hour - for 5 days. But I still had similar negative experiences to the ones listed in this latest report - sleep deprivation, inability to read the map, falling asleep on the bike (and the additional problem of a complete loss of pace when this sleep issue had hit me during the LEL 2013 ride). But, luckily, I came back from them - largely because the course was less demanding and I could recover from the unplanned sleep break.
The facts are the facts:
- My 100-mile time improved by an hour when I made these changes to riding while fasting.
- I can comfortably GO 24 hours without anything but water and salt, and put in better pace than before.
- If I had been able to stop every 20-24 hours to eat and sleep on the Mille Cymru it possibly would have been a different story, but even with the pace improvements I had made this year I was not able to build the sleep cushion I had needed to execute the plan I had.
Note - I am not saying 48 hours is a good riding spell under any circumstances, especially with no sleep or food. What I am saying is that I didn't have the pace to build a sleep cushion and needed a Plan B and a Plan C. I had to make a judgement call. Yes, the judgement I eventually made was 'clouded' by sleep deprivation and was probably the WRONG one - but it was not completely crazy.
I remember exactly why I chose to GO on when I did. I had told myself that I had ridden for 43 hours without sleep last year - after already being on the road for 3 days in a sleep deprived state - so it was not complete lunacy to think I just might be able to GO just a little further if I tried it at the start of the ride, when I was a bit fresher.
People always say "you can't do this" and "you can't do that".
"Can't" is a very strong word and people should never get accustomed to obeying that command.
If I listened to that I wouldn't be doing long distance cycling and I wouldn't be riding ElliptiGOs. Sometimes you have to clear your pre-conceptions and look at stuff for what it really is. I think I have the experience to be able to do that - and to make judgements based on the information I have.
I don't have athletic talent - I just train differently to everyone else in order to meet my needs - and it has helped me to perform much higher than I could when I had followed more 'conventional' means of training.
I say "always do what's easiest for you and what gives you the best results". Conventional training approaches don't allow me to perform at the level I want to because I lack that sort of athletic talent - so I have found other ways that do work - even if nobody's written a textbook before to prescribe them.
I do what I do - and it actually works for me. I can point out 30 other guys who rode this event last weekend using the strategy I am being told I should have used - and they still failed to make it through. Sometimes it's not just about 'the approach' - it's about the situation, the athlete and the machine...
If we hadn't completed the LEL 2013 last year everyone would be saying "I told you so" and "It can't be done on a bike like that" - etc.
If Stuart hadn't got through the MC this year successfully everyone would be saying "I told you so" and "It can't be done on that machine".
Sometimes it can be done - and sometimes it can't. Many people who make these 'rulings' simply don't have the experience to be able to make a valid judgement, because they've never tried it the other way - or even investigated it themselves. They are actually just jumping to conclusions based on the first reaction that comes to mind - not based on some sort of science.
Similarly, many cyclists simply shouldn't say: "This can be done fasting" or "That can be done on an ElliptiGO" - because many simply don't have any meaningful information about these things.
People tend not to look at things from that perspective, that they simply haven't seen the other side so they can't make a valid comparison. The real reason people haven't done some of these things before is because they simply haven't thought to do so - not because they can't be done.
In years to come these debates won't be had any more. People will know certain things are possible because they will have seen them done.
When I first started intermittent fasting in the 1990s nobody knew what it was - and they said it would kill you going without food for a day, or exercising without first eating a big meal - etc. Now even Lighter Life do intermittent fasting as part of their programmes for weight loss. It's become more accepted. But early adopters had to prove it first.
When Alan and I signed up for the LEL 2013 on ElliptiGOs we were told it can't be done. Now people realise it can be done. Just because somebody hasn't done something before is never a good reason to say you can't do it either - just make sure you make fully informed decisions whenever you do something. If you don't have the confidence or information to make unconventional decisions then don't. But for those who do have that information to evaluate something unconventional, it's the way human society advances and evolves. Someone has to be an early adopter and to show people there are other ways to do things (or that some things that look hard may not be so hard in reality).
My final judgement call not to sleep in the MC was wrong this time - but it's not hard to see why I thought it possible - given my previous experiences. I wish I'd done things differently in relation to sleep (and stopped after 24 hours, as originally planned) but I do wonder if it would have been practical. If I was getting to those controls after they had closed would the ride still have counted?
I hope this explanation 'kind of' explains how I see the world - even if some of you don't see it this way. People being different is not always an affront to everything you stand for and believe in - it just so happens that some of us have different needs (and need to find different means to address those needs).
It's always great chatting and debating with other riders on here. Have a great afternoon everyone....
Idai
