BIG MILE CYCLISTS
HOW ULTRA-DISTANCE CYCLISTS STAY THE COURSE
Ultra-distance cycling isn’t for the faint-hearted. We sit down with the world’s best to find out their secrets
PREPARATION
MARK BEAUMONT In the good old days, training for endurance cycling was going out and doing mega miles at a slow pace. But if you want to race these days then you’re going ultra light, bikepacking or supported and, ultimately, it’s about not breaking down, not getting injured. So it’s never about your power-to-weight ratio in the traditional sense, or how fast you are away from the traffic lights, it’s about if you can hack it, if you can physically suffer day in, day out.
JENNY GRAHAM My ride was unsupported so my biggest worry was the massive gaps on the map between food and water places, but once I’d worked out the remotest stretches and the time needed to get between them, and got all my visas and flights, I had to let go. I couldn’t plan every detail of every day.
SEAN CONWAY I spent hours on Google Street View scrolling down roads to see if the quality is good, if they have a hard shoulder. In some parts of the world they’ll be tracks rather than hard tops.
Within that planning you have to think of what I call ‘showstoppers’ – what could go wrong. Things like bad weather, injury, getting run over, falling asleep on the bike, catastrophic mechanical failure - what are you going to do to limit those things from happening? So you might pack hi-viz, choose your road surfaces very carefully, take vitamins with you so you don’t get flu.
JAMES HAYDEN For newbies, do some longer rides first, don’t jump in at the deep end. The learning curve is very sharp. Try some audaxes or ride from sunrise to sunset, or through the night, and see how you like it.
Bike fit is crucial. It’s not just the contact points, any part of your body could suffer if you don’t get that right.
JOE BARR I’m currently coaching Christina Mackenzie who is attempting to beat the women’s record – 52 hours 45 minutes - for Land’s End to John O’Groats this summer. She’s doing it supported so the most crucial thing is assembling a crew she can trust and who will take care of all the logistics and housekeeping. She also needs to build a relationship with each section of the route, meaning she needs to recce the whole journey. If you’re serious about breaking a record you need to know what you’re dealing with. You need to have a picture in your head of what the route looks like and know what to do if you get to that bridge and it’s closed.
TRAINING
MB Unlike most roadies I’ll do other stu" including a lot of work on my core, which is massively important if you are stretched out on
Training for a 100-mile sportive is one thing, but how do you prepare to ride across countries and continents? We gathered together the cream of the crop of ultra-distance cyclists to find the secrets to their success...
the tri bars for 16 hours a day. I’ll fell run once a week because strengthening the parts around your ankles and knees is really important and a great way to avoid injury, whereas most cyclists would never put their trainers on because they think it will hurt their speed.
I’ll do some real ‘suffer fests’, four hours on the Wattbike, but I’m not going out doing back-toback, 12-hour rides on the bike on the road. I only build that endurance in the final block of training.
The cool thing about ultra endurance is that we can all do it. It’s not a hard pace - my average speed around the world was only 15 mph.
JG I did a lot of work on my pedal stroke. I was a mountain biker and had never put that much thought into how I pedalled, but when you’re riding for that amount of time it’s really important that you’re pedalling in the most efficient way. I did some really long, boring sessions on my turbo to get my technique better.
I did some cross-training. Cycling was best but sometimes I just got sick of it so I would go hill walking, or ski-touring during the winter, basically anything aerobic and that involved going up hills.
SC Plan your training by time, not distance. Also, after a big training session I would collapse on the kitchen floor because it was lino and there would be no sweat stains. Eventually, I bought a sweat mat for the living room.
JH Strength training with compound lifts, deadlifts and squats are really important. I carry a kilo and half more muscle than I would if I were just road racing, because I need that strength to withstand sitting on a bike for such a long time. I have a physio who gives me the same neck exercises used by boxers.
ON THE ROAD
MB When you’re road racing, you’re constantly on the power, you’re constantly turning the legs, making every mile count, whereas with ultra-endurance you’ve got to be clever, use the downhills for active recovery, relax the legs, allow your back to stretch out, use time on the bike to get a bit of a break. On climbs you never ever push the big gears. Use the terrain to your advantage and let the bike ride as efficiently as you can.
JG I would get up each day with a plan to ride a certain amount of hours. I didn’t get bogged down in how many miles that would be or places I needed to get to.
You’re more in control of the hours than the miles. Some days I could cycle 15 hours and cover 300km, but other days I could cover only half of that because I had a stonking headwind or massive climbs. If I was counting the miles I’d go to bed thinking that was a negative day, even though I’d worked really hard. I had to let go of the miles I was doing.
On the days when I was behind schedule, I knew I was in it for the long game. All you could hope for was that the next day or week you’d get a tailwind. As long as I’d done the hours, I was happy.
IT’ S ABOUT IF YOU CAN HACK IT, IF YOU CAN PHYSICALLY SUFFER DAY IN, DAY OUT — MARK BEAUMONT
SC Unsupported rides require a lot of imagination and improvisation. For example, I would use roadside barriers for massaging my quads at the end of the day. If I stayed in a hotel, I would wash and rinse out my clothes as best as I could and then put them back on and sleep in them so they would be dry by morning.
JH My darkest moment was in Montenegro during the 2016 Transcontinental. I arrived in a town at the bottom of a big climb at 1am and everything was closed. I hadn’t eaten and had no food. I could either stay until the morning and get some food, or carry on up this 1500m mountain. I decided to head up and it was horrific. I was bonking and kept having to stop and take five minutes to find some energy from somewhere, then I’d carry on for another 100 metres. It went on for hours and hours but I completed it.
JB During the Race Across America my support vehicle su ered a double flat and we had only one spare wheel. I learned a valuable lesson - before you start the event, take the vehicle to a garage, let all four tyres down, and fill them full of foam and gunk and then inflate them again. That way, if you get a flat the gunk fills the gap until you get to a place where you can deal with the problem correctly.
AVOIDING INJURY/ILLNESS
MB A lot of ultra endurance is about self-awareness of your body. When you start to hurt on a bike, a novice might think they’re injured, but actually there’s a big di erence between being sore and being injured. You need to learn quite quickly to identify the problem and adjust your form or your position on the bike. It’s also amazing how aches and pains come and go if you keep riding. A lot of people who’ve never been there before give up the first time they get sore.
JG During training, I was a nightmare. The minute I saw anyone coughing or sneezing I would freak out. I would have a big scarf around me constantly to keep germs out and carried hand gels everywhere. If I caught a cold it would have such a big impact on my training. On the road itself, I washed my hands constantly. I got a 24-hour flu bug in New Zealand that completely floored me and I just had to ride through it.
SC You need to get lots of miles in the legs and concentrate on your technique so you are using the muscles and tendons in the right way. Your cleats – do you have zero degree or nine degree rotation? I needed the rotation so that if things were going wrong I could add that flexibility.
But then there are other types of injuries. You can get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in your hands,
I’ VE HAD 10 SNICK ERS AND THREE COKES FOR MY DINNER OR MIDNIGHT SNACK — JAMES HAYDEN
neck spasms from drinking from your water bottle. There are ways you can learn to hold your water bottle to prevent these.
JB If you’re riding supported, who’s handing your food? If someone who hasn’t washed their hands passes you your bottle you could be out of the race within 24 hours. We had it down to a fine art during Race Across America( Barr won the 6069 age category in this year’s race). Every bottle that comes in, every bottle top is sanitised. And all bottles are replaced with new ones every 24 hours.
NUTRITION
SC If it’s available to buy, you eat it. You often don’t have the luxury of choice if you’re self-supported. Subway sandwiches are very good. Their Chicken and Bacon Ranch Melt is a foot long and is 1000 calories before you put the sauce on. You buy four of them, put three in your back pockets and eat one there, that’s 4000 calories and it’s taken you just 10 minutes - that’s where fast food is really good.
JH Food is different in the sense that you won’t always find what you want, but simple in the sense that there’s always something and you’ll just have to compromise. Usually the only thing available at two in the morning is a petrol station. I’ve had 10 Snickers and three Cokes for my dinner or midnight snack. Calories are king. You don’t want some fancy salad or shake, you want big calories.
JB: In ultra-racing, the further you ride, the slower you become. When you slow down, the body functions in a different way, so it has to be fuelled in a different way. The body’s main fuel source becomes fat instead of carbohydrates, so no gels or energy bars. The top ultra-distance riders are fat-adapted and can operate on fat-based foods for long distances.
SLEEP/RECOVERY
JH How much sleep you need depends on the length of the race. If it’s only three days you could probably get away with nothing. Over the nine days of the Transcontinental I needed at least three hours a night. And I don’t sleep in a hedge. I stay in a hotel. Ninety minutes in a hotel bed is worth the same as three hours on the road. The time of checking in and out is earned back by the quality of the sleep.
JB The Race Across America lasts ten or 11 days and sleep deprivation is a major issue. You can’t overcome it, but you can manage it. If you look at the top riders who are riding at high speeds during the day, they slow down at night, and that allows your mind to change gear, it brings clarification to your head and allows you to make better decisions. Sometimes it requires you to slow down to what would be regarded as a ridiculously slow speed, but keeping moving and not stopping is the key aspect of these races.
MENTAL STRENGTH
MB A lot of people in sport are motivated by the fact that you suffer but then it will be all over and you can have a shower and a pint and tell your friends about it. The thing about ultra endurance is you have to be motivated by what you are doing and not the idea that it will soon be over. That whole ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ thing? It doesn’t work when you’ve still got hundreds, thousands or, in my case, tens of thousands of miles to go.
In a 70-mile sportive you can bury yourself, but ultra endurance is a different mindset, you have to somehow completely get lost in what you’re doing rather than kidding yourself it’s soon going to be over, because it’s not.
SC While I’m riding I like to listen to audio books, music. I don’t want to speak to my family – only my wife as she doesn’t worry as much as my mum, dad and sister. If you’ve got the food, water, sleep and muscle management firing, often your mind is on a high anyway.
JG Big countries were hard. Coming through Europe was great because you’d get through one or two countries in a day and you can get some perspective on the miles you are doing and feel the progress, but a big country like Australia or Canada or Russia, you’re there for weeks and weeks.
I thought it was okay to be a bit sad or emotional at times. In life we spend a lot of time trying to block that out, but if you let it be we generally come out of it, especially when you’re on your bike going through some really cool places and seeing some amazing sights.