I’ve just completed my first 24 hour solo at Exposure, weekend before last. I wasn’t envisioning setting the world on fire but wanted to do 15 laps as that would put me just into the top 50%, an area I normally inhabit. Unfortunately, I only managed 13 laps and whilst I gave it everything I can’t help feeling like I haven’t scratched the itch and would like another crack at it next year. With a lot of accomplished riders on here, hopefully I can glean some advice on how to step it up; outline of preparations below:

Training – I ride regularly but 4 months out from the event I had a weekly regime of one HIT ride session (4 x 1 min sprints followed by 4 mins recovery, repeat 3 times), one seated hill climb repeat session (3 min seated climb repeated 10 times), one 1 hour ride at a higher sustainable pace and I built endurance with a long ride putting on 10 miles each week and culminating in 112 mile ride (avg speed 12.5 mph). In addition I was doing two sessions of weights/circuits and as much as I could of flexibility/yoga/core to stay on top of my slightly dodgy back.

Eating – I practised fuelling over my longer rides and during the race tried to eat every 20 mins. A mixture of sweet (flapjacks, trail mix and fig rolls) and savoury (mini pork pies, sausage rolls and rice cakes). I had a gel every hour but that’s about the limit of my stomach. At around 6 am though I was finding it hard to get enough down which may have lead to a slow decline.

Tactics – I set off and maintained a slow but sure pace up until 2 am but had to have a 2 hour kip at this point as I hit a bit of a wall. On waking I never really got going that well and only managed a further three laps before the tank was definitely empty.

That’s it really, I’m not expecting to challenge for the lead but I did think I’d do slightly better considering the effort I’d put in. Of course I may be deluding myself and just need to do a whole lot more training than I thought.

Thanks for getting this far, all advice appreciated.

Without being too specific about sessions, it sounds like you are doing a decent spread of different types of training, which is a good start. When you say you had a weekly regime, did that include any progression (apart from the long endurance you described)? If you were doing the same interval sets at the end of your training period as you were doing at the beginning, that might suggest you were either trying too hard at the start, or not hard enough by the end. Ideally you should be progressively increasing the number of intervals per session or the interval intensity (with appropriate recovery weeks) during the 4 months.
When you say “the tank was empty” does that mean you just ran out of fuel? It’s difficult to eat properly over such a long event, but it is essential, so I’d suggest experimenting to find more options that suit you. Sometimes you just need something a bit different if you can no longer stomach the usual stuff. Rice pudding, chocolate covered raisins, Allen Lim’s boiled tatties rolled in parmesan and olive oil; I’ve no idea what will suit you, but if you search around you’ll find lots of good suggestions to try.
Finally, a 2 hour sleep in a 24 hour is going to set you back quite a bit. That may be unavoidable, but if you can reduce your down time and still keep rolling OK that will obviously buy you miles.

Thanks KCR it’s heartening to know that the basics are there. My progression was completing the going further each interval and completing the climbs in a higher gear but I’ll look at increasing the demand more. That spud recipe looks lovely, race food or not.

On the face of it your training looks ok, depending on finances there are coaches out there that specialise in endurance but if you’re aiming to complete rather than compete, then you can do it on your own.

Winter is a great place to start building a solid base and then build from that in the months leading up to the event. Either getting wet and cold or some turbo sessions are the name of the game, although if you can stomach more than hour on a standard turbo then fair play, but they are great for interval sessions.

I done the 12hr solo at exposure and previous events and also a 24 previously, but there will be better people than me to help you out. the main thing in these long events is your mind, it will always give out before the body. It’s an art to just keep going and going when your legs are burning, backs aching and everything is hurting but somehow you have to just keep going and only you can find that out really.. whether it’s training in the crap weather, sitting on a turbo, doing one more hill repeat, there will be a thing that you can use to build resilience to it all.

I always struggle at about the 3hr mark and know it’s coming, so this year I switched off all timing on my Garmin and just had distance, speed and heart rate. It really helped me as I didn’t know how long I’d been going therefore didn’t know how long to go and seemed to help.

You will also be amazed at how hard you can go early on and hold it and as long as you keep fuelling (whole other convo😀!) then you’ll be surprised. As long as you’re used to it a bit then you should be ok, Xc races are great for getting you used to elevated heart rate for a sustained period, you don’t need to be amazing at them just use them as training…

Good luck with it all..

Cheers Hopoplu, I’m beginning to think I should treat this year as a building/learning experience and just keep getting those miles under my belt. Just got back from the gym and 18 laps is now my new target, no point aiming low.

Oh, I should mention that I’m 48 yo so it may be that I’m just a knackered old fart.

You don’t have to do huge mileage sessions to train for long distance. I remember Andy Wilkinson (record holder at 50, 100. 12 hr, 24hr and Lands End to John o’ Groats) saying that he didn’t do lots of long distance and nothing longer than 8 hours. However, you might find doing a few Audax events good for practising pacing, eating and learning to dig in through the tough spells that inevitably come up during a long event. If you get in with a good group it’s a nice way to get some quality hours under your belt with company.

48 is just coming into your prime for long distance events!

I hope you’re right kcr, I’ve ingested Joe Friel’s ‘Fast After 50’ and I might have a few productive years left.

Gunz

…and I might have a few productive years left.

Trust me, you do. Just never give up.

Indeed, I only started doing long distance rides when I was in my mid 50s!

As @kcr says, once you know you can ride long distances there’s no real need to do lots of long distance rides as they take a lot out of you and you need quite a bit of time to recover which means the rest of your training can suffer.

You don’t say if your existing training is periodised, i.e. week one is hard, week two is harder; week three is where’s the vomit bucket; week four is recovery. The next block is the same but should be at a higher intensity as your body will have adapted to the workload. Are your efforts over a set course, something like a Strava segment, where you can use the lap function on a bike computer to record your times. Also look at doing hill reps on different gradients of hill otherwise you just get good at one particular steepness.

You probably hit the wall and needed those 2hrs sleep because you didn’t eat properly. I find that over a 24hr effort my taste buds change and stuff I normally wolf down I don’t want to touch. In your pit area have a whole range of food: sweet, savoury, gels, proper food, etc. Then when you get there, just grab what you fancy. I don’t know how long the laps on 24hr exposure are so you might want a separate box with “trail food”.

When you said regular riding prior to the 4 month training plan, what did this equate to time wise per week, and what kind of intensity were you riding at?

Sorry, working nights, been asleep.
Whitestone, the idea of periodised training makes sense and I will look at implementing it. I think a lot of what I did was too repetitive so maybe I need to shock my body a bit more. Also, the eating might have been an issue although I was eating every 20 minutes up to that point. Definitely something to geek over a bit more.
Andypaul, my previous riding was just regular (Dartmoor) riding for the enjoyment of it, I didn’t really log anything. I think this may have been a larger part of the problem as I was only consciously getting in ‘quality miles’ the four months prior to the 24.

It does take a while to build up to longer duration events but it depends what your base was prior to those four months. What was a “regular” ride? Two hours, four hours or more? Also were those rides at anything like the intensity you were riding at Exposure? Not tech difficulty but physical intensity.

All training works on stressing the body then resting and recovering before stressing it again. The gains occur during the recovery periods. BUT, once the body has got used to a given level of stress you have to increase it somehow, either difficulty or duration, to further improve. It’s not so much the training being “repetitive”, all training is that but you have to ramp things up over time.

Build in a periodic test to your training then you know if you are improving or not. It can be a turbo based FTP test or something like a specific hill climb but so long as it’s repeatable then it doesn’t really matter. Then base your next block of training on how much you’ve improved so you get the same “training effect”.

Did you have a track side support team? The best support is being shoved back on the course for another lap st 2am!!

Did you have a track side support team? The best support is being shoved back on the course for another lap at 2am!!

I had the most awesome support team but at 11 and 13 yo I thought it was a bit unfair to keep them up that late. The 11 yo did call me a noob when I stopped slightly early so I suppose that counts as encouragement.

You mention you had trouble getting food down – I’ve never got on with fatty stuff when endurance riding. Pork pies and sausage rolls would sit on my stomach and put me off eating even simple carbs. For savoury I stick to simple stuff like white bread ham sandwiches.

Of course, your stomach is almost certainly different to mine.

I normally struggle with the sweet stuff beej but I hadn’t thought of the effects of excess fat, it might be a cause.

Great article on fuelling for endurance with regards to carbs and fat etc… I used to run ‘real’ food and always had some type of stomach issue. This year at 24/12 I followed this and felt a lot better and then supplemented with ham sandwiches, sweets, plain corn chips, flat coke and a couple of cans of red bull… again just what your body tells you want you want.

24 Hour Race Nutrition

That’s great Hopoplu, thanks very much (food for thought ;-}).