Pacing a Fondo Like a Pro: Strategy, Fuel, and On-the-Day Decisions
In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with Head Coach Ryan Thomas to break down how to pace a Gran Fondo—from the night-before plan to the final sprint. Fresh off a grass-podium at the World Fondo Championships, Ryan shares the exact playbook he used on a course that opened with a 10 km climb, featured brutal crosswinds, and finished fast along the coast. You'll learn how to organise your race day (start-time math, breakfast timing, warm-up activations, clothing), how to read the course and wind to conserve energy, and how to choose the right effort on long climbs so you don't detonate before the finish. What we cover: Race-day setup: When to eat, what a practical warm-up looks like (incl. 30s high-cadence activations), and why start-line position matters. Climb pacing 101: Use lap-average power vs. your recent bests; ride ~90–100% of threshold on long openers; when to hold wheels vs. let them go. Wind & terrain tactics: Headwind climbs = sit in; tailwind climbs = expect selections; how to handle spiky "over/under" climbs and when to save bullets. Group dynamics: Solo chase or wait? Simple rules to avoid burning matches you'll need later. Heart rate in context: When HR helps (and when it messes with your head). Downhill & crosswind safety: Line choice, spacing, and staying within your limits on sketchy descents. Fuel & hydration: Real-world targets Ryan used (~100–120 g carb/hr), bottle strategy for 3+ hours, caffeine timing, and what to carry (and what he didn't). Gear notes: Gearing, tyre choice/pressures, and wheel depth for windy days. If you've got a Fondo on the calendar and want to turn fitness into a result, this episode gives you the pacing blueprint to ride smarter, conserve energy, and finish stronger. — Work with RCA: Want a coach to map your course, pacing, and nutrition for your next Fondo? Visit roadcyclingacademy.com → Hire a Coach (monthly or weekly options). Prefer structure without full coaching? Check out our 12-Week Custom Plan. Cam Nicholls (00:00.088) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I'm joined by the RCA's head coach, Ryan Thomas. And we've got a bit of a series running here. The World Fondo Championships were recently in Australia. Ryan participated. He had a great result, grass podium fourth on eight hours training per week. If you didn't hear that podcast, check out the previous podcast where we talked about Ryan's training. But in this podcast, I wanted to specifically talk about your pacing and generally how you would pace or organize, prepare for a Fondo event. And for this one, Ryan, we had a few questions come through on, we've got a community forum, if you're a member of the RCA, and some of our members posed some questions. They saw your amazing result and they're like, oh, hang on a sec, I've got some questions for Ryan. So we're gonna go through those today, The first one. that I want to pose from one of our members. And it's kind of a big and broad question. So I'll let you answer it the way you want to answer it is like, how did you organize the race or the Fondo? Yeah, yeah, thanks, Kim. Organization for the race is kind of thinking about start time, warm up, nutrition, clothing, all that sort of stuff in my mind. So the start time for me was around 7.15. So I worked backwards from that time in terms of organizing myself from the race and think about the day before, car bloating, eating, eating a lot of carbs, a lot of pasta and rice. But on the event day, Usually you want to eat your main breakfast around two and a half hours, three hours before. So I was up at 4.50, had some breakfast. then I knew this event in particular was a very hard start. So preparing for the race and organizing myself for that was wanting to be warm and doing a good warmup before. So it was 17K in from our accommodation. So we rode in. Ryan Thomas (02:09.614) Um, we wrote in, was a nice warm day. So didn't really have to worry too much about that. Um, unreal sunrise, just as a side note, it was probably one of the nicest sunrise I've ever seen. Um, on the ride in, which was nice start to the day, but can I nice. can I just pull you back on one question? So you got up at 4.50 to eat. So you could eat roughly, you know, two hours before the event. And this can vary for people depending on the event. Like obviously, you know, if your event starts at six, you know, you know, do you want to get up at 3.30 or four? Probably not. But then what does your event look like if your events may be going to start with, you know, like For example, I did the Grafton to Inverrell earlier this year and that was an early start, but I knew because it was such a long event and the first part of the ride was relatively flat, there wasn't gonna be a lot of hard riding. So I could eat closer to the start time. So that one's a bit of a tricky one. And according to the science, you wanna eat three to four hours beforehand, which is just not practical in many ways. You gotta do what's practical, but you gave it roughly two hours. How many? And once again, you know, this is a really important one for a Fondo event to make sure you get enough fuel the day before you mentioned carb loading, but also the morning of. The science says one to four grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight for your main sort of breakfast before an event. And your 70 kilos, Ryan, roughly, do you know how many carbs you had for your brekkie? not exactly. I'm not a big, big number carb counter for meals. I do go racing, but I had, knew roughly roughly what I needed. I just kind of my normal, my normal breakfast is like two pieces of white toast with a bit of peanut butter and honey or something simple like that. So I just added another piece. So I didn't want to throw my stomach out of whack too much. And there's a three hour events on you. didn't need to Ryan Thomas (04:14.542) smash a lot of carbs. Yeah. Just from experience, but I had three pieces of toast with the butter and a lot of honey. I reckon I had around a hundred. That's probably around a hundred grams of carbs for that. And then I had 40 grams of carbs in my bottle on the writing. So got right pre pre event. had around 140. So two, two grams per kilogram. Okay. Yeah. And so you're riding in beautiful sunset, 7K warm up. Are you doing any activations as part of that warm up? an activation is where if you're warming up, it's sort of like a zone one, zone two sort of spin. know, an activation is going sort of beyond that more up into your threshold territory and beyond to sort of prime you, prime the muscles in a polite way before it becomes very unpolite in the event. Yeah, yeah, I did actually. I did two, two activations. I didn't time them. didn't lap them. I just kind of went off by feel, but usually the activations that work for me are like 30 seconds seated, build to a high cadence, hard effort. So probably like over 500 Watts for 500 Watts for me for 30 seconds. So I just stay seated, find a good spot on the, on the ride in and just pedal in the same gear as almost as hard as I can for 30 seconds. end up doing like 130, 140 RPM by the end of it. So that really works for me as an activation effort that doesn't fatigue at all because it's just, it's 30 seconds twice. So I just did that on the way in pretty close to the, pretty close to the start. And it was an awkward one because a few guys I was writing in with didn't do anything because this is like organization for the race is that we had a hundred and closer to hundred starters in our event. you want to get there early to line up. you're not sliding up 200s. Um, we got there around half an hour before start time and we were 150th on the line. So we're well, well, well back. Um, so I was kind of glad that I did the activations because you do your warmup for 30, 40 minutes and then you sit there for half an hour before you have to go again. Um, those activations, I think I felt fine at the start. Um, I don't know what everyone else felt like or what everyone else did, but Ryan Thomas (06:32.566) In my mind and everyone else who I told for the event was get a good 20 to 30 minutes. If you're to line up half an hour before you need a good warmup and a couple of activations to make sure when you get into that climb, your heart rate doesn't go to a, go to a peak within the first kilometer. Cause that'll you'll feel pretty average doing that. So that was kind of the strategy that half an hour before was you can get, build those nerves up a lot and they could, could tell the people around me were like getting real nervous and Everyone was getting anxious and like old bikes and going to the toilet and everyone was getting real anxious, but I was, I was quite relaxed and just, just trying to enjoy the moment and taking videos and texting and just like trying to calm myself before that half an hour, before the stock on went off. Cause it was going to be quite a spicy start. Yeah, okay. So talk me through, you know, the strategy and what transpired for the first effort. Because like any Fondo, you've got to look at, how long is it going to be, you know, and then, you know, how many efforts are involved and what are the efforts look like? Are the efforts, you know, like a, is it a sharp climb that goes for three minutes? Well, that's going to be a VO2 max effort. Is it going to be a long climb? for 30 minutes or an hour, whether that's going to be a tempo effort or a sweet spot effort or maybe a threshold effort. So can you just tell us before the gun went off, maybe talk us through what was required for this particular event? Yeah, so it's quite interesting in terms of demand. So it's literally five to 800 meters, I can't remember exactly. From start to the base of a 10 kilometer climb. So flat for 800 meters and you straight up a 10 kilometer climb, which I had done the event before. So I kind of knew the demands really well. So in my head, I knew how long it was going to take and I knew what the rest of the course looked like. So Ryan Thomas (08:35.63) 10 kilometer climb. So if we think step back a little bit, when you're preparing for something or a fair event like this, you need to think about, I'd probably say three things is what's the actual course like what's the hills, descents, flats, turns, all that sort of stuff. Second thing is wind. What's the wind doing and how's that gonna play into your strategy, whether you're in a group or whether you're. in a group behind just trying to do the fastest time you possibly can, where are you going to make the efforts to count? And third is the temperature on the day. what sort of, what sort of clothing are you going to wear? The course kind of determines that a bit as well. So the, the temperature on the day was one of the warmest days we had down there was 15 degrees on the start 25 by the end of the day. So was quite a really nice day. So didn't have to worry about any warm gear at all. It was pretty straightforward wind. was really windy. So the prediction was 30K an hour winds and 70 kilometer an hour gusts of wind. So really, really windy. So everyone that I sent out an email to all my members, all the people doing it before. And in my email was like, had a screenshot of the course and this is the wind direction for every part of the course. So be prepared that the first 20 kilometers is going to be a headwind. like that it's not going to make much difference to being a little tack or you're to get a big difference. big slipstream in the draft, it's going to be much easier in the wheel than in the headwind. Then you turn left into a crosswind and then it's a big tail all the way down to the coast and the coast, it's going to be really windy up and down. So that was, that was one of the big factors in terms of strategy and how to, how to prepare for this event and how to pace it. so course 10 kilometer climb straight out of the gate. And then you had 40 K in between the base of the second base of the first climb and the base of the second climb. So you had 40 Ks of rolling terrain in pretty windy conditions to prepare for the second. Well, I'd say the main decisive part of the race is that second climb because it's comes closer to the end. So the first climb for our race, and I think it sounded like for a few other races, kind of neutralized because of the headwind. So, you know, if you haven't done much racing or been around much wind before, Ryan Thomas (10:54.634) in an event, if it's a headwind up a climb, it slows everybody down. So the pure climbers can't go as fast up that climb. If it's a tailwind up a climb, pure climbers or a lot of people can go fast with less effect of draft behind them. So it's much better for a climber to have a tailwind up a climb. It's much better for non climbers to have a headwind up a climb because they can get the draft. So first climb from from a strategy perspective, when I told everyone was stay in the wheel. use the draft, conserve as much energy as possible and try to stay around threshold under threshold if possible because you've still got a long way to go and then try and try and recover once you get over the top of that try and recover for that 40 to an hour 40 minutes to an hour in between until the second climb which is going to be quite difficult. Now you fought because you got there half an hour beforehand, but obviously there were people must've got there 45 to an hour beforehand and were waiting for a much longer period just to get that front in that frontal position. But you made up a lot of spaces in that first, what is it? 800 meters leading into the climb. And then by the time you worked your way up at the start of the climb, you were sitting on 20th wheel. Maybe an obvious question to some, for others, they may not know the answer. So I'm going to ask the question, why would you, if you're going to sit in the draft and sit in the wheel, why would you not just sit in 150th wheel, which is where you were at the start line, why did you spend a little bit of energy trying to get up to 20th wheel? I knew that our race was the discrepancy between the best and the rest were going to be, it was going to be quite large. So for example, my threshold was 350. There was probably some people there with a 250 watt threshold. So that first climb is going to be 10 minutes difference between the fastest and the slowest rider. So if I was starting at a hundredth wheel, then there was going to be a lot of people dropping wheels and I was going to have to spend a lot more energy to stay with the leaders than I needed to. Ryan Thomas (13:01.614) So I needed to be in my head. needed to be in the top 50 by the start of that climb because I thought about 50 people would make it over the top, which made up around 80 to 100 spots in that first 800 meters. Luckily, got to around 50th and then started working my way up with try to conserve as much as possible using the draft, using some experience from a bunch riding perspective to work my way up in the draft. So the top 20 wheels. Okay. But it's a, it's a hard one to, I would say it's, that's the strategy. If you're aiming to win or finishing the front group in a grand Fondo, it's a bit of a different strategy. If you're. Writing to your own personal power or your rock, you are, you're unsure of how, whether you could actually keep up with the front group. It's a little bit different strategy. It's you don't want to spend too much energy in that first 800 meters because you're going to after I start riding a VO2 car in the first two kilometers to stay with the front group. the first strategy for most people was let that try and line up as far close to the front as you can, because you want to benefit from the draft if possible. Go get to the bottom of the climb and try to ride anywhere from threshold to sub threshold. So that 90 90 to 100 % of your threshold is probably a good range depending on how comfortable you are and how fast, how deep you want to go up that first climb. What's a good rule of thumb then for somebody who's doing a Fondo event and whether it's, know, Amy's and the first climb comes in the first kilometer or whether it's another event and the climb comes at, you know, 50 kilometers and they're with a group and then all of sudden they're getting stretched on the climb and they're not sure, you know, like should I be trying to hold on to the wheel or should I be, you know, dropping off? Because I feel particularly with people that are Cam Nicholls (15:00.438) inexperienced with their own physiology and these events, it's very easy to overindex on a climb trying to hold onto wheels. And if you go too deep, then you're just destroyed for the rest of the ride. Or it's very hard to get back if you dig yourself a hole too deep. what's a general rule of thumb for those people to follow? Two things that I worked with a couple of members on who were trying to go really hard up the first climb was you look at your peak power for that sort of duration. for example, if you're aiming for 25 minutes up that climb, what's your best 20 minute power in the last six months? What physiologically can you do at your best? Let's say it's 300 watts. Your best ever 20 minutes, 300 watts. And up that first climb, a good thing to do for any experienced people on any climb. If you're doing a long climb or a short climb, pick that duration and figure out what your best is in the last six months or three months in training. If you lap the power and you have lap average power on your screen, you can see, well, my best is 300 and the first five minutes I've averaged 320. I cannot sustain this pace. I need to slow down because my best is 300 and I do the best if I'm going to do 20 watts higher than my best ever. then I'm going to be suffering by the end. So if it's a long duration event, that's the best strategy because you don't want to do your best ever power on a, on a 20 minute climb in a four hour race, because you're going to, that's going to hurt and you're going to pay for it in the last hour. So using your peak, your, your peak powers for that duration is a really good indicator and probably take 10, 20 Watts off that. And that's a good target. The other thing to do is if it's a long climb is thinking about your threshold and your threshold power. Let's use 300 Watts, for example. If your threshold is 300 Watts and let's assume you use critical power to find it. That power is essentially the maximum power you can sustain for 30 to 45 minutes. So if you lap lap your power on the start of the climb and you're doing over that threshold power, you don't pretty close to that threshold power and you know, it's going to be long. Think. Ryan Thomas (17:23.086) Well, I'm going to do this, a maximum effort or I'm going to sustain the best power I possibly can for 40 minutes. And then I'm going to have to do 110 K. That's not going to be possible. So that's the, that's my mindset when I'm going into an event like that is what's my, where's my absolute limit. I need to be under that at any moment in time. And what's my threshold where, where do those two sort of sit and what can I physiologically do while still being able to do the rest of the event? Well, Mm. Do you look at, I know heart rate's a bit of a tricky one because for an event, obviously, where there's a factor and nerves are a factor and everyone's different as well. But so this is a bit of an anecdote from my personal experiences in events. So I know once, you know, if I'm in a long climb and I start pushing towards 180 beats, my max is kind of 184 to 185. Once I'm 180 and I'm spending a bit of time over 180, If I spend more than a minute or two over 180 for a prolonged period, I know it takes me a long time to come back from that. And that's just from learning over the years, right? So that's not necessarily the case for everybody, but it's the case for me. And I think that's why the beauty of training and doing A and B events and getting experience here goes a long way with helping you understand your own. physiology and therefore your own pacing strategies for these events as well. Ryan Thomas (18:53.71) Yeah, absolutely. Heart rate to heart rate's a really good one. If you if you want a secondary thing or something internal, an internal measure for how your body's feeling. As you said, race day can be really strange on heart rate because you're coming in quite fresh. Often you might see I don't wear heart rate on right. didn't wear my heart rate monitor because I didn't want to know. knew that it was going to be high. A lot of people. Yeah. And in so We'll do that, yeah. Ryan Thomas (19:23.022) The strategy that this just, this is my preference is that if I look down and I see a high heart rate number, that's going to play with my head. That's going to play mind games. If it's lower than what I think, I'm like, think, Oh, I'm really fatigued. Like my heart rate's not coming up. So I don't want to know heart rate to me with so much experience, a heart, whatever my heart rate is doesn't matter. I'm just, I'm going to do the heart. I'm going to do the hardest effort I can to stay with the front group. If you're doing it for a time, then I would say like, if you think about the same sort of thing, what's your, what's your peak heart rate for 60 minutes ever. And think about that number. And if you're going pretty close to that and you're spending a lot of time around that number during the event, well, you're probably going to be, you can't do physiologically. You shouldn't be able to do much more than threshold heart rate for an hour. So use that as kind of your limit for internal effort, I would say. And you can go above it for short durations. It's not a It's not like a rev limiter. can't, it's not going to stop you from going hard, but just be mindful that your heart rate goes higher and recover. So if it's going up to like, for your, your example, that 180, 185, if you're getting up to 180, think, well, if I, if I do this for another minute longer, I'll put a time limit on it. If it's another minute at 180, I'm going to have to back it off and I'm going to have to do zone two power, but my heart rate to come down or we've got 500 meters left of the climb. I'm just going to keep going and then I'll recover over the top. So it's very different, heart rate's very different, and it's very contextual within the event. It is good when, you know, I'm thinking of draft in Varell when I got dropped and I was kicking myself that I got dropped. I, but I went out back and looked at my heart rate numbers. I all time high 30 second heart rate. I'm like, Oh, okay. I was about to have a heart attack. I'm not going to be so hard on myself now because the data is there in front of me. that was the first climb. And then you briefly mentioned, you know, the undulating Cam Nicholls (21:28.482) component with some crosswinds. Sounds like you're in a group there though and everyone's working together. So when you're in a group, when everyone's working together, which is ideally where you want to be, because that's going to help you increase your average speed in Fondo events significantly. So that was a big tick. It's not always going to happen. Let's just throw a hypothetical out there. You get to the top of the climb and you're by yourself. Are you better off just keeping going or you're better off waiting? Obviously there's risk associated with that. Like what do you recommend to people? have a look, have a good look around behind. And if you can see a group behind and definitely slow down, if the group's like 30 seconds ahead, or, know, when you haven't seen that group for a long time, then don't try and chase because you're not going to catch the five people, even if it's two or three, they're way stronger than you. And they've just dropped you on the climb. So they're stronger, more people together. You're not going to catch. So either you're riding easy or you're waiting for a group behind. So riding to a power that you know you can sustain until the next key moment in the, in the event. the next climb or you're riding zone two to the finish, or if it's 30 K to go, then you just go as hard as you can to the finish. But in this situation, it's, I would say you better off just take it nice and easy and waiting for waiting for the group behind. Cause riding at zone three power for 30 minutes and then getting caught from the group behind. Cause there's 10 people behind you. That's kind of be way harder than just waiting for five minutes, getting caught by the group and rolling smooth turns, you're probably saving 10 % of energy doing that than trying to do it all on your own. Cam Nicholls (23:10.346) Okay, so the second main effort in this particular Fondo, was there a specific strategy for that one, which is any different to the one for the first climb? Obviously, there's less people, so you don't have to worry about positioning as much. Yeah, it was a little bit of a different climb. So it went in three phases and a few members said to me after I don't remember the three phases, it was just a long climb. But it was 15 kilometers long. So it was quite long. And you had to really think about how you're going to pace it. So was like a 5k set 5k up, predominantly 5k up and then flatish downhill and then another 5k but it's kind of sawtooth. It was a big fight. Ryan Thomas (23:54.682) was up and down. was flutter sections in it. The first climb was just like three, 4 % the whole way. Whereas the second climb was quite spiky in nature. so it was kind of preparing and I tried to prepare my members for like that over under style effort where you might be hitting threshold or going just above threshold. And then you're coming back down the zone two or three, and then you're going over again. So it was kind of that style of climb. and having written it before I knew that that's what It was like in the front of the race, we were attacking quite a lot. So it's different for every situation. But it was big tailwind from that point. So we turned like the 40 km in the event. You turn left and hit a big tail cross. So it was fast from that point. So a few mistakes I heard with people was. doing too much in that middle part of the race or too many turns or over indexing on how you're feeling in that middle part of the race and figuring that all that second climb is going to be the main decisive point using that 30 K in the middle to take it easy, take a back seat. Instead, people were going to the front trying to keep the pace hard, keep it fast. So you kind of want to lean on other people in that situation and save your energy. That's what we did in our group. had a big group and I average zone two for that 40 Ks in between the two climbs. That was really easy. So was quite, that was probably the best strategy to do is try and take it as easy as possible and then use the tailwind. You just got to go as hard as you can for that climb. Cause the final 40 K was flat along the coast road. So the group that you're in, if you're in a good group there and you're rolling turns, then it wasn't going to change much. But that, that main second climb was kind of the last big decisive point of the event. Mmm. Cam Nicholls (25:44.526) And I think it's really important what you mentioned there, like how the climb came in threes, because understanding that before you go in means that in the moment, like if you're going up one of those, let's call them three stages, if you're in stage one and all of a sudden the pressure really ramps up in the final part of that stage one, and you might be like redlining a little bit. But if you know that it's going to drop off a little bit and the pace is going to come off, then you're probably inclined to stay with it because you know that maybe in 500 meters, you're to be able to catch your breath a little bit. But if you don't know that, and if you haven't gone in sort of examining the terrain and what the climb looks like, then you might be like, is, know, heart rate's gone up. I'm well over threshold. This is a 15 minute climb. I'm going to let these guys go. Exactly. That in context, like our specific, our specific group, there was, there's one right hander and everyone who did the event will know this exact one. It's like 10, 12 % like really steep corner before the last, this is like the last little rant before it flattened off slash went downhill. And our event we were doing like a single file, there was two or three meters between every rider. Like it was full attack there. And in my head, I was like, I've got to be with the front because Yeah, so. Ryan Thomas (27:06.798) goes downhill here and if I'm behind and I'm gonna have to chase so it was like full attack there and then we rested and then we did the second part but I think a lot of people in that same boat everyone was a couple people talking after the race that that that corner was everyone remembered that corner quite well because I was like final crunch before that second and third phase So is there anything that you wanna mention before we finish off with a couple of questions from the RCA community or additional questions, I should say, with the actual course? just an interesting point that, the decent back down was 70 K an hour gusts, a crosswinds downhill, 70 K an hour. So it was really sketchy and there was a lot of people that crashed. I didn't see any personally, but I heard a lot where on the, on the ground and walking down that hill because it was so dangerous. but I just, yeah, hope everyone that crashed was, is okay. but it was. Yeah, I had a lot of fun down there, but there was a couple of moments where I was like, oh, this is like, this is the limit of everyone's capacity. Like at one point you came to an opening and you're doing 75K an hour and you look 200 meters ahead to the rider in front of you and their bike just starts going sideways from the right hand side of the road all way to the left. You're like, oh, just brace for impact. Like it was, it was really sketchy. That sounds intimidating. Ryan Thomas (28:38.222) It was very intimidating. And I know you spoke about Chris Miller before he said he got dropped on the descent. So it sounded like he was being cautious down the descent. He got dropped and he had to chase when he got to the bottom. I just saw that on his drama. So I think there was a few situations like that where it was it was quite gnarly. And then the last 40k was pretty gnarly as well with a lot of gusts of wind. So I know I hope. Yeah, it was a very tricky. tricky last 50k with that descent and in the crosswinds headwind tailwind, it was wild. Yeah, that's a challenging one to prepare for in training. guess going back to what you said at the start of the podcast, it's like, you got to look at it the night before. And then if you're prepared for at least mentally, then what can you do in that instance, Ryan, you know, you make sure provided you've got the right bike skills that, on the decent you are closer to the wheels than perhaps you might be typically because, you know, a gust could push you back a few bike lengths and you can get dropped pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Or in that situation, I'd say you've got to give more space because it's the unpredictability of the wind. And if someone gets pushed from the right hand side of the road to the left and you're close to them, like you're going with them. So you have the unpredictability of it was just ride within your limits really in that sort of situation. It's yeah. Pull the, the elbows out, brace for impact and just hold, hold the bike nice and tight. I had my hands were sore at the end of the bottom of the decent from gripping the bars so tight. Wow. That says a lot for a skillful rider. So questions from the Ask Our community. Were you prepared to deal with a flat tire? Ryan Thomas (30:25.0) No, I said two, two different mindsets here. I saw a couple of people with saddlebags, in our group, my mindset was win or lose. I was, I was gonna, yeah, I was taking the 500 grams less on the bike to, to save a bit of weight and go a bit faster and try and win the race. Then if I got a flat, I was going to be, I was going to be stopped anyway for five minutes and I wasn't going to catch back up to the group. So I was happy to sit and wait for the sag wagon. If you were, if you were doing it for time, a hundred percent just ride your normal setup. Yeah. Saddle bag and maybe carry a CO2 canister instead of a pump or something like that. but I'd say always be prepared. Otherwise I've, I know I've heard a lot of stories. The wait, wait for the sag wagon or the wait for someone who's got a flat is like, you know, getting in for three or four hours after the event, like, so, so you're off the time. So the sag wagon is the very last car of very last rider of the day. So it's a long, long day out there waiting for them. It happened to me, Melbourne to Warnable 2020 at 130 Ks in got rear ended, got a flat tire. It was a really rainy morning. So there'd been lots of punches that the SRAM support vehicle didn't have a spare wheel. So I sat on the side of the road for 45 minutes waiting for the sad wagon. And then yeah, you're just in the back of the sad wagon for another 120 kilometres picking up riders. It's really depressing. I can vouch for that. So moving forward, will never not, I don't take a saddle bag. I keep it pretty light. I'll just put a spare tube and a mini pump in my back pocket. Surrounded by gels and bars and all that kind of stuff. Just as a just in case. what did you pack with you? So this will be probably a good one to discuss. Ryan Thomas (32:16.62) strategy. Cam Nicholls (32:23.182) you know, obviously external to food, nutrition, but I'm keen to understand like how many grams of carbs per hour you were aiming for. So what did you pack with you nutrition wise and what were you aiming for in terms of carbs per hour? Did you pack anything else? It was a tricky one because 130k three hours roughly for us so in my mind I know I know how much I lose in sweat and how much fluid loss I and I'm over a litre an hour so in my mind it was going to be tricky to not be dehydrated and try to I was kind of accepting that I was going to cramp at some point in the end because I wasn't going to be able to get enough fluid in because I didn't want to stop and fill bottles because I was racing for the win so yeah My sort of situation was a little bit different. If you're racing for time, or it was four or five hours and you have 100 % you have to stop to get water because you can't get through that sort of duration without more than, um, less than two bottles. Um, so I had two 950 mil bottles. So two big ones, a lot of people had two, five, six hundreds. And I was very suspect on that for three hours and I'm pretty sure the cramping was the theme of the day. pretty much everyone I talked to had cramps. So that's kind of the nature of doing 130K event with only two bottles. I'd probably guarantee that's why most people cramp. They just couldn't get enough fluid in. So yeah, I do 950 mil bottles with 120 grams of carbs in each. So I was gonna sip on those throughout and I knew that I needed to have another 120 grams in gels throughout. to keep it up. I was aiming for around 100, 120 an hour turned out from training piece that suggested I needed 400 grams of carbs that three hours. So three hours, 10, I think it was so around 120 was right. And I had, yeah, I did that. had all else then the other things I carried, I carried my, yeah, didn't carry a pump or saddle bag. I carried my phone in my back pocket. Ryan Thomas (34:31.893) just in case I got stuck out there, I had a crash or something. I didn't want to be stuck in no man's land for without anything. And I took a sneaky video during the race. And the only other thing I had on me was two nootropics gels, two caffeine gels and a Crampix. cup. And when did you have your caffeine? I had 200. So the new tropics gels, 200 milligrams of caffeine. had that I had one 15 minutes before the start. Um, then I had another 200 milligram caffeine and air and a half into the race. So around the night, about five K before the second climb, the main decisive climb. Um, and then I had one more gel, which was, I had a lot of caffeine and I don't recommend people do this, but I'm a high caffeine user and I use a lot. then I had another hundred milligrams of caffeine off the descent, for the, before the final 40 K and then I ended up cramping with 15 K to go. So I had a current fix at 15 K to go and it helped a bit. And I just sat in a waited for the sprint. Interesting. What else have we got here? So the other question was, was anyone handing out additional, because obviously three and a half hours is a long time with only two bottles, even though you basically got the liter bottles, is a smart move. So you've almost got two liters there, but you're still probably not enough. And a lot of people who intentions, I've got the 600 bottles, which is... Cam Nicholls (36:08.14) does surprise me but actually doesn't surprise me. Were there people handing out neutral water or did you have to pull over and stop somewhere? I didn't look for neutral water, but I did hear that there was some neutral water that people were handing out red bottles. don't know if that was just, they thought it was neutral water or not. But if in an ideal world, I would have had a supporter handing out water at the feed stations, an extra third bottle. there was for people competing for time, you could just stop. There was three aid stations throughout. So there was plenty, plenty of opportunity to stop and refill. refilled bottles and water. And I'm pretty sure they had some nutrition like gels and bananas and lollies and stuff there as well. So there was ample opportunity to stop and maintain, maintain that energy and fluid intake. If you, if you were willing to sacrifice those couple of minutes to Yeah. Good. Which a lot of people did. Yeah, okay. I think that is it from the questions at the RCA community. Anything final to add? I mean, I've got a question, but I'll let you, and it's to do with your bike set up. But before I ask my questions, do you have anything further to add? Ryan Thomas (37:27.81) No, no, that was it. just, yeah, I had a great time. It a fun race. Okay, so I know your bike's the Merida Skoltura. Yes. Dura Ace. Shram, Shram Red. Force, carrying a bit of extra weight there mate, you could have been on a podium if it wasn't for that Shram Force. Shram. Ryan Thomas (37:50.008) don't say that. Just joking. So what was your front, what was your gearing set up? Bye! Ryan Thomas (38:00.846) I have a 52 40 chainring at the front and then a 10 32 cassette. for it and what's at the back. Cam Nicholls (38:09.71) Okay, cool. And what was your tire of choice? I have the GP 5000. 28 mil. TPU tubes. I'm a non convert to tubeless like yourself. Sounds like you're going back to tubes in the very near future. I run tubeless on my mountain bike and love it. I've never had an issue, but for some reason I'm just a tube guy on the road bike. don't know. I just haven't converted over and I don't know if I will. I'm just like the tubes. I don't feel like I'm losing anything. Okay, achieve this. Cam Nicholls (38:36.279) Exactly. Ryan Thomas (38:52.194) with TPU tubes. What's PSI? You're pumping them at 70 kilos body weight. I had 60, 63, 60, 63 in the rear, 60 in the front, roughly. Yep, cool. what wheels have you got? You got the Cadence? We've got the cadence. Yeah. Which are unreal. 60, 60, real 60 mil rear, 50 mil front, which was perfect. Perfect for that course. And they are unreal in the crosswinds, like going down that decent with 70 K an hour gusts. Like I was not moving anywhere near as much as other people. don't know. They're deep 50 even 60s, deep wheels. So they're, I don't know what it is about those wheels, but they're just good in the crosswinds. Cam Nicholls (39:19.029) stagger. Cam Nicholls (39:39.534) Good. All right, well, thanks for sharing Ryan. If you're all out there listening to this and you've got some Fondo events coming up, don't forget at the RCA, we're a coaching business and as part of coaching, it's not just about giving you intervals and giving you zone two sessions and structuring your plan in a way that helps you recover properly. It's also about the advice that you can get from coaches about Fondo events, how to prepare nutrition-wise. BikeWise, I know Ryan, go through all the Fondo events that we deal with at the RCA all around the world, Canada, USA, Europe, UK. You are going through with your members on your monthly catch-up calls, the course, is that correct? And then what it looks like. 100%. Yeah, we always break the course down, always look at the demands of the course and what sort of strategy and pacing strategy you should use. So yeah, always, always break the course down. It's the key part of any event. And if you're not thinking about what sort of strategy you should do, then yeah, we can, we can certainly help you with that. I think that's what a coach proactively enforces. I think when people are doing events by themselves, I've been guilty of this, you don't really lean into it as much as you should. And let's face it, you're not going to sit down with your partner and go through it because if they don't ride a bike, they don't care. So having a coach could really be valuable in this space. So if that sounds of interest to you, make sure you check out the road cycling academy.com website. Where you would wanna go for this one is hiring a coach. We've got a monthly and a weekly option if you're unsure. Just submit an inquiry. You'll get me on the inquiry guy will jump on the phone, web calling and go through things and understand your cycling goals and make a recommendation. So yeah, if that sounds of interest, check out our website. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next podcast.
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