Bonking is a dreaded experience, an exhaustion of fuel and shutdown of the body’s ability to exert itself. The term gets thrown around a lot, but if you’ve ever felt it you know how bad it can be, and how hard it is to recover from. So just what is a bonk, why is it a bad thing, and how can you avoid it?
We cyclists spend lots of time thinking about how to win bike races, but what if we should actually spend more time thinking about losing? Hear us out— maybe by better understanding what leads to an outcome we want to avoid, we can prevent common mistakes, and fine-tune our efforts to achieve better results. In that spirit, we present our top 15 most effective and time-honored ways to lose a bike race. Tested and perfected by generations of disappointed cyclists, these ill-advised techniques are guaranteed to work for you, too.
Why bonking on your rides is not making you faster, how to know if you are going deep enough in your workouts, Improving the efficiency of your training in low and high volume training plans and more in Episode 261 of The Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast.