The plan, the route

The longest day, longest ride tradition is to ride something long, somewhere around the longest day of the year. After a battling an injury induced hiatus 2023 and conquering the 200 mile effort in 2022, I was keen to push the boundaries even further. After some pretty crazy Ideas like 300 miles, or riding 100 laps of Prospect Park, I finally settled on a 230 mile route that was a simple trek from Brooklyn to New Paltz and back, primarily following the Empire State trail. This trail is a relatively safe route with sufficient access to resources and bail out points if needed, which is clutch since my wife no longer gets involved in my crazy ideas. My route selection is biased towards limited climbing and with just six and half thousand feet weighted towards the first half of the ride, this was as good as I could hope for.

I mapped the route and spreadsheeted the miles, estimated speed, stopping points and stop durations so that I had a solid plan for the entire day. I would leave at 4:30am and expected to be back by 8:20pm. I expected to be riding for fourteen and half hours and planned for around an hour of stopping, including lunch in New Paltz.

The training

My training started in March following a winter focused on training for a half marathon. I found the running fitness carried over relatively well, but I needed to work more on endurance. I created an endurance focused training plan using TrainerRoad, leaving Sundays open so I could supplement the plan with increasingly longer endurance rides. I quickly increased those longer endurance rides from two hours to four hours and sprinkled in a couple of park races to add some intensity. During this time TrainerRoad released their “Red Light Green Light” functionality that identifies periods of high training stress and advising a day off or a lighter day. I had about twenty “red” days between March and June and I took rest on fives of those days. I didn’t feel that TrainerRoad was taking into account the fitness I was bringing from running over the winter and I was able to quickly progress through to increasingly higher intensity workouts. The Adaptive Training features worked well in this regard and continued to adapt and offer increasingly harder workouts. I ultimately topped out with some six hour workouts and was fairly confident I had the fitness needed for the ride.

Nutrition and hydration

I tend to learn by doing (or not doing) and when it comes to nutrition and pacing, I have experienced the lesson from going out too hard and not focusing enough on nutrition. I have not gotten to the point of precisely mapping out how many carbs per hour or dialing down the exact calories I need every X minutes, but I generally know what works for me. My a key rule is to eat and drink early and often. My general plan was to eat as much “real food” as possible, balanced with Skratch Labs high-carb drink mix. One bottle with 7 scoops is 100 carbs/400 calories. I was generally planning on a bottle per hour - using a combination of bottles and a 2-liter hydration pack to minimize the need for refueling stops.

The two days before the ride I was consuming a high carb diet and focusing on being super hydrated. I used Skratch’s new Salted Margarita everyday hydration drink mix throughout the day to preload. Fortunately, it wasn’t going to be a super hot day, with temperatures in the mid 70’s most of the day and topping out at 80 degrees which was a relief. Being a bigger guy, the heat tends to hit me hard and keeping hydrated in those conditions is really difficult.

The night before my ride, I prepared my nutrition. I wasn’t sure I would consume all of it (or that I needed to), but didn’t want to be caught short and wanted plenty of variety.

· A two liter hydration pack with 20 scoops of high-carb drink mix

· Two 750ml bottles with 7 scoops of high-carb drink mix

· A bottle with water only – for emergency use, or dumping on the head if it got hot

· An additional seven Ziploc backs each with 7 scoops of high-carb drink mix for refilling

· Two egg, cheese and potato tacos

· Two sourdough sandwiches with vegemite, peanut butter and cheddar cheese (trust me…)

· Six JoJe bars (RIP)

· Three packs of Skratch energy chews

· Four Precision Nutrition 30g carb gels

· Two small Ziploc bags of peanuts and pistachio nuts

The pacing plan

My pacing had me averaging around 15.5 mph with some variation for terrain and expecting the latter portion of the road to be a bit of a slog. More importantly, I was aiming for an Intensity Factor of between 0.65 and 0.70 for the day and I planned to track that carefully through the day, making sure I didn’t let any early “good feelings” drive me to overdo it. I had played with various intensities on some of my longer training rides and I knew that if I stuck to this pace and followed nutrition and hydration plan, I should be fine.

The bike

Ugh. I had been going back and forth on whether I should ride my lighter and more aero Factor Ostro or my solid and reliable Moots Routt. After a training ride incident with my Factor, I realized that using a race bike for a distance even like this – even though it was all on pavement - was a mistake. I wasn’t looking to set any records* and comfort was more important than pure speed. So, I settled on the moots. I fitted 38mm fast rolling tires the weekend before, rode the bike twice during the week and everything was set up and perfect… Until the front tire exploded off the front rim on Wednesday night for no apparent reason. I tried to get it back on, but it just wouldn’t hold. I ultimately decided to just stick a tube in and be done with it - or so I thought.

* but we did set the KOM for Brooklyn Bridge to New Paltz

The Day

I was in bed by 8:30 the night before and my alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. I had breakfast of muesli, yoghurt and banana, got dressed, applied a generous serving of chamois cream and left right on time. As I rolled down the street, it was immediately apparent that something was off with my front tire. There was some kind of bulge in it. The one thing I had planned to did, but did not, was test my bike fully loaded the day day before. I large storm that evening had made that not possible and now I was kicking myself.

I had to make a decision. Was this going to be annoying, but OK? Or was this potentially problematic that was going to but the ride in jeopardy later on? I decided to fix it now. As I took the elevator back up to my apartment, I went through the alternatives – fit a different tire (I had something, somewhere, I think) or grab the wheel from my Factor. Thinking through the implications of switching on my compressor at 4:30 am and my sleeping wife’s reaction, I decided to make a quick wheel change. I now had a 28mm up front and a 38mm in the rear, mullet style. Fine. Let’s roll.

I rolled down to the Brooklyn Bridge where I met Josh – a new recruit to the team who had expressed an interest in riding half of the way with me. We rode over the bridge in the dark, but the sun was already starting to show itself. We took an early pee stop and once we were on the trail through Van Cortland Park, we started to see more and more tree debris. We had to dodge many fallen branches and had to dismount for a couple of larger ones but no real problems.

Josh was good company and provided a good wheel into some stiff headwinds later in the morning. The time passed fairly quickly. I was careful to make sure we were not overdoing it. Its so easy to go out just a little too hard. I ate the tacos, a JoJe bar and some energy chews and kept to my hydration schedule which was ensuring a good supply of calories – everything was on track.

Before too long we were at the first refuel stop in Brewster. All I needed was some additional water and the bathroom so we were quickly on our way – we were within 5 minutes of the time schedule I had created, and were only behind because of my wheel change.

From Brewster to New Paltz we had the peak winds of the day which were blowing fairly steadily from the northwest – pretty much a block headwind. Josh did more than his fair share of turns on the front as the miles continued to tick over. I continued to consume food and fluids as I had planned and was generally feeling pretty good. The trail is generally well shaded so heat and sun exposure was not an issue. As we got closer to Poughkeepsie and the Bridge Over the Hudson, the trail traffic increased, but was never really a problem. Once over the bridge, New Paltz was not far off.

We rolled in and found a place for lunch. We had made up a little time and were about 10 minutes ahead of schedule now. I topped up my bottles and hydration pack with high-carb mix and water ready to roll again. I said farewell to Josh whose wife had met him to drive him home. I was feeling good and there was not one part of me that wanted to hop in the car with them. 115 miles in, 115 to go. I got this.

Although most of the climbing is in the first half of the ride, the longest sustained climb is the 25 miles out of Poughkeepsie. And by climb, I am talking about not much more than 2% - but with 130 miles in the legs, you feel it. Knowing it was coming was helpful. I rode this section during my 2022 200 mile LDLR. Before too long I was topping out and rolling down to Brewster again. I stopped, bought a bag of ice and a bottle of water and topped up my bottles. I was getting warm at this point so I made sure I had a cold bottle of water available to pour on me to keep me cool.

Heading out of Brewster, I was bang on time. I was probably feeling the worst that I had all day – high fatigue and starting to feel some aches and pain. Cramps seems to be just around the next corner or short rise. I was slowing down. This was what I had expected and planned for. I have been here before. I was 165 miles in. In about 20 miles, teammate Lucia was planning on meeting me and ride with me back to Manhattan, so I had that to look forward to and kept pushing. It was getting harder to eat so I took in my first gel of the day and opened another pack of chews. The meetup with Lucia was a gameday decision, and one I am grateful for. Riding with Lucia was a delight. She set a perfectly steady pace and I sat in on her wheel for the two hours we rode together. I was able to stand a little – taking my ass off the saddle to relieve the increasing discomfort there. Before long, we were fighting with traffic in the brief section between Van Cortlandt Park and the bike path along the Hudson. Lucia said goodbye at the George Washington bridge and I pushed on.

As I headed down the westside highway, fighting for space with tourists and runners I felt good again. Home was near and friends were gathering at a local bar to greet me upon my return. As I climbed over the Brooklyn Bridge, I knew I would be arriving a bit ahead of my planned time and was really pleased with how the day had gone. No mechanicals, no overheating, no over-pacing and I kept up my nutrition. I rolled towards Gold Star as the miles ticked over to 230. My Garmin settled on 230.1 as my wife and teammates from TBD greeted me and bought me a couple of beers. A perfect end to a well planned and executed day.

What a great day. Now, what’s next?