Originally Posted by
ark40
Mostly I feel physically exhausted, the energy is not there and I start to slow down noticeably, going uphills is a dead block after 50, just don't have the strength to do it. Having said that I haven't really pushed beyond 50 this year. But plan to do 55 this Sunday. Let's see how that goes.
How do you feel at the end of a 40 mile ride? Could ride some more miles?
I like the idea of a once a week "sprint" / "hard efforts" type of ride. My local hills are 1 mile, 300 feet, so with a 90 minute ride, I can attack a few of them at full blast, without worrying about saving some energy for later in the ride.
Before I retired, I used to do a local Tues evening ride that had lots of speed groups and fairly flat routes. I liked to try to hang on to a speed group that was just a little too fast for me -- and found that I could go longer and harder on the fast parts than I expected. That "keep this effort going for another 30 seconds" is really hard to do solo -- I needed the motivation to not get dropped right there.
I didn't see any mention of energy bars or other carbs eaten during the rides.
Shoes -- I finally got some nice Lake shoes that are large enough to fit some fairly thick socks and there's no tight spots at the sides. It made a big difference for my longer rides. I've used the donut shaped "callus" foam pads from the drugstore for strategic padding at times, too. Those sometimes don't stick very well, so a cut down piece of "moleskin" with the donut pad stuck to it's surface is a more reliable pad.