I am doing a race in a couple of months about 500 km with about 15000m of climbing non stop event. Will be taking some short sleeps probabely on the way, as time goal is somewhere around 72 hours.

How hard do I push? 20 minute power is around 300 watts. There are some food and napping stops on the route but for the rest its unmarked(no Gps maps only, (very) remote terrain gonna be interesting night time navigation) and unsuported.

any pointers in watts? or HR rest abouth 50 threshold just shy of 180

I’d be keeping to zone 1/2 for that kind of distance, i.e. not “pushing” at all. 200w max? Longest I’ve done is 12 hours though, so experience is limited.

I find that the little efforts up short climbs accumulate so don’t be tempted by them – gear down, sit and spin.

+1 I wouldn’t push at all. Fuelling and hydration will be important, I’d pay close attention to that. Leave the powermeter at home 🙂

Not very. I’m sure I read something about 24 hour time trials that basically said that they’re less of a test of fitness as anyone can plod along at Z2 almost indefinitely, and more of who’s the best at eating whilst moving. I think that sums it up nicely..

over 72 hours, +1 for not pushing at all.
if you’ve trained well, you’ll still be making good pace in upper z1, should have no risk of bonking, and will at least delay the onset of the inevitable suffering.
If you’re still feeling good with ~100km to go, then gradually up the intensity.

You want to be right down the bottom end of your power as others have said. When I’ve done long rides no the road i didn’t have power or HR but went for “glass cranking” which is probably a gear lower than you think you’d be in. Events of this length are more about fatigue, injury and fuel than power output.

I’d always ride something long like this off feel. You’ll have good and bad patches so maintaining power output isn’t much use. I’d try and study the route and set yourself some check points. The obvious ones are distance/time based dividing up the 500km into chunks making sure you are covering enough ground to get through it in 72hours. But remember the 250km will almost certainly be slower han the first.

Start slow, get slower.

As others have said, it’s not about “pushing” it’s about energy management. Not done any ultra long road rides – did a steady 200Km on Saturday but that was my longest ever road ride – but have done long off-road rides. I’ve a pace that I can keep going for days, I don’t get particularly fatigued so long as I keep eating and drinking. If I up the intensity just slightly then I’ll suffer either later that day or the following day (not talking short efforts required to get up a short steep hill but the “I need to keep up with that rider ahead” type efforts). You are racing the route not the other riders.

Eat and drink more than you think you should. Make route notes of where the feed/drink stops are and aim to use up your supplies as you reach them.

What’s the event BTW?

I tend to put zero effort into the climbs, work hardish on the flat and blast the downhills. I take a 20 minute nap when I think I might fall off the bike. Keep shoving in the protein at every chance – the carbs will take care of themselves. This worked for the SDW double double and has made me more efficient on long rides ever since.
On an organised race, it has to feel better to overtake folk in the final third, than being overtaken, so go out slow and enjoy reeling them in.

Lots of good advice above.

What’s the event? Sounds interesting.

Something like 60% of FTP might be doable, depends upon your overall aerobic fitness. I doubt you’d get much of use from the HRM, that kind of extended effort is going to see your HR drift upwards as the event progresses. I suspect that trying to stick to a specific HR zone will see you slow down unnecessarily.

And +1 for not punching your way up short climbs.

I love the depth of knowledge and experience on this forum!! Amazing stuff 🙂

Keep shoving in the protein at every chance – the carbs will take care of themselves.

This is interesting- I would never have thought of this. My first instinct would have been a panicky grab for the carbs and lipids for energy! So why proteins? For muscle repair? And in what kind of format- protein bars?

Pies! 😆

Take rob’s ^ advice..I think he knows what he’s on about!.

I’d listen to Rob. But I’m also curious about carbs taking care of themselves. Surely you have to eat some?

On the subject of carbs I’d also look at the 45 minute rule which is not eating carbs within 45 mins of starting riding for the day because if you do the insulin response promotes the use of muscle glycogen for energy instead of fat. But you’d have to figure out how that fits into whatever sleep you plan to take. This may or may not make a difference to you depending on how predisposed you are to conserving glycogen anyway.

Re zones – a power meter might not be a bad idea, as I understand it z2 is meant to be the pace you can sustain indefinitely. For me, this corresponds with being able to talk almsot normally hardly being affected by extra breathing.

Great stuff. The race is called race to Rhodes going from Pietermaritzburg in South Africa to Rhodes. Its the smaller brother of the Freedom Challenge als known as Rasa race across South Africa(thi one is more like 2000k). I have done the route twice, so do know the terrain as i was planning of going full tilt on the full event in 2015.

An arm injury made me start with little fitness so I just mucked about on the bike and enjoyed the scenery and catch up with some old mates and make cutoff so most nights got 8h our sleep and a couple of hours at the braai or bar.

This time round I wanna go fast. The power meter would not to be to aim for a certain zone but more as a sort of handbrake. I know myself and I get to keen and push to hard which I will most likely pay for afterwards.

Night time navigation will be interesting as well with no route markers and a big chance of no other competitors nearby.

Hi again – sorry I didn’t fill in enough details re carbs…. of course you stick them in every 20 minutes (or at least, thats what I do, just one or two mouthfulls each time); the plan is to look for things that happen to be high in protein – everything proteiney is also carby! On the go I do protein bars, chocolate milk, eggy things and cheese. Its a real bugger that I can’t eat nuts.

If you want to know more, check out my blog, I had been planning a list of things I have eaten to keep the pedals going round after this weeks 4 day ride to Wales and back. Type ‘the adventures of Rob Colliver’.

I really don’t think that it matters too much what you eat on a short race, but if you go too hard and get into the puke zone, calm it all down again with anything gingery.

This is a little off topic now (how hard to push in an endurance race) but you can’t push the output of you have no input.

Off to climb a mountain on a loaded bike.

Multiple day rides is as much about managing discomfort as well as managing your nutrition – pushing yourself even if you feel good will over-stress yourself and reduce your body’s chance of recovery. Pushing can also create inflammation in muscles and joints which can get very uncomfortable. I get the impression from the OP’s post that they haven’t much long duration (24hrs+) riding experience and suggest going on long ride(s) to replicate race conditions, getting to know their own body’s responses and refuelling needs and then base their ride strategy on that. By all means monitor your HR and power during that time, but my own experience of multi-day racing is that comfort, nutrition, navigation are far more important.

I would suggest you start as light as possible and split that distance into two with a kip in the middle.

For me I would be using HR but only because I know 120/130 bpm is sustanable for me, whilst anything over 150bpm increases the likelthood of blowing up.

Those are my numbers, you’ll have your own obvs.