We had this issue for the Festive 500 in December, or something similar. Also very low-battery. Not sure if related.
This time, I Gorilla taped a generic 20000mAh battery pack to her handlebars and charged the Wahoo Bolt while she was riding, for the second half of her ride. She also cleared all her history off the Bolt the night before. I have no idea if history-clearing was useful. Battery certainly was. It allowed Always On Backlight mode, all night.
“Morning after pic” below from my ride with her on Strava.
Nope, she’s her team’s sprinter. She’s a much better sprinter than endurance rider. Peak power of 1200W @ 63kg. Former collegiate and post-collegiate 60m hurdler and Team USA bobsledder.
But, she is flirting with the idea of some 24-hr events for max distance.
In the interest of not presenting a prettied-up or falsely polished picture of how fueling should go, but how it actually went, I’ll post my notes on the day. I don’t normally take notes. But I think it’s valuable to see some of the on-the-fly, real-world thinking.
We normally put together whatever we think will work, and run with it. The ride today/yesterday was more challenging than her Festive 500.
Her Festive500 was equally partitioned into 5 laps, each of which would take 3-4hrs. It was in Seattle WA with a total temp range of 15 degrees from day to night, and no radiant heat from sun. It made fueling easy. All bottles identical.
For the Trenching Challenge on Lemmon, temperature varied widely from top to bottom, so optimal route changed with time of day. Length of each ride segment also varied by preference. And most of all, I worked all day and was totally run ragged and making decisions on the fly throughout! Hence: a notepad.
Most decisions were made in haste with the goal being equally as much to just KMF (keep moving forward) as it was to optimize the procedures & nutrition. Minimizing stoppage time was a goal.
My biggest mistake: forgetting to tell her that I put 4000mg sodium in her second carb bottle and that she needed to aggressively drink the water. Husband & sport scientist failure!
Other notes:
- No solid food or gels were consumed from start to finish. Only liquid.
- Foot pain and back pain became the primary limiters to performance after about 200 miles for @michelleihowe. Not nutrition, hydration, or GI distress. Naproxen, ibuprofen & acetaminophen were all consumed at overlapping intervals.
- We rotated 4 NiteRider headlights all night. I charged 2 while the others were on our bikes. One pair of 900 lumen version and one pair of 1800 lumen version. Ran them on high power for the descents, and lower power for the ascents. Worked great.
- My Wahoo Bolt had an impressive 45% battery remaining after my 11-hr recording. Backlight on mine was set to 15 seconds.
- We will be purchasing a much smaller portable USB battery pack for future exploits that might require Wahoo Bolt battery life extension. The 20000mAh was overkill.
- I used a similar battery pack in my pocket to charge the 900 lumen NiteRider lights via micro USB.
- I consumed ~1000g carbs, 9000mg sodium, and 8-9 L of water during my 11 hrs. I consumed at the same rate for my 2-hr ride portion with her that morning giving me a total of >1200g liquid carbs, >11,000mg sodium, and ~10-11L water.
This ride deserves more than 20 kudos.
