Bonked Hard Yesterday
 

Had a couple consecutive hard rides in 20+ mph wind this week. Yesterday I only got 9 miles and bonked hard. Just barely made it back home. Finally, over 24 hours later beginning to feel better. Still not 100% but better. Think I'll take the weekend off.

It happens...always disappoints and frustrates me when it does. Best you can do is get your rest back, analyze what you think caused it and if it was within your control, then get back at it when you are ready. Keep smiling.

You cant bonk after only 9 Miles.

Thanks.
Didn't feel real good after the last ride but shrugged it off. Should have paid attention. I think it's that I completely changed what I eat a few months ago. Was just fine with my intake vs exercise until I started riding. Now I'm burning more than I'm taking in. Need to tinker with it until I find the happy place.

That's good to know. Guess it was just my imagination.

Just out of curiosity did you eat anything prior to or during your ride? Were you properly hydrated? From my experience, bonking comes from malnutrition... so that may have been your issue, on your next "hard" ride, try taking along a candy bar or bottle of Gatorade (mixed with water so you don't end up feeling bloated after drinking).

You guessed it. Been on a very restricted diet the past few months. As long as I don't exercise, I'm fine. Throughout the week I had noticed that I wasn't feeling good after each ride. My pea brain hadn't made the connection until the day after my last ride. Decided to give myself a couple extra days to sort of restock. I will definitely be bringing something to eat with me on Monday.

Thanks. I appreciate the advice. Haven't been riding long and what is still a "hard" ride to me is 10-15 miles bucking 20+ mph winds.

20+ mph winds will make any ride hard for anyone.

(At the end of my ~40m ride last weekend I hit some stiff headwinds - just had no gas in the tank for the last 5m, or so it felt).

We've had unusually high winds for Fall so far this year. Currently it's steady 15 gusting 20. Oct-mid Dec is usually the best weather in the area. Afternoon highs in the 50-60 range and little to no wind. We're getting the temps but keeping spring/summer winds.

I don't want to sound like a doubter, so please don't misinterpret me. I've ridden tons of miles since around 2009 while also on a very restricted diet, and I've also bonked several times, so believe me when I say I know it's possible, and what it feels like. That being said, the shortest distance I ever bonked on was 23 miles into a 25 mile ride. I was eating very little, riding way too much (it was during one of Strava's distance challenges, if I recall the Festive 500 one of the years I did that). That ride was my second ride of the day (one in the morning, this one was in the afternoon) and with insufficient calorie intake in between I was in a very low energy state.

Still, 9 miles in implies either that you would have had to have been in a nearly fully depleted glycogen state at the start of the ride, with very low blood sugar, and simply unable to metabolize enough fat to keep up with the energy requirements. That typically would imply a very high level of effort.

If you don't mind me asking, do you wear a heart rate strap during a ride? If so, what heart rate zone were you in during this ride? I ask because most folks should be able to plow on on bodyfat alone in zone 2, and really only get themselves in trouble in sort of mid zone 3 or higher levels of effort.

I'm wondering if what you experienced was really a bonk, or something else. What cadence do you typically ride at? I ask because if you're typically in like the 60s or 70s it's possible that you simply mashed too hard into that wind and, to use the popular metaphor, burned all the matches in your book, and had wasted muscles. Blowing your muscles up like this can feel pretty devastating, which someone who hasn't really bonked before might think was a true bonk.

Btw, when I bonked at mile 23 in that one ride it was mile 23 of a 25 mile ride, and I went from like 18 mph speed one mile to like 10 mph or less a mile or so later, with a very real dread that I literally could not make it the last two miles home. It was devastating, and when runners call it "hitting the wall" they aren't kidding. In a true bonk your brain is literally shutting down your body's muscles in order to prevent the brain from being so starved of necessary calories that dain bramage could result, or worse. This is a very different thing from simply burning all your matches and being so wiped out muscle-wise that you don't think you can go on.

If, in fact, it was a case of simply burning out your muscles by mashing at too low of a cadence into that strong wind, have you tried pushing your cadence higher? When I first started riding I thought that the 60-70 rpm I was doing was perfectly normal. After reading about higher cadence I starting pushing my cadence up and got used to it, and now on good training rides I try to keep my cadence at a minimum at like 85 rpm, and typically between 90 and 100 rpm. If I wait to shift to a harder gear till I'm in at least the upper 90s or even low 100s then my cadence won't fall below 90s after the shift. Another reason why a compact chain set and a wide range of 1-tooth difference cogs in the rear is a blessed thing.

Anyhow, please forgive me if you really did bonk as in get to a point of such low blood energy level that your brain actually shut down the rest of your body. I don't mean to be a doubter, but I do think it's entirely possible that something else that felt really bad was going on, but not technically a real bonk.

Btw, the other bonks or impending bonks I've experienced were all in the 45 to 55 mile range during moderately high intensity rides with insufficient energy. A 9 mile bonk would be quite an aberration, and if you really did bonk at 9 miles, regardless of the nasty wind, then you definitely need to do some rejiggering of your nutrional/exercise balance.

What diet are you on? Anything low carb or related to ketosis by chance?

You can bonk at mile 9 by the way, especially if you have ridden consecutive days.

@Jarrett2
Low carb. 100gr per day, max. Some days 50 or less.
@SethAZ
Thank you for the explaination. It may not have been a true bonk. Looking back, it was probably a low blood sugar and basic lack of nutrition for the amount of effort I had been putting out over the course of the week. However, even though I'm not diabetic, I've had bouts of low blood sugar before and none of them were ever like this. It was a scary shutdown of my legs and upper body. Had a lot of difficulty getting unclipped, had to stand holding onto the fence in my front yard for a while before I could get off the bike. Took about 5 minutes after that to navigate the 30 feet to the house, then a few more to get me and the bike up on the porch. Couldn't formulate a thought to complete a sentence for a while once inside. Felt like crap for a little over 24 hours.

I try to maintain a cadence of 80 but know that I drop down tremendously on hills and into the wind. I am sure a lot of my problems are due to the fact that I don't know "how" to ride correctly yet. I've got less than 50 miles in the saddle. Everything else has been on the stationary.

I had a feeling. I went through the same thing a year ago when I went on the keto diet. All of the sudden, short, easy bike rides were kicking my ass.

It's a tough transition for a sugar burning cyclist to become fat adapted. When not eating low carb and cycling, your body gets used to a steady intake of sugar to burn for bike rides and doesn't become efficient at metabolizing fat for energy. When you make the switch to low carb, your body has to literally change its internal systems to better metabolize fat. That process is a bit slow.

So when you go out and try to do your same rides on lower carbs, its going to suck. Bad. The good news is this will pass. It took a few months of eating low carb and slowly increasing my cycling back up to pre low carb levels. But I eventually got even faster on the bike than I was before I went low carb. Another benefit is once you build the internal machinery for efficient fat burning, you essentially become bonk proof. You can ride for hours in a fasted state with no ill effects.

Bottom line, it sucks to get fat-adapted as a cyclist, but once you are there, its much better than being a sugar burner. Just take it slow and feel your way through the process.

So you were able to maintain the low carb program and push through to a fat burner without adjusting your diet or did you take in a little extra on ride days?

Ok, well that actually does sound like a true bonk. Btw, that's a serious thing, and you really need to have some calories available for something like that, because raising the blood sugar level is what's needed, not willpower.

All I can say is that losing weight through hard, long distance cycling is a balancing act, and one which I personally am still tinkering with. The challenge is that if you're riding hard enough, and far enough, then your body probably can't keep up with the rate of calories burned by metabolizing your body fat, but if you're going low calorie, low carb diet then it's really easy to be at too low of an energy state. If your glycogen stores aren't topped off then you probably don't have the 90 minutes' worth people popularly write about.

What I do personally, and I'm still working on this and am not claiming to be an expert on it, is for my longer rides I make sure I've at least got some gatorade powder mixed in in my second water bottle. I'll go with the water-only bottle to begin with, and hold back going with the gatorade if I'm doing fine, but I'll start drinking it without hesitation if I get any inkling that my energy state is low enough that my fat metabolism isn't keeping up. I have one of those little snack bags that attaches to my bike right behind the stem, and I'll typically have an energy goo, or a calorie bar of some sort like a Cliff bar or whatever in that little bag. I don't eat it, it just sits there as an emergency reserve. If my gatorade bottle isn't sufficient and I'm in real calorie trouble I want to have those calories available as an emergency measure.

It's really easy to get into this mind trap where you're hesitant to eat or drink any calories because you're trying to lose weight and you think it just takes will power to gut it out, but bonking for real isn't about willpower. It's about whether your brain is going to starve because your body, even burning fat, is just incapable of keeping up with the calorie demand. Hence the fallback plan of having calories available. Additionally, I carry my wallet with me in my jersey pocket, and I plan all my rides that are longer than 25 or 32 miles so that on the back half of the ride I'm never further than maybe 2 or 3 miles from a gas station. I live in a part of AZ where I ride on tons of back roads and rural roads and whatnot, but I live right on the edge of where the citification keeps pushing out into the desert, and it's not hard to ride roads where there's a Circle K or some other gas station not that far away. If I'm feeling in calorie trouble I do not hesitate to stop there, get a sugary coffee and sometimes an additional snack, take 7 to 10 minutes to rest up and drink the calories, then continue on.

I'm at the point where I have a pretty good idea of what my fat-burning metabolism can handle, and I plan accordingly. I know I can do a 25 mile route pretty easily on an empty stomach. I can typically do my 32-mile route on an empty stomach if I don't push my heart rate past the zone 2/zone 3 boundary. Any further than 32 miles is stepping closer to the brink than I like, and hence the gatorade/emergency calorie/gas station treat options. A month ago I did a 50 mile ride during a week of tons of other miles, where I decided to see how far I got on an empty stomach. It wasn't truly empty because I'd eaten a little two or three hours before the ride, so it wasn't quite the same as an early morning "fasted state" ride. I ended up stopping at a 7-11 at around the 43 mile mark and getting a sugary coffee and snack. I hadn't bonked, but I detected signs of stress that tripped the Master Caution light in my mind, and I didn't hesitate. These signs of stress included that my heart rate was going up 5-10 bpm with no increase, and even perhaps a slight decrease in how fast I was riding. After a 7-10 minute break and some iced sweet coffee at the 7-11 I rode home the last 7 miles and was fine.

My current training regimen includes early morning "fasted state" bike rides, on water and black coffee only. I have a target heart rate which I've determined after reading a few online articles about cardio base training and improving the efficiency of burning body fat. If I'm feeling really good and look down and find out I'm 5-10 bpm higher than this target, I'll slow down. If I look down and I'm 5-10 bpm lower than this heart rate, I'll speed up. This heart rate wasn't determined for me by some sort of scientific testing or anything like that, so it's really just a SWAG, but the idea is that at this heart rate I have the best chance of improving my cardio endurance while also training my body to be more efficient at burning my extensive internal lipid stores. :innocent:

Doing like a 12-15 mile ride this way I don't even bring the Gatorade backup, but doing my 32-mile route I definitely do. I often don't drink it, but if I feel any signs of energy stress I don't hesitate at all.

Anyhow, I'm glad that nothing really bad came from your experience. I know you didn't ask for any advice, but as I'm basically still a fat body, and also an aspiring long distance cyclist, and have been tinkering with diet, cycling for calorie burn and long distance endurance, etc. I thought I'd share my thoughts on it.

Bottom line is this: low energy state is no joke when you're out on a bike. You should have an energy plan, and that includes a backup plan where you have some calories you can eat/drink for a near-instant energy state raise, because bonking doesn't mean you're losing the most weight; it means your brain is fighting hard to keep itself from dying. Dain bramage isn't worth it. Bring some calories.

Yes, on push through. Once adapted, you can still ride on very low carbs and be fine.

Also, if you've got less than 50 miles in the saddle, then you really need to work up to longer distances. If you asked me, and I know that you didn't, what I'd advise you is that it's probably more important that you work up your cardiovascular endurance and cycling legs than it is to ensure that you're burning the most body fat during your rides.

What this means is that you probably want to do some 10-15 mile rides for at least a couple of weeks before you push out your distance even further. Nobody starts their running career by going out and doing a marathon or even half marathon. You need to build up your cardiovascular base endurance and get some cycling legs under you before you should start tinkering with low energy state fat-burning training. There's lots of stuff out there to read on this, and I don't know who are the real experts one should be reading and who's just talking out of their ass (hint: I'm probably one of the ones talking out of my ass, since what I say is just based on a smattering of reading and my own personal experiences, not some kind of scientific training in the discipline). Here's an example of an article I felt was useful to me in terms of heart rate and building up the cardiovascular base. Using this guy's formula and rounding up or down 1 or 2 bpm I arrived at 130 bpm as my target heart rate for my cardio base-building rides. On most of my solo rides this is what I stick to for now. Sometimes I set myself a time challenge on a particular route to see where I'm at (set some Strava PRs/KOM attempt on some segment or other), and when I go on a group ride this heart rate target goes straight out the window. But for solo daily mileage rides the 130bpm target heart rate is what I shoot for. It'll be different for everyone since it depends on age and some sort of assessment of one's physical state.

I'm doing lots of miles up to my 32.5 mile route on an empty stomach and at this target heart rate. I would not advise you to do this. Go for those 10-15 mile rides and just build up that cardio base for a few weeks. Then push it out to 20 miles, then further, as you get your legs under you, your cardiovascular system gets stronger, etc. And eat something before you ride. Now's not the time to be doing empty stomach rides, since you've barely even ridden at all. This is way too early for that.

If you don't have a heart rate monitor I'd suggest that it's a very good investment to make. I was on a group ride this past Saturday and we got to a hill climb section where I got dropped from the main group of skinny people, and was pushing really hard to keep up with this group of two riders. I was staying with them, but I looked down and was pushing 155-160 bpm heart rate. I knew immediately that I would not be able to sustain that over the few miles that this hilly section still had in front of us, so I dropped myself from that group, got my heart rate down to 145-150 bpm and just kept my own pace through those hills. This was based on experience, and an understanding of where my body was at. The 145-150 heart rate was at the threshold of what I could sustain over a long distance, and the 155-160 bpm was over that threshold, which means I could know immediately that my ability to sustain that was not going to last as many miles as we still had ahead of us.

Anyhow, keep it up. Get those miles in, build your cardio base. Work on your techniques. Learn to cycle in more of a 90-100 rpm cadence rather than, say, 60-80 rpm, and you'll probably find, like most folks do, that you can keep that up much more easily by shifting lots of the work to your cardiovascular system, rather than mashing really hard with your leg muscles and blowing them up. It feels really wierd pedaling at 95 or 100 rpm at first, but it's something to work up to, and after you get to where you can do it, it pays dividends bigly, to paraphrase our lard-ass in chief.

I don't know if you missed the part where he said he's got less than 50 miles of actual cycling under his belt. Personally I think he's got enough work cut out for him building a healthy cardiovascular base and getting some cycling fundamentals under his belt before attempting to push through with becoming fat adapted. Just my opinion.

I'm working on my fat adaptation right now. I eat a fairly low-carb diet myself, though probably not in a ketogenic state most of the time, and I'm doing things to improve my fat adaptation, like empty tank rides in the morning on water and black coffee only, but I've also got many thousands of miles in the saddle, so I've got something to work with, and I also will have some sugar carbs (gatorade drink powder in one water bottle, an emergency snack in the frame bag, etc.) in a pinch, or for really long rides, or for fast group rides. I haven't gotten to the point of fat adaptation where I could do a 45-50 mile tempo group ride on an empty stomach, for example, or without drinking in some sugar-based calories.

@SethAZ @Jarrett2
Thank you both so much for the advice! I am down from my heaviest 300+ to 270 since August. I actually hesitate to call how I eat now a diet because it's more of a lifestyle change and it is very difficult to allow myself to eat something "not on my menu". Experimentation with what to bring with me on rides and maybe ease up on myself a tad bit as far as how hard I push and far I go for a while sounds like it may be what is needed.

I've only got the 50 miles on the road bike. For a little over a month prior I was doing up to 25 miles on the stationary, several times a week. I know there is a huge difference between the 2 but I'm not starting at complete zero.

I went through the same transition and although the process was slow, it was well worth it.
Increasing saddle time a bit at a time worked for me and I'm glad I stuck with it.
To OP, take it slow and steady and you should be fine.

SeathAZ, it really depends on his goals.

dfull, which is more important to you currently:

Becoming a stronger/faster cyclist?
or
Getting healthier and losing weight?

Here's the reason I ask. I started out dieting to lose weight. Then I started riding bikes to hopefully lose more weight. But somewhere along the way with (misguided) advice from this forum, Strava, group "training" rides, etc. I lost track of the reason I started riding bikes (to lose weight) and got focused on becoming a stronger, faster, cyclist because that's what those things promote. I got confused and thought the two goals were the same thing, but despite what people here might tell you, they are not. When I was riding as hard as I could, I stalled and/or gained weight due to the fuel needed for cycling. When I ease off on cycling and focus on food, I lose weight. There is a point of diminishing returns on cycling performance as it relates to weight loss in Clydes.

So if health and weight loss is the goal, my advice is to focus on dietary goals and use cycling as a supplement. If becoming a stronger cyclist is the goal, then focus on whatever it takes to be a stronger cyclist and use food to further that goal, ie. more sugar. That's my opinion based on years and miles of experience.

If you decide to focus on weight loss, health and low carb eating, I stand by what I said in my previous post, "just take it slow and feel your way through the process." Your body will let you know what is doable as you go through the process.

@Jarrett2
If that's the case, this may be a catch 22 for me. Obviously, I want/need to lose more weight but at the same time, I want to become a stronger rider. Speed, I feel, I can work on later once my weight goal is reached. Seems to me there would be a happy medium that will allow one to build strength/distance and continue to shed pounds.

@Jarrett2, I actually totally agree with what you just said, and I don't think that what you've said and what I said are really out of whack.

My own personal goals include both becoming a stronger cyclist and also losing weight. I'm no racer, and never will be, and as a fat body I don't have the luxury of eating a ton to fuel long, hard training rides like a thinner cyclist can do. That's why I'm pushing myself to train my body for better fat adaptation, so I can ride long and hard while also losing more weight.

I totally agree that someone just trying to lose weight will do far better by focusing entirely on diet, and then using some cycling as a boost to burn a few extra calories and get the metabolism working harder. It's fairly easy to cut 400 or 500 calories from the diet, and to burn those same calories a guy might have to ride 15 or 20 miles. Eat 400 or 500 calories and then riding 20 miles nets you really nothing except some cardiovascular endurance benefits and some improved muscles that may pay off in terms of improving one's metabolism. Getting to where one can both cut the 500 calories from the diet and also ride 30 or 40 miles without eating those calories back is the bonus round. Really good weight loss, and also some legit cycling improvement.

I think with a month on the trainer and 50 miles on the road it's a pretty good time for dfull to decide what his goals are, as you suggested. If he's liking cycling and wants to do it long-term, not just for weight loss but because he enjoys it, as I do, then I think it's smart for him to plan out how he's going to build up his cycling endurance, while also losing weight, and this is where energy management comes in. If he's only riding 10 miles at a time I doubt there's any reason to eat anything at all for his rides, especially since he'll never burn it off in just 10 miles. Of course he apparently bonked in 9 miles in a good headwind, so there's that. He probably wouldn't have if he had a better developed cardiovascular endurance, which will come with setting some distance/heart rate goals for building a good base, and sticking with it.

If I go on a fast group ride I'll take calories in before, and during a ride, and then make sure I eat some protein and a small amount of carbs immediately after the ride. I don't consider group rides to be "weight loss" rides, so if I blow half or more of the total calorie burn of the ride by food/energy intake, I'm OK with that. My weight loss rides are my solo rides, where I can ride at the pace I think will most benefit me in terms of burning fat and training my body to become more efficient at burning fat. My ultimate goal is to become so well fat adapted in my cycling that I can do these same 45-50 mile tempo group rides without taking in any external calories. I'm just not there yet.

There definitely is. Track your ride data and your weight loss together, you'll find the sweet spot.

The stuff that SethAZ just said is right on, I think.

I had to slow down the speed of my rides to start losing weight again personally. My focus these days is on health and weight loss and not cycling performance though.

A true Catch 22 would mean there was no way to reconcile the contradictory consequences of the choices. In this case, there are. You can become a stronger rider, which will enable you to ride longer/harder, which will result in more calories burned. You can also train your body to become more efficient at burning your body fat. Doing both at the same time is a balancing act, but I certainly think it's possible.

Building a good cardiovascular base, and developing some cycling legs, will be integral in both, so that's probably a good place to start.