I was never much for riding brevets, and if I went over about 120 miles, even on a good day, I start to get miserable. In my current unfit state, I get miserable when I sit in my basement office and ponder my eight bicycles hanging on the wall, unused. Not miserable enough to do anything about it, of course.tofu wrote:I don't think folks can really understand what it truly feels like until they have personally experienced it and then tried to keep going.
My last bonk was on a 75-mile ride in which I attempted to follow the faster riders (who were accomplished racers) in an organized club ride. The reason had to do with a very fast young redhead (this was before I met my wife, who is also a redhead. I have a thing for redheads, I guess). I was probably not fully hydrated at the start of the ride, and certainly had not prepared to go really hard that day, having not even eaten breakfast. What can I say? I get a little silly around cute redheads.
We really hammered for the first 50 hilly miles, at least by my standards, and I started to feel sick and light-headed. We stopped at a store, and I bought a quart bottle of Gatorade and chugged it. But it was too little too late and too sudden. About 10 miles later, I bonked, hard. I let the others ride on while I sat on the embankment and took a 15-minute nap. Given how I looked, the others were prepared to send a car back to pick me up. But when I woke up, the Gatorade had had a chance to be absorbed into my system, and I rode easily into the finish of the ride, arriving there before they had even had time to organize a rescue.
On telling this story to a riding buddy, the comment was, "too sweet, too fast".
My response? "Yes, she was. But I really think it was drinking that Gatorade too quickly."
Rick "no, this wasn't the occasion when I fell asleep while riding" Denney
