Every time I go for a longish ride 35-50 miles, I end up feeling pretty sick afterwards and sometimes even dizzy. I am pushing pretty hard on these rides, but so is everyone and they seem fine afterwards. I drunk 1.5l over 35miles on Saturday with 800ml just before the ride. My helmet (pisspot) is very hot and I was wearing long sleeves which made for a very hot ride as the weather improved.

Does anyone else get this, do I just need to drink more?

MTB or road? On MTB I’d be knackered too!

MTB – I am not really knackered, my legs etc. are fine, I just feel sick.

Have you eaten during the ride? You really need to.

What have you had to eat prior to riding and do you eat anything whilst riding? sounds like blood sugar dropping.

Pre ride:
– Porridge with dried fruit and banana
– Cereal bar

During:
– 2 x gels
– 2 x flapjacks
– some jelly beans
– 2 fig rolls

^ probably not enough looking at it.

Felt too sick to eat when I got back to the car.

Sounds like dehydration to me, how long were you out for? I normally go through about 0.5l per hour on long days in the hills

3hr 20mins, so yes sounds like I was not drinking nearly enough.

Eat and drink little and often throughout the ride – its a fairly long way for an mtb ride! If it’s hot/or you’re sweating lots then it’s worth drinking electrolytes to help make up for the stuff you’re sweating out. Also – get a proper helmet with vents…and short sleeves! 😉

I was getting like this on longer road rides, mine was low blood sugars.

Typically i was riding like this on my days off, i’d skip breakfast, do anything around the house that needed doing then stuff a banana down my neck and go out on a ride….then come over depleted, dizzy, nauseous etc towards the end of the ride and raid the kitchen on my return….worst if got was when i was less than 5 miles from home but was barely spinning the pedals, i genuinely didnt know if i’d get home or not…i made it but collapsed on the bed and was ill with cold/flu-like symptoms for about 3 days afterwards.

Now i’ll make sure to have breakfast, cereal or porridge is works for me, then something like a banana before setting off and i’ll also pack an energy gel or another cereal bar into my jersey….hasnt happened since.

thanks everyone, does sound like I am getting the fuelling wrong.

I used to be like this until I ride with a few different riders, who basically spotted I wasn’t taking on enough fuel. I used to regard energy bars as an emergency item and run on energy drink, but it just wasn’t enough.

I now generally eat one breakfast type bar about every 45 minutes to an hour. I can basically go as long as I like doing that.

I get this sometimes if I get the fuelling wrong.
Eating something every 10 miles works for me (flapjack/NAKD bar/etc)
I’ll then top it up with the odd gel on longer rides.

yeah, my money is on dehydration too.

I suffered for a whole year during 2013 with loss of performance, feeling low/tired, not wanting to ride. Even went to the docs and had blood tests for everything under the sun including diabetes (my wife is a type 1 diabetic and has been since age 13 so I know a bit about this and she wrote the book).

Nil, nothing, nada was wrong with me. A bit of self-diagnosis and I realised I had been cutting down on the hydration for various reasons. Upped it to correct levels and here I am aged 50 still bashing out the miles.

Edit: Oh and get a ‘proper’ XC style lid. Pisspot may look cool (in your opinion 😆 😉 ) but you need one that vents much better. It may also be worth layering your clothing so you can shed the warm stuff on weekends like the one just gone by.

You are bonking.

You can only go so hard. If you are riding hard, you can only digest so much fuel, then after that it just sits in your stomach and maybe even makes you sick.

You can go for about 1.5 maybe 2 hrs tops hard, then you have used all available glycogen stores in your body. At that point, you will head into bonk territory if you keep pushing.

* Fuel up the night before – pasta
* Get a HRM and know how hard you are pushing yourself
* Get fitter so you can go faster without as high a heart rate
* Don’t overfuel during the ride (some of the advice here points to that TBH, and is bad advice)
* Regulate your temperature properly (better helmet / clothes)
* Drink sports drink during ride to hydrate, gets carbs, and electrolyte
* As soon as you finish, get some chocolate milk in you, then some proper food.