I've never ridden a hundred miles. Most I've ever done is about 60 so quite a gap. When the football team go on tour I've committed to riding part of the way with http://twitter.com/robinwilley01, I say part. It's about150 miles and we'll do 100.
Over the last few weeks I have been increasing my mileage. I commute every day by bike and then on weekends have been steadily increasing the distance and time in saddle. Starting at 90minutes for 25miles, to 32 miles in 2hours. This weekend was for me to push to 3 hours and try to get closer to 50 miles.
Friday night I bumped into Rob in Morans and so the plan was that we'd go together. Now the thing about Rob is that he's a very strong cyclist. He has many thousands of miles in his legs. So riding with him is always, for me, a little nervy. The other thing about Rob is that he knows roads in the Cotswolds that most don't. So today I spent a lot of time not really knowing where I was or even what direction we were heading. We did a lovely ride, rarely seeing a car we went through two places I recognised - Bibury (passing a pub where, apparently, a Japanese soap opera is filmed) and then Birdlip. Other than that I just tried not to fall to far behind him.
At about 2:20 in I started to feel empty in my legs. Understandable in some respects as I'm building but this was different. I had a gel and that kicked in and worked well. But again I was empty pretty quickly. The home stretch was down leckhampton hill and even on the downhill I was lacklustre.
I got in and did a blood test and had a low blood sugar reading of 3.7mmol. I realised then that for the last hour of my ride I had been borderline low hence the feeling of being empty. I never had enough food to boost myself and so was struggling. Learning froth at there's two main points,
1. I need to make sure I eat before I start, today I didn't have anything before heading out on the basis that my blood sugar was slightly high. That was a mistake.
2. Carry more food with me to keep myself topped up. A SIS bar and gel is not enough for 3hrs and will definitely not be enough for a century in around 6 weeks time.
