Weigh in day today, 191. Up 1 this week and down 24 overall, 28 weeks.

Been fluctuating between 189 and 191 the last three weeks. I weigh almost every day but only record it here on Tuesday. I'm obviously eating at ~190 pound maintenance. I want a small deficit, but have been really slack with logging. Back to the grind(of logging) as of today.

I registered for the ECC yesterday, then burned the crap out of my hand in the evening.
I grabbed a pair of grill tongs that I didn't notice were touching the extremely hot grill. Left some embedded melted plastic in my skin. Luckily I have a pool so I plunged my hand in the pool and it looks like mainly a surface burn. Just not sure how it's going to be grabbing handlebars for the next couple of weeks, as the burn is right between the thumb and forefinger on the fleshy part of my palm.

Weigh in day today, 191. Even this week and down 24 overall, 29 weeks.

All is on schedule for the ECC this coming weekend. I will just do a couple of easy rides, one today and one on Thursday, and then do my best on Sunday.

good luck, eagerly awaiting a trip report next Monday

Thanks, I'll try to take a few pictures and will post a TR.

Some random thoughts while looking forward to the ECC. Quoting myself from 1/30/2015 above. Still haven't made 180, but I'm now at 86 kg (190 pounds). I was using the 8 minute CTS fitness test above, and based on my last test my watts per kg for the 8 minutes test is 2.25. I'm now at the bottom of the "untrained" range on that scale, at least for the longer durations(5 minute & FTP).

I've dabbled with the "Time Crunched Cyclist" century programs for the last few years, but never did the whole program beginning to end, until this year. I have to say doing the program really improved my fitness.

Planning for next year, I want to hit the TB (Triple Bypass) in the 8th week of the TCC experienced century program. Allowing for 6 weeks between programs I can do the program next year starting once in January around the 18th and then once in May. Keep losing weight in the meantime and then see how it goes.

Weigh in day today, 189. Down 2 this week and down 26 overall, 30 weeks.

ECC trip report to follow.

ECC trip report. Let me say up front I only did 92 of 100 miles.

The place:
Red River, New Mexico. Elevation 8760. I had gone skiing there 20 years ago, but I had forgotten how pretty it is. I like it better in the summer than the winter, for sure. That was probably the last time I skied. It is a really small town nestled in between some mountains with a pretty, clear stream. My hotel was right on the river. We got there Saturday afternoon and the weather was really nice, upper 70's and sunny.

The ride.
Got up at 6:30 Sunday morning. It is pretty chilly, maybe 45 or so. Luckily the website had prepared me for that so I had long pants and a jacket, and long fingered gloves. Ate a bowl of cereal, a small yogurt, and a banana. Maybe should have ate more? That's a pretty typical pre ride breakfast for me, not sure if more calories would have helped me later in the day?
The hotel is less than a block from the start, so my wife and I go downstairs about 7:30. I fire up my Garmin 500, and we find a sunny spot to wait for people to gather for the start. There are somewhere between 275-300 people registered for the ride. 7:55 my wife starts taking a bunch of pictures, I get distracted, and right as they are counting down the start my Garmin auto powers down due to inactivity.

I immediately turn it back on and start slow peddling and it goes into this funky state where it says waiting on the screen and then nothing happens. Typically it goes to an acquiring satellites message, but I give it a minute and nothing happens. Crap, I need the GPS or I don't have heart rate, speed or power info. I really don't want to do this ride "blind". I pull over, power it down, wait a minute, and turn it back on. No help, still "waiting". I've seen this one before at home, and the way I cleared it then was connecting it to my PC. That is not an option. At this point everyone else has passed me, so I get back on my bike.

The first 13 miles of this ride are a very fun descent. I would have enjoyed it more except I am worried about the Garmin. I stop and fiddle with it at least once more, no luck. I finally decide to leave it off until the first stop in the town of Questa, 14 miles into the ride, which is 95% downhill.

I get to Questa, stop, and I get rid of my warm clothes at the clothes drop, and try powering on the GPS one more time. Still "waiting". I decide to quit worrying about it and just ride the best I can.
I leave it on to see what it will do. About two miles away from Questa, I hit my first pretty big uphill, and about halfway up the Garmin suddenly goes from "waiting" to the main screen. I hit the start button and it starts recording data.
The section between Questa and Taos is fairly rolling hills, hills that are large by my standards. They barely show on the Strava profile but they are there.

After going through Taos, the first long ascent starts. It is 16 miles of low grade uphill. I feel pretty good about it, though I do stop once to catch my breath about halfway in. I'm certainly not fast up the hill, but I do a good job of pacing. The very last section of this ascent is pretty steep, but only for less than a mile. At the top is a rest area (Palo Flechada, 9100 feet). I eat a couple of orange slices and a couple small chunks of banana. I've also eaten a cliff bar while riding, as well as drank some Gatorade and water.

Leaving the rest stop the ride heads downhill. The road is pretty good and I think I do a pretty good job of descending. It has several tight hair pin corners and then the last section is straight down.

After the descent there is a right turn to go to Angel Fire. It is 8 miles out, and 8 miles back, and you need these 16 miles to make it a century ride. I know there are not a lot of riders behind me on the course, but I decide to go for the century. As I turn right I see 3 riders that left the rest stop after me go straight, and cut out the 16 miles. This ends up worrying me a little more than it should, in retrospect. As I'm riding to Angel Fire I'm feeling a little lethargic. My mind starts working on me, wondering if I can do the whole ride. I don't feel much power left in my legs, and I am worrying about the big climb of BobCat pass. The road I am on is pretty flat, but about the 4 mile mark I see a hill. I decide rather than climb this hill I will cut the ride short and see if I have enough left to get up the pass. One bad thing about this decision, when I turn around I am 4 miles from a rest stop in Angel fire. Since I turned around early I now have to ride another 21 miles before getting to the last rest stop at the 90 mile mark.

As I ride up this Valley (Moreno Valley), we have a pretty good cross wind. It doesn't hurt me too much, but it certainly isn't helping. I also start to run out of liquids, it's a little hotter than I thought it would be, and I start feeling nauseous. I don't feel like I have much left, and I just don't think there is anyway I am going to get up Bobcat pass. In my mind at this point I'm remembering Bobcat pass as 6 miles of 6% grade.

I get to the 90 mile rest stop, and I've almost decided I am going to have them call the SAG wagon. I decide to get a drink, eat a PB&J, and take a few minutes. I start talking to another guy who is there, and he tells me the first 3 miles of the pass is not bad, maybe 2 to 3%. It is only the last two miles that is 5 to 6%. I rest a bit and decide to try it. The first three miles are fine. I'm grinding up it slowly. I get to the steep part and have to stop. Long story short, I have not much left, but by walking some, riding some, and resting some I get up the last 1.8 miles of the pass. Takes me 41 minutes, lol.

It's all downhill from there, the descent would have been very fun if there weren't irregular bumps across the road.

tldr:
GPS problems suck, maybe didn't have enough fuel or liquids, finished 92 of 100 miles.

Strava link:
https://www.strava.com/activities/392469672/

nice trip report and good job fighting to the end!

yeah, to me it sounds like you probably didn't eat enough.
before the ride: it depends how early you want to get up. ideally, you eat more than 3 hours before the start and you eat A LOT (maybe 800 cal or so?). but most people need to do this early enough that they can digest it (/some of it) before the race starts. then maybe 30-60min before the start you eat again a little bit (100-200kcal). some white bread or some fruits, nothing too heavy and nothing that is hard to digest (not too much fiber or complex carbs).
then during the ride: aim for 250-300kcal (with your weight) per hour and start eating very soon after the start (let's say 30min after starting). you don't have to eat gels or powerbars (but they are completely fine of course). eat what works for you. mostly carbs (and some protein if you're on your bike the whole day), not much fat.
drinking: very hard to generalise. depends A LOT on weather / humidity and personal preference. some people drink too much, many don't drink enough. i assume everyone in the US drinks too much (thanks to gatorade commercials). btw: if you drink something with calories --> this also counts into the 300kcal / hour.
btw: because you have a power meter --> total work in KJ is very close to total energy expenditure in kcal (this is just a coincidence because kcal/kj is very similar to your body's efficiency, which is 24-25%). so you used ~2500kcal on your ride. your body starts with a surplus of around 1500-2000kcal. if you don't eat anything and use up all that glycogen --> you bonk. your body can't absorb more than 200-300kcal per hour of hard-ish riding. so as long as there is still something left (either from before or from food eaten), you're fine. (of course, all those numbers are just ballpark numbers)


so you were riding most of the time alone? that's hard. (on the upside: you're not that fast yet, so drafting is less important, hehe)

strava: had a closer look at your heart rate in the analysis tab. two things:
- i think you went slightly too fast on the first long climb (the highway 64 one). if you reduce avg HR on this climb by maybe 3-4 bpm, you should feel a lot better on the final climb. (avg HR on hw64 climb is ~169, avg HR on last climb is ~159)
- what happened during the HR spike starting at mile 29? first i thought it was a malfunction, but it seems "clean". (and you had to take a break after it...) did you try to follow someone faster? or just got carried away? it seems a little steeper, but still, unless HR malfunctioned (it happens, but it doesn't look like that to me), this was a very bad idea and cost you a lot of unnecessary energy / time in the end. you really have to avoid such spikes during a century. you gain something like one minute during the hard effort, but then loose 10+min at the end.

- detail: i would turn off the "auto-lap" feature and instead use the manual lap function at the start / end of longer climbs / downhills. right now you have a lap every 5 miles, but that is quite useless on a road bike.

again, congratz, great job!

ps: just followed you on strava, in case you're confused who that is

Tron, thanks for the advice. I will definitely try eating more on my next big ride. I'm fine on metric century rides doing what I did but on these longer rides I've been dying the last part, so I need to try something else.
I drink a lot, but I don't think I over did it. My pee was pretty concentrated. (TMI?)
I'm pretty used to riding alone, so I don't mind. The only spot it would have been useful to draft was up the Moreno valley. The rest was pretty much downhill or uphill.

You really did take a good look at the data. What happened there is a good question. I've had it happen a few times on different rides. My heart goes to an abnormally faster rhythm. I have to stop and let it slow down, usually at some point there is a sharp 20 BPM drop. I guess I'm going to have to get that checked out. I was hoping getting in better shape would take care of it. I don't know exactly what causes it, it is not just a hard effort as I had harder efforts during the ride. Perhaps it was the fact it was a prolonged effort, not sure. I don't think it was HRM malfunction and I wasn't chasing anybody. I was in a nice rhythm and looked down and saw it in the 190's. My effort was not a 190 BPM effort, for sure.
Good advice on the auto lap, most of the rides here are flat so there aren't natural spots to hit the lap button so I just autolap, but what you said makes sense.
Thanks. Once I got past worrying about the Garmin trouble, I really enjoyed the ride. I'm not sure why a fat old guy likes to go uphill, but I do, lol. I will follow you back on Strava, like to see what you are up to.

Weigh in day today, 189. Even this week and down 26 overall, 31 weeks.

Not much else to say. I think I'm going to attempt one more century this fall, The Crazy Kicker in Mineral Wells, Texas, weather permitting. Saturday, October 17th. 3500 feet of uphill, which doesn't sounds like as much as it used to after almost finishing the ECC.

I just started reading this log.

It seems like most of the food you ate during the ride was solid. Chewing takes a lot of energy when you're on a long ride. For me, regular Clif bars were so dry they always made me nearly throw up. Tron says you don't have to eat gels, but I think they're damn near a necessity. Plus they give you that energy bounce pretty much right away if you're fading. Also, I'd make sure most of the liquid your drink is sports drink (if you can find a flavor you like well enough). Over a typical 100 mile race, I would drink/ pour over my head probably 10 bottles, 7 of which were Cytomax orange and 3 were water that I dumped on myself if it was hot.

I normally would have had some kind of gels with me, but I screwed up and forgot them and there weren't any in the little market in Red River. I did drink 50/50 water / sports drink on the ride but as typical on these type of rides the sports drink was quite diluted so was probably more like 75% water.

I'm ok on rides 75 miles and less, but the last 20 miles on a century have always been a problem. Could be nutrition, could just be fitness. I'm going to try on the one in October to eat more upfront, and I will definitely have some sort of gels and or Gu with me. Plus it won't be 100 degrees or at 8000 feet, so I think I should have a good shot at my best century ever. As long as the wind doesn't blow 30 mph, which is always a possibility in Texas.

"Chewing takes a lot of energy when you're on a long ride." <--- any source for that? never heard it before and i'm very skeptical... there are afaik only 2 reasons people use gel:
- the gel-carbs get (slightly) faster into the bloodstream than with solid-food-carbs. but that's no problem unless you're already very close to bonking. otherwise just "eat regularly" and you shouldn't have a problem.
- IF you have stomach problems or in general an easily irritated stomach, gels are easier to digest. this is more important for runners, because eating / digesting while running sucks, it's very often to get problems during ultra-runs. but most people don't have problems digesting solid food during a ride, especially if you're not riding at an especially high intensity. now, for the case that you're riding at your absolute limit, sure, i'd suggest to eat gel instead of a dry cliffbar (btw, there are many awesome and non-dry bars available, hehe). but during a "leisurely century", it's simply a question of preference imho.

but don't get me wrong, gels are absolutely fine and many people prefer them. but i just don't think there necessary at all, unless in very specific circumstances. and at least for me personally (and many people i know), it's more "satisfying" to eat solid food while riding. even many pro riders love their rice cakes etc during the first part of a stage...

do you disagree?

ps @ OP: it's definitely smart to try different "nutrition strategies" and find the one that works best for you.

I think it may be the difference in pace intensity's that we are talking about here. I think if I was "racing" I wouldn't want to try to eat a cliff bar, but I'm definitely falling under the "leisurely century" category.

I usually take some sort of a gel as well as something like a cliff bar with me on a long ride. In this case I got caught short.

Tron, it was definitely an experiential thing so it might not be true for everyone and I certainly cannot produce any studies. But I found that on long rides, even easy ones, clif bars that I found tasty off the bike made me want to throw up cuz they were so dry and hard to chew and swallow. The fruit power bar flavors were a little better but still hard. It makes a difference if you're stopping to eat too.

Definitely what you said about experimenting and finding something that works is true though.

Btw, where can I find the gps file? I'd like to take a gander. Congrats on the 92 miles and good job on not getting in the sag. I'm not ashamed to say that I have cried on the bike many times, so I know it's not easy to resist

The Strava link is in post #132 ITT.

Weigh in day today, 188. Down 1 this week and down 27 overall, 32 weeks.

Been tough getting in as many rides as I would like, with the days getting shorter. Probably have to start doing more indoor rides, even though the weather is very nice.

Weigh in day today, 189. Up 1 this week and down 26 overall, 33 weeks.

So according to the scale my progress has been very slight the last 6 weeks on losing weight. I haven't been keeping any other metrics so it's hard to point to anything for sure, but I think I'm a leaner 189 then I was 6 weeks ago, fwiw. My side saddles seem smaller, lol.

I'm a member of the Richardson Bike Mart Strava club. Strava clubs list weekly leaders for total distance, single ride distance, and elevation gain. One ride stood out to me last week, a 502 mile single ride. I've been aware of ultra endurance events but never really checked into one. There is something called the Texas Time Trials in Glen Rose, Texas.
http://tt24tt.com/

Here is the link to the actual ride:
https://www.strava.com/activities/400928497


They have a 500 mile "race", as well as 24, 12 and 6 hour races. You ride a 26.5 mile loop until you reach the 500 miles. The fastest to 503.5 miles was just under 29 hours. Crazy.

I'm half interested in trying the 12 hour event next year. My goal would be 5 laps, 132.5 miles.

Pretty sure that was local hero Andrew Willis? He's been *tearing up* all the ultra races around here. His training schedule is ****ing crazy. He does like 10-hour indoor trainer rides, sometimes up to 6 hours with no tv/movies/radio/phone/anything. He logged an 11 hour ride in July where he went through 48 bottles of water.

Another friend of mine did the 6 hour event - I think he made 3 loops (77ish miles?) and could have gone for a 3rd but no real point. A few other people who's names I recognized did various ones also.

I think if I'm not otherwise busy I'll do the 6 hour one next year. I hear it has significant elevation gain.

Hey, I'll be in Dallas for a reunion on nov 6-8th. I was planning on crashing a friend of mine's ride on saturday morning. You interested? It'll probably be a group ride, I think, and I doubt it'll be anything stressful, probably 16mph avg is my guess, although I can find out from him if you like. Not sure where but he lives south of dallas and tends to ride in the white rock lake area.

Yes, it was Andrew Willis. His splits are insane.
http://edsresults.com/ttt2015/index....r_info&bib=515

I'm pretty sure those splits are elapsed time. The variance between lap times is extremely small. He churned out 90 minute laps from start to finish. If he stopped I can't find it. I'd have been tempted to search his bike for a motor....

16 might be stressful for me, lol. Sounds interesting though, let me know if you are coming for sure and where you are going to meet, when it gets closer. If the weather is good I'd come out and see how long I could hang in there.

I think Willis was a pro cyclist in his youth. He runs the local criterium series (a weekly bike race from like april to october) with his wife Holly. (Holland Racing - Holly + Andrew). I think they might promote some other races during the year.

A few years ago he had gained a lot of weight and stopped racing. Within the last year or so he dropped the weight, started racing again, and started doing these ultra races.

I think the first one he did was 250ish miles and he beat everyone else by 2 hours or more, including the teams which are usually faster because they can run pace lines. He did some other long ultras. I think he had a bad DNF in Race across the west, which is a big chunk of race across america. I assume he'll be doing RAAM this year.

It takes a lot to get where he's at but he also has a lot of support. Sponsors for money and bikes and stuff, which gives him the freedom to mostly devote his life toward it.

Weigh in day today, 189. Even this week and down 26 overall, 34 weeks.

Those last stubborn 10 pounds. I'm going to give myself until December 29th to get to 180. I'd like to start 2016 in maintenance mode.

The last 10 pounds definitely take the longest but the payoff when you switch your daily calorie goal from trying to lose weight to maintain is well worth it.

are you still logging your food? or what's the problem?

Not faithfully. I think that's the problem.