Originally Posted by
kingston
I certainly didn't intend any disrespect to anyone so apologies if it came off that way. Everyone's different, but I personally fuel very differently for short rides (under 100 miles) than long ones. My understanding is that fasted rides train your body to burn fat on the long rides, and I have personally had a lot of success with fasted/low-calorie training to prepare for longer endurance events. When I first started riding distance events, I didn't eat enough, then I ate too much, and I always felt like crap. It took a while to figure out what worked for me, and what works is training with almost no calories and a steady stream of bike food and gatorade on longer rides. I don't know anything about nutrition other than my personal experiences, so I will always defer to your expertise on that topic. I just wanted to point out out that it's not always the case that fueling strategy for a 24+hour event should be the same as for 6-7 hour rides.
My goodness. I'm sorry if I came across as harsh. I've just come across so many riders who were new to intensity at distance, had screwed up their nutrition and had to be gotten back on their feet again. "Here, take 2 of these and 6 swallows of this and 6 swallows of that." Nutrition is the key to being able to ride forever.
I hear what you're saying and have also done fasted riding. I do believe that speeds up the process, though I suspect it will happen anyway if one rides enough. After all, one can only eat half one's burn if one is going fairly hard, so the rest is recruited from fat stores already, even not fasted. I'm terribly biased however, by being a performance rider. I TT everything. I can't help myself. It's a weakness, I know, but OTOH I have a lot of fun with it. Looking at it in that light, after about 50 miles of riding as hard as I think I can and still finish, I notice that my HR won't come up like it did, and I'm losing power. What to do? Well, that's happened because I've been having so much fun I haven't bothered to eat. So I drink about 200 calories and 10 minutes later I'm back in the game. So that's why I preach that the first 3 hours are the most important for establishing a pattern of nutrition and hydration.
For every distance ride which is important to me, I have a plan: hydration, nutrition, elimination, what, when, where. I try to stick to the plan. Another bit of planning I do is caps: whether I'm watching my HR or power, I have a cap that I try not to go over unless it's going to be to my overall advantage. If I am feeling good that last 100k or 20 miles or whatever, I spend what I saved - unless of course I have to do it again tomorrow. Sometimes of course it works out that I didn't save enough and I suffer. It's good to know where the edges are.