SFR 400k ride report

[Toshi Takeuchi]

My plans to do a randonneuring "ride series" this year is going well. I've completed the 200k, 300k, and now the 400k. The 600k is the last remaining ride in the series.

In some ways, the 400k is the hardest because most people ride this all the way through without sleep. Whereas, for the upcoming 600k, the plan is to ride 350k followed by rest in a campground and then the final 250k to the end.

I've ridden the series with a new but strong randonneur who is doing these long distances for the first time, and is doing a great job. It's nice to have company at night, especially as it gets later and everyone gets sleepier.

For the first time on the last 300k, I got super sleepy, even though it wasn't late (~11 PM), so I made it a point to get extra rest and sleep before the 400k, which would likely go until 2 AM and beyond--yes until ~4 AM+.

Between the 300k and 400k, I didn't do any longer rides, but continued commuting between my work and home (with an extra hill for training). That meant I got around 19 miles a day, 4-5 days a week, with 1200ft of climbing or so. It was sparse, but enough to finish the ride without feeling drained, since I had enough experience to go well within my limits and not wear myself out--especially early in the ride when the adrenaline is flowing.

For the 600k training, it looks like I'll get some extra riding during Easter weekend, so I'm feeling confident about finishing without suffering extensively.

Overall, the 400k went well, except for a couple of flats that my riding partner had to fix, but we managed to finish in ~22 hrs. Importantly, I slept in the car for 1.5 hours before driving home (on one ~24 hour rainy slugfest, I decided to drive back right away and fell asleep driving mid turn, but woke up in time to recover--not again!!!). I actually felt pretty good after the nap. By Tuesday, my legs felt really strong and ready for longer riding, so I have to try to maintain some momentum (hopefully not peaking too soon) before the 600k at the beginning of May.

--In terms of food, I do try to drink some calories as well as eat real food. My rice/egg/sausage rolls last 300k or so, at which point I added date bars in the past. I'm wanting to experiment with fig bars instead of dates, because I like figs better. The other thing that sounds appetizing to my 300k stomach is brioche with peanut butter and honey. I'm going to try to make a couple of these sandwiches and see how it goes.

A drink I've added is my homemade "Skratch labs" endurance drink. It uses maltodextrin powder (glucose polymer/starch that breaks down in the gut) with fructose (fruit sugar, because the body can take in more calories if you mix fructose with the glucose due to different transporters) and citric acid for flavor (orange/lemon/citrus flavor). Per 32 oz bottle: 90g maltodextrin, 30g fructose (15-45g depending on taste), 3 g citric acid (1.5-4.5g depending upon taste).

I don't add electrolytes (salt), so you will need to add separately. You could leave out the citric acid and drop in a fizzy electrolyte tablet as an alternative.

I try to eat real food, but if my stomach doesn't cooperate, then the drink mix can keep me going.

Stopping and eating also is really nice, but not needing to stop as much means more sleep. Yes, this is fun!

Toshi in Oakland

[Bill Lindsay]

Great work, Toshi!  

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA

[PDXJohnny]

Toshi, thanks for sharing your experience. I'm glad you are enjoying riding your bike :) Will you show us a picture of you and your bike at one of the events? 

[Toshi Takeuchi]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 6:54 AM PDXJohnny <johnny....@gmail.com> wrote:

Toshi, thanks for sharing your experience. I'm glad you are enjoying riding your bike :) Will you show us a picture of you and your bike at one of the events? 

Sure, not the greatest pictures, but here's one on the Sonoma coast with Pascal on the 300k, and another from behind riding at night on the 400k.

Toshi

[Cal Patterson]

Strong work!  I have a question Toshi, and anyone else too I suppose,

 Do you have a method or rule or goal for how much to ride, (and how hard, and how far) between the different brevets while you're doing a series?  Assuming the 2, 3, 4, and 600 are usually each two or three weeks apart, what do you aim to do in between them, to get adequate rest but stay "with it"?

Thanks

Calvin

[Bill Lindsay]

"Assuming the 2, 3, 4, and 600 are usually each two or three weeks apart..."

That seems kind of tightly scheduled.  Is that like in Alaska or somewhere else where they have to squeeze them together into a really tight window?  I usually think of a series spaced out 4 weeks per event.  Regardless, I can't give any experience about how I execute a 400 or a 600 because I've never done those distances.  I've done about 40 200s and maybe 10 300s and this season I intend to do a 200 every month.  What I do to stay ready is ride pretty much every day, and ride as far and as hard as I feel like riding.  If I feel like riding easy and riding 10 miles, I do that.  If I feel like riding a harder hillier 25 miles, I do that.  The preparedness for the 200 next month came from doing the 200 last month.  If I had never done a 200, maybe I'd recommend doing at least one 100k ride a week or two in advance to make sure that feels OK.  Beyond the 200 the "training" for the next one is the previous one.  I think Toshi's "training" this season is pretty similar to what I'm doing.  His riding between brevets is mostly commutes and he rides 5 or 6 days a week, and he's having a good season.  

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA

[John S]

"Is that like in Alaska or somewhere else where they have to squeeze them together into a really tight window?"

The fortnightly schedule makes sense in places where it can still be very cold and snowy/icy in February and starts to get very hot in June (e.g., Central Plains/Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, etc.).  For example, my local region (KC area) usually runs events at two week intervals, starting with the first 200k in late March, 200k/300k in early April, a Flèche in mid April, 300k/400k in late April, and 400k/600k in mid May. Gravel and populaire distance rides are mixed in. There may be a special offering (e.g., 1000k) in late May, and in recent years there has been a UAF brevet in late May or early June before a hiatus during the hotter months.

JS

[Dan Dunmire]

Toshi- Thank you for the ride reports and best luck with the 600K! 

++ your endurance drink recipe. I have had good results with a similar concoction of maltodextrin with apple juice and water. MD adds fast carbs but isn't sweet.

Dan on LI NY

[Toshi Takeuchi]

Thanks Dan,

That's a great tip. The apple juice is a nice alternative to the lemon/citrus flavor and is less acidic, which can help because my stomach can get unsettled on longer rides when acid is not well tolerated.

Toshi

[Toshi Takeuchi]

Hi Calvin,

My general advice for the "lazy randonneur" would be a couple of short rides during the week and a long ride during the weekend. When my children were young, this meant trainer sessions during the week and longer rides on the weekend.

The general rule of thumb is the shorter the ride, the harder the effort should be. Go all out on hills and mix in sprints on the trainer. It's either longer time with less effort or shorter time with more effort (there's a lot of research on interval training).

My long rides during the weekend would try to get a little longer for the longer brevets, but this is not necessary as the shorter/harder formula works well here too.

I tried to focus on what needs improvement. One big tip is that the vast majority of these rides are flats interspersed with some hills. This means a 1 mph improvement on the flats can lead to huge differences in time. On the flip side, the hills are where we can overdo it and ruin our legs for both hills and flats.

So my basic motto is to survive the hills and power on the flats. With this idea in mind, I try to spin higher gears on the flats for my training rides so my body gets used to a faster pace. For hills, I try to find as many as possible, but I favor shorter hills and rollers over long mountain climbs because there is more opportunity for high intensity (e.g. power over the rollers) followed by recovery on the shorter efforts and this profile fits the brevets I'm training for. My ultimate goal for the weekend ride is to space out my efforts so that I'm wiped out by the time I get home. Ideally, we would get wiped out on the shorter rides during the week, which I can do on my commute by climbing some steep hills on my way home, but it takes a lot of mental fortitude to do that on a trainer with all out intervals.

The second big tip is that all that hard training we do for the ride has to be flipped on its head for the brevet. 

For emphasis: don't ride too hard at the start of the brevet! We put in 100% effort for the 50 mile ride and get home wasted, but we can't go that pace on the 250 mile ride--otherwise we'll be wasted after 50 miles and suffer for 200 miles. --I know from experience, because I've gone too hard at the start and then have suffered for hundreds!! of miles.

Because we are used to going hard for short distances, we think that we can go hard at the beginning and be ok later on. This thinking is a recipe for disaster.

Instead, what we need to do is find that "go forever" pace. Be okay with everyone else taking off and find that "forever" zone and stick with it.

The time limit is not generally a speed challenge. An easy rule of thumb is that riding 10 mph (with no stopping) allows me to finish within the time limit. Every 2 hours of riding 15 mph on the flats gains 1 hour of rest time. Even if I crawl up a hill at 5 mph for 30 min, I can make up for this on the flats in 30 minutes@15 mph and then start banking time for my rest.  I try to minimize time off the bike by keeping my stops short. Food/water/bathroom for 15 minutes or less, and I can be on the road again--eating/taking in calories while riding helps keep stops short.

I hope you get to ride some longer brevets and have fun doing it!

Toshi