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Comment by johnohara | Hacker News Reader

900km is 15 km further than the longest RAGBRAI (550 miles) ever. And that is done over 7 days.

I've ridden the full RAGBRAI three times and know from personal experience that your body turns into an insatiable caloric furnace after the second day. Pancakes, pasta, ice cream, steak and pork chop sandwiches, gallons of water and of course, nightly carbo loading. All grist for the mill.

But this, this is at a whole other level.

800-900 calories per hour == 19,200 to 21,600 calories in 24 hours. Which, btw, does not turn off just because you stop. It probably took 2 days just to taper down his body's panic alarm. Not to mention sleep and muscle recovery.

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You should look into the history of the Trans Iowa race[0]. It was a single "day" event (if you don't hit certain checkpoints in time, you're out) and was usually around 330 miles (530 km)...on gravel roads of all qualities. There was a separate division for single speed bikes. It was insane.

Not to dismiss RAGBRAI, though. It is a different kind of challenge - biking 50 miles in a day, especially with frequent stops, is no big deal. Sleeping in a tent, waking up, and doing it every day for a week especially with all of the nighttime activities is a different kind of challenge.

[0] https://www.cxmagazine.com/trans-iowa-2018-gravel-race-14-fi...

From my experience of doing two trips across Iowa, the challenge has almost nothing to do with cycling. For many people, RAGBRAI is a challenge in taming their alchoholism. The bike riding is easy if you don't drink.

I feel like this is greatly exaggerated. I did half of that in 3 days (500km) with the last day being 250km (because I was sick of doing it) and I didn't feel any such "caloric furnace". I ate a couple of pbjs each day and then had some rice and beans for dinner. I didn't do this very intentionally, I just didn't have much choice (I did this ride in Africa, where there aren't many ice cream shops).

It's universally understood that a century is one of the easiest "feats of endurance", which is why you see people far into their 50s and 60s still able to do them.

Drinking is another matter though. You really need your fluids on a trip like that.

quite true - i drank about a liter an hour throughout the trip and urinated pretty infrequently lol

Both very true but also overrated, in a way. When it's cold enough to avoid overheat without sweating and the body is sufficiently used to the task at hand to not trigger much sweating proactively from exertion that's actually just barely enough to keep you warm you can get by with surprisingly little drinking. One rainy day on an 11h ride I only increased drinking frequency in the last hour or so when I realized that a bike with empty bottles would be easier to carry up the stairs.

>> I feel like this is greatly exaggerated. I did half of that in 3 days (500km) with the last day being 250km (because I was sick of doing it) and I didn't feel any such "caloric furnace"

I think this depends on your fitness, especially your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds and the shape of your lactate curve. Less fit people burn a lot of glycogen even at lower wattages which results in crazy hunger when your glycogen stores are depleted. Trained people are able to burn mostly fat at relatively high wattages and even skinny people have a lot of energy stored in fat.

Personal anecdote: I decided to use the pandemic to get back into shape. When I started accumulating endurance kilometers, I had to eat a carbo-gel every 30 km and I still felt really hungry after the ride and I had to devour enormous portion of pasta immediately. Now I can easily go 100 km on empty stomach and I do feel kind of hungry after that, but nothing exceptional.

True. It takes a few years when you don't get much faster anymore but eventually the body settles into a habit of simply not running itself as deep into super low blood glucose levels anymore as it used to, thanks to shifting the threshold where fat conversion is phased out upwards. You still arrive from a 5h+ Very Hungry (which is part of the joy because everything tastes so good!) but not quite as badly as you used to from a 2h.

Scott Dickson is a RAGBRAI OG and has won PBP a few times. Some like both levels.

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