Went on a 40 mile ride in 25 mph sustained winds with gusts of 40+mph. I had some problems with my balance riding into the wind with gusting side winds, not so much with the wind in my back. I guess the gyro effect of the wheels spinning helps to stabilize the bike. This was on wide roads with low traffic, I think it would be dangerous to cycle on narrow roads with heavy traffic in these kind of winds.

10 days to go before Vätternrundan. I have completed three 150 km rides in the last month and felt quite good doing so. I am optimistic that i will be able to complete the 300 km although i do realize that the last 100km or so could be pretty painful.

Literally said "Oh my God" at subject line. 186 miles is quite the distance.

Marn, I hope you realize a trip report is mandatory, good or bad?

The body will be gone at that point, it will all be up to your mind by then. Make sure to fuel yourself constantly during the early going, and stay out of your red zone as much as possible. Glycogen depletion and dehydration will be your biggest enemies. Good luck!

You will have no problem finishing 300km after doing three 150km rides in the last month. As already mentioned stay well hydrated and aim for about 3-400 kcals of food an hour(bars, gels, bananas, choclate,nuts etc. Basically whatever you like because eating enough is not pleasant nearing the end of a long ride). Gl and enjoy!

I will post updates and maybe some pictures throughout the ride. I will probably need to bring an extra battery for my phone though, as Strava eats a lot of battery power.

They make small USB chargers. They're basically just a battery bank that you charge like you would a phone, but then you can connect your phone or whatever to them, and they'll recharge your phone. Even the pretty small ones can completely recharge a phone these days. The small ones are very small, maybe like a long tube of lipstick.

Take care of your butt. Whether you usually use lube or not, I recommend it. I use Chamois Butt'r but that's just because that's what is easily available here. Put it on your sitbones and the underside of your crotch. I'd probably reapply about every 2 hours.

I normally don't use it - just on very wet days (riding in a wet pair of shorts chafes bad) and very long rides or multi-day events.

There is really nothing worse than having like 50 miles to go and having a sore spot where the skin has rubbed off.

And yeah eating is going to be a big deal. The longer a ride is, the more a bad eating schedule will affect you. Make sure to get some protein in regularly. I like Hammer Perpetuum for long rides, it has a bit of protein. They'll probably have stuff like peanut butter at stops maybe? That might help some. Clif bars and what not have SOME protein but often not that much.

You'll probably burn, say, 600 cal/hour. Your body can provide about half of that from burning fat. It can provide the rest from glycogen, until you run out, which varies but for me is probably something like 3 hours. So you should probably aim at getting more than 200 cal/hour *in sugar*, fat is not going to help at all. Gels and sports drinks are the easiest way. Sports drinks will also help with the electrolytes.

Amazing experience!

We started among the later groups which is full of organized sub 10 h sub 9 h and sub 8 hour teams. We tried to hang onto some of these groups but eventually in the hilly pieces we were dropped. About half ways in after spending a lot of time in the pits there were no fast teams left to catch us, so the 3 of us started riding together, started catching all the slower and knackered riders, we passed hundreds of riders on the way to Motala, some were pensioners, some were obese and others had just hit a wall, especially during the later stages we would see people walking their bikes up the hills. I had my ups and downs but mostly we were feeling good after eating. The Last 50 km were surprisingly fast and non painful. I guess we were just high on adrenaline to not feel our aching legs, today i certainly feel it!

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I love that this goes around a huge lake. Want to take a shortcut? START SWIMMING.

The USB charger you recommended was needed, I also should have followed your advice of lubing. It was a warm day and I am sore in those areas now. I also made the mistake not taking enough easily digestible food with me like gels(had only 1 gel and a protein bar), because of this we made many stops just to eat. Next year we'll be more organised and hopefully more fit. I need to set a new goal.

That is awesome. My advice, next time find an extra .5 kilometer to ride.
300 is a nicer number than 299.5.

haha, I actually rode from the camping place to the start and back so 308km that day

Some random things to add.

There were 20005 participants, a record number.

Starting times spanned from Friday 19:30 to Saturday 6:30, releasing groups of cyclists every 3 minutes, we started Saturday 05:36.

The track record was beaten by a pro team of 12 riders accompanied by 17 other elite riders to help them over the first 150km. They did it in a time of 6h33m with an average speed of over 45km/h or 28mph.

My brother had only time to train about 600km total on a bike and still did it in under 12 hours. We finished together.

Nice work duder.

I always wonder what it feels like to be that bad ass.

To make things harder, tempo bikes with special handlebars are not allowed in Vätternrundan.
The riders at the front of the pack must be averaging over 400W to keep up that kind of speed?

I don't think that's really possible for those kinds of distances? I know one former pro racer who does ultra events now. The shortest event he's done was 450 miles, which granted is a lot more, but he was targeting 250 watts I think. He beat the entire field (including teams) by 2 hours.

A high level pro can put out about 5 watts/Kg for a pretty long time (an hour or two?), for a 150lb rider (68Kg) that would be 375 watts. Averaging 300 watts might be good enough to get you to 28mph if you cooperated well. Maybe as much as 375-400 watts while on the front, <300 otherwise.

Getting towed by 17 riders for the first half definitely makes it much easier. At the back of 17 guys your output is probably lowered 35-40% easy to maintain speed.

Actually I re-read your post. Yeah, the guys at the very front would do 400 watts, but they'd rotate to average much less.

Congrats on beating your goal.

Yeah, the machine in the gym can not be trusted. I realize that now.

thanks

Yeah that's what I meant.

Found this post about power output.

So I have pretty much only done endurance training so far this season, now I want start some fitness training at almost threshold power. I found a fairly flat circuit of road about 11 miles from home where I am setting some performance goals. Today my goal was to average 20 mph, this was hard, but I didn't quite need to give 100% effort to achieve it.

My goal for end of the season is to be able to do one lap (8,7 miles) at 35 kph or 21,75 mph and 3 laps (22,4 miles) at 20 mph.

I am not really sure how to train for this in an efficient way. I do think getting a pulse meter might be useful. I am also contemplating getting a power meter. Do power meters actually use power to measure your power or do they add any resistance?

Stravas estimate of 177 watt for maintained 20 mph seems a bit low to me, I guess I will just need a power meter to know for sure.

I found a power calculator with many input variables. It is giving me a range of 200-265 watts depending on the variables i chose. I have my hands on the top of the handlebar, but I am still kind of crouched down, so I am not sure what to chose there.

http://www.kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm

I really only have a lot of experience with pretty comprehensive training plans - these usually aim at general racing skills, so they include things you might not be interested in like climbing, short intense jumps, and short length sprints. Training for those things probably have some benefit all around though. I can tell you the parts of my training that I think would probably help.

The first would probably be what are called "steady state" intervals. These are near-threshold or at-threshold intervals. The ones I do are 6-12 minutes long, with 3-6 intervals, 2-3 minutes in between. For the first set it's recommended to spend no more than 30 minutes in intervals, so like 3x10 or 5x6 or 6x5 etc. I usually have these in zone 5a-5b (uh, I will look up what that means shortly)

No more than once a week you'll want to do a long ride, like say 2 hours, with a single 20-40 minute interval buried in it, that is near your threshold. I like to put the interval on the same stretch of road so I can compare.

You might get some benefit from shorter intervals too. I "like" pyramid intervals. These are intervals that go, like, 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 4 min then 4 3 2 1. Each interval has the same distance in between as the last intervals, so 1 min on, 1 off, 2 min on, 2 off and so forth. The intervals are done at essentially the maximum power you can hold for that time period. You probably won't hit your max HR but you'll get close. My max HR is around 184-185, I usually am trying to hit like 176-178 in these and hold it. I think they're supposed to be the upper end of zone B but I don't remember. These will give you a lot of overall fitness and if you ride with other people who like to, say, sprint for city limit signs that's what these will help with.

You definitely want a HR monitor. These are cheap and effective.

Power meters are nice too. They do not add any resistance, they use "strain gauges". There are many kinds - they usually mount to either the crank, the pedals, the front gears or the wheels.

The cheapest ones I know of are the Power tap and the Stages power meter.

Powertaps are built into wheels, or sometimes you can find already built up wheels with a power tap in them. The power meter is in the "hub". You can find them used at about $400 in the US, maybe 2x that new?

Stages is a relatively new entry. You buy a special crank (basically you replace the left crank with their crank, so you just buy one of the same length and you're gtg). They're $700 I think.

So with the power tap, you're stuck with 1 wheel. With the stages, you're stuck with 1 bike. I'd choose accordingly, by which one is less limiting to you. My racing bike has the stages on it, because I have a few different wheel sets that I switch out according to conditions. I use the powertap on my training bike.

Strava integrates well with both HR and power meters. It will help you manage your training by showing you how much fatigue you're building up. With a power meter it can also show you a graph of how much power you can put out per unit of time. You can use this to help plan intervals. For example if the graph shows me I can do 350 watts for 5 minutes, and I want to do an all-out 5 minute interval, then I know I should start the interval at (at least) 350 watts. Starting at 250 means I'll probably not work hard enough and 400 means I'll probably burn out.

Both of your goals are reachable. I'm not sure which is harder, but for me I think the 2nd one, because it requires vigilance. I tend to start daydreaming when I ride and I'll look down and realize I've started to slack off. I've done 20 miles in an hour before, and it's required 100% concentration.

Increasing your strength will help with both goals, too, I think (weight lifting)