05 October 2009

Bonked

Scary!

I've never experienced a full scale bonk before - until tonight. My good luck finally ran out.

The plan was a 30ish km roll out along some fireroad to stretch the legs before the weekend, and test out my mate Lucy's new lights - before she races with them for the first time. Geographically we're lucky, being pretty much smack on the High Country Rail Trail, which gradually works it way up to Lake Hume & beyond. Tonight Lake Hume was called as the turn around point.

Heading up was ok, but as soon as we starting heading back home, I could feel the hollowness start to form in my belly. For some reason it was worse heading down than up - maybe the temptation to get in the big ring and mash it exaserbated the issue? Progressively it got worse and worse.

And it's not like we were working hard - this was a relatively straightforward, gentle ride, for the record maxHR was 169 and aveHR 134, which is pretty low for me - usually more like 185/160.

On the last rise before the final roll down the hill into down, the tunnel vision started. All I could do was focus on the front wheel and keep spinning the pedals. I managed to hang on until I got home, by the time I rolled into the driveway my head was spinning, yet HR was only 115.

A serious raid of the cupboard when I got inside - need sugar, need it now! No honey left, it was all I could do to stop myself from sprinkling brown sugar straight onto my peanut paste sandwich.

Luckily Els had dinner ready pretty smartly, which helped. 2 bowls of salad, 2 bowls of pasta, one sandwich and one beer later, I'm feeling a bit better. But there's a tub of ice cream in the freezer that isn't altogether safe, and I might have room for another beer yet!

So - lesson learned? Don't head out without a gel (I should stash a couple of emergency gels in the tool wallet I think), and pay a bit more attention to what I eat pre-ride. I think I just pushed the envelope a bit too far today - too much lawn mowing and not enough eating.

1 comment:

Dee said...

It's funny how nutrition becomes so demanding. If Magda knew how much we have to eat she would really hate us!