Actual Riding Time + Sleep + Faffing Time = Finish Time

[JonB]

Total time 87:53
Moving time ~ 56 hours
Sleeping ~ 10 hours
Wheel fix ~ 90 mins
Helping out with roadside accident ~ 40 mins
Eating, chatting and general faffing ~ 20 hours

Obviously a lot of scope to reduce the latter but time off the bike is essential recovery time (for me) and a bit of social time is important as well. With a bit of focus might be able to get into the low 80s but I suspect that time gained may result in getting more sleep. Would definitely appreciate a bit more time in hand to cope with mechanicals etc.

[fussballclub]

85.5h total
61.5h bike
8h sleep
1h puncture repair
15 h controls and cafés

[Jacques]

57h 55m riding.
30h 45m stopped of which approximately 9h 00m asleep.

88h 40m total. (41h 40 out & 47h 00m back)

[Andrew]

Knocking one out.

And that can take a surprisingly long time if your old and/or tired.

I hope you took the energy expenditure into account when refueling.

[Hummers]

Knocking one out.

And that can take a surprisingly long time if your old and/or tired.

...or do not have complete use of your hands.

H

[L CC]

Knocking one out.

And that can take a surprisingly long time if your old and/or tired.

...or do not have complete use of your hands.

H

As with everything else, he had help. 

[Aunt Maud]

My, this thread is going downhill faster than Jean Claud Killy.

[Chris S]

 

[Hummers]

My, this thread is going downhill faster than Jean Claud Killy.

Quelle surprise!

H

[Man of the Mountains]

I suspect I am not alone amongst DNFers in finding this thread quite sobering

I don't recall wasting time but I undoubtedly did. I do recall making decisions of whether to sleep or not and too often deciding to press on.

Guess what? Sleep dep got me in the end.

The solution I believe lies in keeping the entire ride in your mind always. Thinking 'how do I feel right now?' is not helpful because the resulting tactical decision will likely be bad for the end result. Better to ask 'where am I in the big picture?' and thus constantly modify your strategy

I'd be interested in the wisdom of old hands on this..

[Man of the Mountains]

Knocking one out.

And that can take a surprisingly long time if your old and/or tired.

...or do not have complete use of your hands.

H

I would have thought not being able to feel your hands would be a help not a hindrance 

[marcusjb]

I suspect I am not alone amongst DNFers in finding this thread quite sobering

I don't recall wasting time but I undoubtedly did. I do recall making decisions of whether to sleep or not and too often deciding to press on.

Guess what? Sleep dep got me in the end.

The solution I believe lies in keeping the entire ride in your mind always. Thinking 'how do I feel right now?' is not helpful because the resulting tactical decision will likely be bad for the end result. Better to ask 'where am I in the big picture?' and thus constantly modify your strategy

I'd be interested in the wisdom of old hands on this..

Sleep is key for sure - seeing it from my reasonably well rested perspective, mixing it up with very tired riders, was very interesting for sure in the latter parts of the ride. 

Riders pushing on despite needing a sleep - where half an hour of sleep would likely make them an hour faster on the road etc.

Or Wilkyboy doing the numbers and talking about how he had no time for sleep - LWaB pretty much telling him to shut up talking about having no time for sleep and to grab a quick nap! 

I loved this album on Facebook (sorry!) - https://www.facebook.com/panagiotis.bourikas/media_set?set=a.10205775370716042&type=3&pnref=story

[Aunt Maud]

My, this thread is going downhill faster than Jean Claud Killy.

Quelle surprise!

H

Last weeks off topic was about trimming pubes, I can see a pattern emerging.

[davego]

I suspect I am not alone amongst DNFers in finding this thread quite sobering

I don't recall wasting time but I undoubtedly did. I do recall making decisions of whether to sleep or not and too often deciding to press on.

Guess what? Sleep dep got me in the end.

The solution I believe lies in keeping the entire ride in your mind always. Thinking 'how do I feel right now?' is not helpful because the resulting tactical decision will likely be bad for the end result. Better to ask 'where am I in the big picture?' and thus constantly modify your strategy

I'd be interested in the wisdom of old hands on this..

I personally say sleep is the biggest issue on PBP , followed by contact points and fitness last , fitness just allows more sleep and time off for contact points to recover.

Its best to do a 400 as well as 600 overnight to try some strategies , but they are not the same as 1200. There seems lots of different strategies but it depends on your issues and the person what works best .

Are you able to sleep anywhere , if so just wait until your sleepy. Does a short sleep work for you , what time do you get sleepy. Do caffience tablets help you . I think you could write 4 pages on the subject. My first PBP 2007 I got it all wrong a lay awake for 10 hours over the ride and then got seririous sleep deprivation issues on the last 40 miles overnight. This time I sussed it

[DCLane]

The solution I believe lies in keeping the entire ride in your mind always. Thinking 'how do I feel right now?' is not helpful because the resulting tactical decision will likely be bad for the end result. Better to ask 'where am I in the big picture?' and thus constantly modify your strategy

I'd be interested in the wisdom of old hands on this..

It was my first time.

What really helped me was the ride spreadsheet - it had controls, distance to the control, time arrival, what I was doing there, time leaving, distance completed.

That was on an A6 clipboard on my stem and helped me keep focused on where I was overall in terms of time. Yes, it changed slightly when I overslept at Brest so skipped the second sleep stop - and I stopped for more food than planned. However, it also showed I was much faster at the food stops than the time allocated. In the end it worked brilliantly.

I can't remember who wrote the spreadsheet, but if you read this - remind me that I owe you a very large beer.

[simonp]

Spreadsheet said I'd do 76:03 and I did 76:44, so that was pretty close.

[davego]

Mine are only estimates as I did not use a Garmin

Sleep time 8 hours
Faf time includes eating , puncture , getting a new back wheel 7.5  hours

Ride time 59 hrs

[L CC]

The solution I believe lies in keeping the entire ride in your mind always.

Yes.
I've never been a proponent of the 'break the ride into stages' theory of getting round long brevets. It's partly because I'm not stupid and can't kid myself I only have to ride 50km when I know there's actually 250km to go. I want to know I'm at km 919 of 1230 and that there's 9 hours in hand and tomorrow's terrain will have me riding at a moving 21kph.

[Reg.T]

Someone like zigzag is fast on the road, without doubt, but is 'only' putting 5-10 hours into a typical rider on his moving time.  (Not meaning to sound dismissive with that 'only' - your speed on the road is amazing, but it gains you less time than your incredible stopped time!).

However, his stopped time is phenomenal and he is putting 20 hours or more into most of us there.

What I think this fails to recognise is that those of us who spend much longer in controls and sleeping gain some recovery benefit during this time, which enables us to ride more quickly on the next stages. I reckon most of us would slow down a lot if we tried to emulate zigzag's approach.

[marcusjb]

Someone like zigzag is fast on the road, without doubt, but is 'only' putting 5-10 hours into a typical rider on his moving time.  (Not meaning to sound dismissive with that 'only' - your speed on the road is amazing, but it gains you less time than your incredible stopped time!).

However, his stopped time is phenomenal and he is putting 20 hours or more into most of us there.

What I think this fails to recognise is that those of us who spend much longer in controls and sleeping gain some recovery benefit during this time, which enables us to ride more quickly on the next stages. I reckon most of us would slow down a lot if we tried to emulate zigzag's approach.

Totally - and to be able to ride with that little recovery time is the most amazing thing about zigzag, veloboy, sloth etc.  As noted, they are not *that* much faster on the bike than many riders; however, they are much much faster off the bike than any of us. 

Certainly even doing the 24 made me realise, we can all do far more than we think with far less time off the bike.  I guess it boils down to experience and knowledge of how your body feels and works and seems to highlight that if you are interested in doing a time, the pace on the road is really only one part of the big picture and learning how to control very quickly and training your body to deal with little recovery time is where the massive savings can be truly made.

[zigzag]

Someone like zigzag is fast on the road, without doubt, but is 'only' putting 5-10 hours into a typical rider on his moving time.  (Not meaning to sound dismissive with that 'only' - your speed on the road is amazing, but it gains you less time than your incredible stopped time!).

However, his stopped time is phenomenal and he is putting 20 hours or more into most of us there.

What I think this fails to recognise is that those of us who spend much longer in controls and sleeping gain some recovery benefit during this time, which enables us to ride more quickly on the next stages. I reckon most of us would slow down a lot if we tried to emulate zigzag's approach.

at higher speed it gets exponentially harder to add each 1kph to your average and keep it all sustainable. say, for me to be able to ride at this year's winner's pace i'd need to spend 5hrs less riding, i.e. raise my moving average by 3.2kph; while it doesn't seem a lot, in reality the extra amount of energy and power required is massive!!

[Dom T]

Was surprised to see the amount of stationary time on my ride. It felt like it was much less esp with only 2hrs sleep in Brest and another two in Tinténiac, just shows how time flies when you're having fun!

Total: 73hr 47min
Ride time: 50hr 13min
Stationary: 23hr 34min!

[drgannet]

Riding: 53.5 hrs
Sleeping: 12 hrs
Everything else: 22.5 hrs
Total: 88 hrs

[Somnolent]

I can't remember who wrote the spreadsheet, but if you read this - remind me that I owe you a very large beer.

Spreadsheet said I'd do 76:03 and I did 76:44, so that was pretty close.

If it was mine.... it didn't work for me!
I overestimated the much-talked about effect of the 'fast start', underestimated the time needed to get through busy controls, didnt allow time for roadside stops, didnt account for the p.m. start (of which had no experience anyway) and the resulting sleep deprivation almost from the off, but fortunately my moving speed dropped off much less over the days than predicted.

The big lesson learned - sleep deprivation kills speed like nothing else, short cat-naps are fine for dealing with the dozies but don't help with the speed, better to get a longer sleep sooner, leave a control out-of-time (even by a significant margin) if necessary, and make up the time on the road.

I'm on film as saying I'll not do it again, but if I did I think a sleep at Villaines on the way out might be effective from pov of reducing sleep deprivation and hitting subsequent controls at quiet periods.

[Frank9755]

What I think this fails to recognise is that those of us who spend much longer in controls and sleeping gain some recovery benefit during this time, which enables us to ride more quickly on the next stages. I reckon most of us would slow down a lot if we tried to emulate zigzag's approach.

I think that is true.
Another way of looking at it (if you are trying to minimise overall time) would be to say that if you eased off your effort only very slightly, how much less control 'rest' would you be able to manage with?