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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

I once did 250 km and change in a single day (a trip with Amsterdam as start and end counterclockwise around the IJsselmeer). When I was 21 and probably the fittest I've been in my life. Afsluitdijk seemed like it would never end, 30 km straight against a terrible headwind (but the whole trip has hardly any elevation change). I peed green stuff and had major skin damage on the inside of my thighs afterwards. Having to go up two flights of stairs with my relatively light racing bike at the end nearly did me in.

900 km in a day sounds like an incredible feat to me and I'm super impressed with it, but I would really wonder about the kind of impact that has on your body.

I slept for more than a day after that trip and I swore I would never do it again (and I didn't).

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I have attempted twice to ride from Hannover to Berlin in a single day which is approx. 280km.

First try I made 140km. It was a hot day and the main issue I had was that I sweat more than I could drink. Also it was getting night and I was afraid of not being able to get a train anymore so I abandoned.

For the second try I started at night (2am) to make sure I had a chance to make it in time. Around 4pm after over 180km I had to abandon because the cycle path ended and it was too dangerous to drive on the road with all that traffic.

Anyway it was a very pleasant experience as you pass many nice towns and other sightseeing. I stopped countless times to take pictures. Riding 100km, or even 200km is less harder than many expect it to be.

That sounds like a fun ride. I know the region well and the scenery there is quite amazing, too bad that - as you noticed - bike paths in Germany are still optional in many places. But near the bigger towns you can usually ride safely.

100km is well within the reach of pretty much everyone, assuming only mild amounts of fitness. In Cape Town every year there is a biking event that gets around 35000 participants, and is a 110ish km loop including 4 noticeable Hill climbs. Minimum age is now 12,but in the past children as young as 8 have finished, and there are plenty of older riders in their 70s and beyond. Reasonably fit folk do it with no training, often on a borowed bicycle.

Heck, I did once 180km on a mountain/cross bike. It was around Lake Geneva, normally racers do it in sub 4ish hours time, it took me 9.5h. Wind was the biggest enemy, when doing circle eventually you face it. I did little to no biking beforehand, being generally fit from hiking I managed somehow, but last 50kms was sufferfest. And last 1km very steep uphill in Lausanne I had to go down the bike 4x, but refused to take public transport.

The biggest issue, aside from general tiredness at the end was neck/shoulder pain. It just isn't healthy position to be in, and that's for mountain bike, for road bike it must be much worse. Impotence / fertility issues are also frequent for devotees from what I heard, even with appropriate saddles.

My boss had serious neck pain issues that doctors were baffled with and unable to cure. Told him to stop road biking, refused to do so. But eventually he stopped and problems disappeared for good.

Once in a lifetime experience, glad I did it but sure as hell not going to repeat it. Plus I've found more interesting sports for me.

It's not as bad if one gets a proper bike fit, and gradually increase mileage.

This is something that really bugs me: how many people I see on badly fit bikes, starting with inappropriate frame sizes but also the most painful postures and handle bars that are either too narrow or too wide for the individual, saddles set too far back or forth, cranks that are too long or short etc. This is especially weird for high end bikes: if the place you are buying your too-expensive bike from ensure that they know how to fit the bike to your body, it will make all the difference once you start riding longer trips.

100 km is doable for basically anybody, I did 100 km when I was completely out of shape and weighted 130 kg. The main problem was PITA from the seat, not exhaustion. I think doing 10-15 km/h on a reasonably flat terrain for the whole day wouldn't be a problem for vast majority of people.

I kinda agree it's rarely distance being the problem it's all the other side effects. Seat, or something wrong on the gears, or wheels, or wind or terrain.

With a well adjusted, well maintained bike on a flat lane without wind most would simple push and glide softly.

And rain... that can really demoralize, especially when combined with a bit of wind.

Well I did a few run completely soaked and somehow I appreciated the free cooling mechanism but it was 14km not 140

well, I didn't really check scientifically, but a friend said: yeah, you're heavy (110kg but going down sloowly) and you still move a bit, so clearly on flat terrain, you can just put those muscles into going forward. Where he probably has a point.

The problems start uphill - I only had a 5 gear bike and went for a simple 60km roundtrip stopping at some relatives. All went well, until I had to move up 100ms. With cramps (the bike was too small), I walked the last km.

But that hill (6% for 2km if you take it in one go) still is hard with a suitable gravel bike now (at 105kg).

I'm at about 100kg now, walking and running got much easier but I don't see much difference on bike. I mostly cycle with my wife who is much more fit and has basically perfect BMI, but has knee problems. She has more problems going uphill than me, so we walk up steeps hills.

May I suggest trying an e-bike for your wife? Even at the low assist levels you will find noticeably less pressure required on your knees and that can make all the difference. I have a close family member with knee issues and there it helped tremendously.

Tried to persuade her many times, she doesn't want one cause they are heavier than normal bikes and taking it from our flat outdoors and over obstacles in the city would be harder.

That makes good sense. Hm, let me think about this for a bit, maybe there is a way to get something light fixed up that still helps with knee injury. Because in my experience it is only the 'getting started' part where you need help, not once you're rolling.

I drove my bike through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. The only country with good cycle paths is the Netherlands. In France I even ended up on the highway because the road just changed. And I had the same experience as you in Germany. It's dangerous to cycle next to cars who are driving 90km/h.

> In France I even ended up on the highway because the road just changed.

What kind of GPS navigation system did you used? It can't imagine a single place in France where the highway is the only available road, since there is a lot a really small roads everywhere. (I did an almost 3000km tour of France a few years ago, and for instance Google maps is an absolutely terrible tool for this kind of use).

I never use a GPS.

But this was a long time ago. I think somewhere around Metz. The road was something like a primary road which turned into a highway. A paper map indeed confirmed the road changed into a highway.

Ah ok! Primary roads do indeed turn to highways, and without a GPS I can understand how you ended up in such road in the first place, simply by following the direction signs.

The longest I've ridden is from Long Beach, CA to San Diego, which is about 170 km. Started at 5am and arrived at 5pm. I remember the first half of the trip to have nice scenery. I don't remember the second half at all, as I zoned out and contemplated the mistake I had made as I kept pedaling.

“I remember the first half of the trip to have nice scenery. I don't remember the second half at all, as I zoned out and contemplated the mistake I had made as I kept pedaling.”

Time on earth kind of quote right there, my friend.

Did that same ride (starting from DTLA IHOP) and had a similar experience. Thanks for the reminder.

Ah yes, the 'what was I thinking' feeling... That's uncomfortably familiar. I don't remember any scenery from anything past Hindeloopen (on the Frysian side of the trip) either, but it had become dark by then, though I don't think it would have mattered much.

Retrospectively, I was woefully unprepared for that trip, not physically, but gearwise (food, drink, spares). I had planned to stay over in Friesland somewhere and then figured I would rather sleep in my own bed. That was probably a miscalculation, but that first half went pretty smoothly so I totally underestimated how bad the second half would be. Going onto Afsluitdijk that was pretty clear but by then the way back was long enough that I decided to go on.

The lack of spares in the end was probably and advantage because the bike held up perfectly (an old Peugeot 10 speed) and it would have just added more weight. But the lack of food & drink was really bad. I Ended up in an all-night gas station at some point to get some water, they were quite surprised to get a customer on a bicylce.

About 12 years ago I rode from Kanata (west end of Ottawa) down to Kingston— about 145km, I think. As training for it, I had done a few 80km days and one 105km, but the final ride was still a major step up and similarly wiped me out.

The funniest memory I have of the whole experience was how delicious the dinner was that I had at a little greasy spoon in Westport, about 2/3rds of the way there. Similar to camping or being on a canoe trip, it's just nuts how good food tastes when you're physically exhausted and starving. I went back to that diner later with my then-fiancee, and the food was considerably less appealing without the benefit of having cycled 100km to get to it.

My mother's family has an (apocryphal?) story about an ancestor whose unit during the civil war caved and slaughtered some of their horses for food while starving.

It was the best meal of his life.

After returning home from the war, he determined to raise horses for meat. The first taste-testing, as the story goes, was underwhelming.

There was a huge scandal about a Dutch meat processing company replacing beef with horse meat without mentioning this on the label or in fact anywhere else. The CEO went to prison for that (and the company went bankrupt). It's funny that if the taste is that different that nobody noticed this earlier on.

(Dutch): https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/twintig-maanden-cel-voor-paarde...

As a kid I interpreted the story to mean it wasn't very good, but in retrospect I suppose it could've been ~indistinguishable from beef and it still would've been a big disappointment for someone who expected it to be the second-best cut of meat they'd ever eaten...

Plenty of people that eat beef would really not like to be told they ate horse meat after the fact.

In wartime in NL anything that had protein was fair game, including dogs and other pets, I don't expect that it would be different anywhere else and I'm pretty sure that after a diet of flower bulbs and such those would have tasted just fine. There are some pretty harsh jokes around that theme.

Dachhase (roof rabbit) for cats. Kittenhorror!

That's less to do with the source of the meat than the mislabling of it.

Fraud is fraud.

Yes, but if the taste would have been markedly different you would expect someone to notice it a bit earlier, apparently this ran for years.

Horse and beef really taste pretty different (I've had both, in a number of different preparations), but I suspect that mixing the two together would render the final result close enough to beef that the psychological effect of expecting to eat beef would allow people to taste it as just beef -- sort of like those blind taste tests of wines where they added red food coloring to white wine and people (if I remember right, even a couple of wine experts? I dunno, I'd have to look up that study and it's late. :) ) interpreted the taste as a red.

What I understood from the horse meat scandals lately, replacing with horse meat is often the problem with where did they get the horse meat? If it's not proven to be from horses that hasn't been used for riding or racing, it can contain medicines we humans are not supposed to eat.

Yes, and food labeling laws are pretty strict: it should contain what it says on the tin, no matter where it came from, and you need to have a proper administration right back to the source. This has become a criminal offense since the mad cow disease affair.

And that would be different from industrially produced meat how exactly?

No matter if chicken, beef, or pigs.

Ah yes, the Pferdefleischskandal. Apart from the lie on the label (Etikettenschwindel) I'm still ambivalent about it. Because from time to time I pass butcher shhops advertising horse meat, and in larger supermarkets it's a speciality canned like corned beaf, usually from Poland.

So they got added value with their Gammelfleisch! What's not to like? :-)

> and contemplated the mistake I had made

Reminds me of my own "contemplation" on the way back out of the Grand Canyon. Getting down there is hard. Getting back up is way harder. And the only "food" I took with me was a six pack of beer, so somewhere halfway back up my body ran out of glycogen and I couldn't even maintain my body temperature. Thought I was gonna die, and realistically I could have died, actually. I was there alone, and had I sat down to "rest" that could have been it. Moral of the story: if you're going to attempt something physically demanding like this, at a minimum have plenty of energy dense food, water, and a thermal blanket with you. That's how I pack for longer hikes nowadays.

When we were kids, one of the adults in our Boy Scout troop would read stories from this book [1] each week, to encourage us to follow the motto, “Be Prepared”, when it comes to hikes and such.

Unfortunately, as you suggest, your story is commonplace and doesn’t always end well :/.

The takeaways I remember: (1) never hike the Grand Canyon, or any place with high exposure, in the summer, unless you’re extremely prepared for extreme weather (2) always pack the ten essentials [2] (3) when attempting a long or arduous hike, always inform an accountable third party of when and where you’re going.

Hopefully this helps somebody avoid a similar situation in the future!

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/09700...

[2]: https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/ten-essentials.html

'Energy dense food' = sugar.

More like bread and bread-like things. Sugar has to pass through your liver first, so it's not instantly available. Nuts, which are often recommended, are also energy dense, but harder to fully digest, unless you chew them really freakin' well, which nobody does.

Pass them through a coffee grinder. The paste is easy to eat in large quantities and is very energy dense.

Years ago I hikes around Annapurna in Nepal. Going through Thorong La (spelling) pass goes up to 5400m and can have snow any time of year. I saw several unprepared hikers who had simple summer gear with them only. The locals hike this route in flip flops sometimes. Fee years after that there was the big earthquake which killed ppl at Mt. Everest and around the same time that Annapurna area got around 2m of snow in 24h. Several ill prepared hikers got lost and died in the snow storm.

My husband and I went there in December, which I highly endorse. It was frigid when we started, cool when we got as far as we thought prudent for a day hike, and we were sweating and down to t-shirts by the time we made it back up top.

Time management: think about how long you want to be out. Divide by 3. Once you hit that first third, turn around. I follow this rule on my bike as well when riding downriver if the train situation is uncertain. I do not appear to be nearly as well-trained as the rest of you commenting on this.

Sounds painfully familiar. Did something similar long ago. Bangalore to Bidadi (on Mysore highway).

The onward ride of 50KM or so was very pleasant. I later realized it was because of a gentle down gradient. As a consequence, the return leg was a terrible misery. So much so that I hauled myself and my bike in a tuk-tuk for the last 10KM or so.

For me the sweet spot was 80KM. To be able to fully enjoy the ride and not feel miserable for next few days.

Agreed. I've done Seattle to Portland in 2 days a few times (200 miles total, which I split as 120/80) and while I'm glad I did it, I've realized that I like 30-60 mile rides far more than 80+. It wears you down.

As a teenager I did something similar. Lived up in the mountains in Norway. Started the ride with ~10kms downhill. Decided that day would be the day I broke 100km for the first time. After biking a further 80kms on the flats, I had the steep hills back home left. I got about halfway up before I had to get my mom to pick me up. Then I did small laps in the village afterwards to still reach 100k, heh.

I did Vätternrundan in Sweden in 2019. 300km, used 8:44, so avg speed around ~35km/h.

The moment we finished, we all fell asleep in the grass. So weird how the body can go on and on, but the moment it knows it's done (/safe), it shuts off.

Him holding the same speed for three times as long and solo is mental.

That's a very decent time. The good thing about a group is that you can rotate point, that makes a pretty big difference assuming everybody is in roughly equal shape.

Endurance is not really about general fitness, but about adaptation to a specific activity, road cycling in this case.

I’m an amateur, not serious cyclist, did 15k km in past 5 years. I’m not particularly fit (10km run in ~1 hour). Longest I did was 230 km at 25 km/h and it wasn’t really that memorable. I could have easily continued. But when I started cycling, and wasn’t really less fit, I could have barely cycled for 50 km.

> Longest I did was 230 km at 25 km/h and it wasn’t really that memorable.

Once you start doing that trip at 30 or 35 km/h you'll find it a lot more memorable. Target for a distance like that on flat country should be in the 5.5 to 6.5 hour range when you're in mostly flat country on a proper bicycle.

In the end it’s about %FTP for a certain time. For me, 230 km at 25 km/h is ~50% FTP for 9 hours. If I were to ride at 90% FTP for multiple hours, which I think is at the border of what's humanly possible, I could do ~33 km/h, so 230 km in ~7 hours. If I were to raise my FTP by 40% to 350 W, leisurely 50% FTP would be ~29 km/h and 90% FTP would be ~36 km/h, so 230 km in ~8 and ~6.5 hours, respectively.

What's constant regardless of FTP is the ability to ride for multiple hours without getting saddle sores, joint pain, or running out of energy, which is what endurance is about in my opinion.

I'm convinced that many endurance activities if overdone are not in fact healthy, even though being associated with fit people.

They are proably associated with fit people because unfit people cannot do them.

I had a friend who was really in to endurance sports for a while. He gradually kept ratcheting up the distance and frequency. At the time, he talked about it as chasing a feeling. I saw him once after he'd run something like 35 miles in a day and he was really relieved that he had found his limit at that distance. He was worried that he was going to end up one of the ultramarathoners running 50-100 miles in a day.

So yeah, if he's at all representative, I don't think it's health that they're chasing. The most I've done is a couple of sprint tris and a few 50-mile-per-day bike trips. But even that for me wasn't about health; it was about challenge.

Hardly anyone does extreme endurance activities every day. The oxidative stress, tissue damage, immunosuppression, and inflammation can be pretty severe but with adequate recovery protocols there are unlikely to be persistent health problems beyond a few days.

Long term high volume endurance training can also cause calcification effects in some older athletes.

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/en...

After some distance/time how fit you are doesn't matter anymore. Then it all becomes about food to prevent all kind of physical issues.

Food is simple. Just about one Banana and an Apple, and about 1,5L fluid(3 cans) every 100km. Which means you don't even have to have them with you, since you can buy it everywhere. OFC that depends on where you drive. And on the speed.

I did that afsluitdijk path the day after the Den Haag-Texel. It does go on forever!!!

That must have been fun on the way back!

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