THE BODIES So how do you prepare for a three and a half thousand km journey on a bicycle and how do you actually manage your body during the event? If, as a coach, I knew that then I would be rich already.......! But what I learned on Zimboundary will certainly help me in the people I need to help in the future..... This was an interesting challenge for me. From a coaching perspective I had a current pool of athletes ranging from sedentary ladies to Zimbabwe national cyclists, however the training plan for a journey this length is very very different. To put it into perspective a normal training week in terms of hours for an athlete with a job and family like us would be 8-10 hrs. A really good week would be 12-14hrs and anything over 16hrs considered heavy and only done once every monthly cycle. Ashleys training plan had him doing 18hrs every 5th week with his longest week being 22hrs. Our first week of Zimboundary had us on 46hrs in 6 days and of course there is no way to actually train this distance and live a life! I focused on two key areas for Ash. Ligament and tendon strength and the skill of learning how to recover while actually riding your bicycle. Ash was a wonderful client to coach, did everything set for him including the nutritional and mental strength exercises and was really interested in the reasoning behind the various stages of the program. My own training was far less structured. I had great intentions but my training plan got sidetracked by illness in the family which comprised lots of traveling and a routine was impossible to set up. I did a lot less time on the bike than Ashley but I used what little time I had to full advantage and spent several weekends training in the Eastern Highlands (doing route recces for the one MTB event I organize here in Zimbabwe). At the actual event I cycled at the back with my co-organizer, Andrew Brown, doing the race sweep. For those who dont ride being sweep means making sure everyone gets home so it is slow but the benefit to me was the extra time in the saddle at very high altitude. The other good thing I did was three of Zimbabwes top 3 day mountain bike events. The Matopos Heritage Challenge, the Zimbabwe Kushanya and the Victoria Falls MTB. Again I didnt race these but cycled them usually at the back with all my good friends including Graham Botton, Andrew Brown and Debbie Swales, who as you know joined us for the lower Zambezi Valley section. I believe that this was the most valuable as it conditioned me to time in the saddle rather than actual muscle strength. Also the big difference between the two of us is that I have over twenty years of cycling history and Ash has about five and on a bike this muscle memory makes a huge difference. Nonetheless we both set out from Aberfoyle on the 6th July with huge trepidation at what lay ahead. I knew the first week would kill us and expected our bodies to settle by around week 3 and then grow in strength from there. The critical and fundamental point at this stage was that Ashley and I had the same goal, to finish Zimboundary. We couldnt predict the wear and tear on our bodies so having a common goal was important and we agreed at the outset that we would cycle at the slowest persons pace and if one of us had to stop due to illness or injury then the other would too. We had expected to suffer but completely underestimated the extent of it. The first week was hell. Apart from the 90-100k / day which was a shock we also had anything up to 3000m climbing in a day which just made everything more difficult, the day longer and the cycling harder. It was equally tough for the back-up team of Astrid and Jimmy who had no idea what to expect or any experience of the requirements of two cyclists. We could not have survived this week without Astris amazing ability to forage for the most nutritious foods around. Daily she found avocados, fresh green kale, bananas, sun ripe tomatoes, sweet potatoes and so on. This nutritional support was critical. We were also on strong anti-oxidants and I had brought protein shakes for that first week only, anything to try and help us recover a little quicker. On day 1 once we got to the huge 30km climb I was stronger than Ash, on Day 2 Ash was much stronger than me, Day 3 up Tank Nek it was me feeling strong again, Day 4 into Chipinge I really struggled and Ash was strong and so it went.....Most importantly the stronger rider on each day rode at the weaker riders pace and took on the task of helping the other one. We were both impressed at how easily we fell into this rhythm and simply responded to the energy ebb and flow of our bodies. Generally we would stop every two to three hours for tea and food but on the really tough climbs we would stop every hour or less just to break the monotony of the constant gradient. We were on the road 10-11 hours a day including our stops and this made recovery really tough at that point as we often arrived at our nightstop in the dark, would bath, eat, sleep and then wake up still in the dark to start again. Sleep was usually around 6 to 7 hours which just wasnt enough but there was nothing we could do about it with the crazy schedule that had been set. That first week really was tackled one kilometer at a time and this was a valuable tool that we would fall back on in the weeks ahead whenever it got really tough. Our bodies in that first week were shell shocked and by the time we got to Malilangwe for the first rest day we felt like we had come through a war zone. I had ripped my shin badly on a tree stump on Day 3 and I could tell how badly our bodies were handling the trauma because the wound just would not heal at all, it was constantly open and weeping. However we are remarkable machines and after one rest day I pointed out to Astri that the wound had closed, scabbed and was gone two days later.....this is the power we have to recover if given the chance. From the second week after the initial shock we settled into the physical routine of the ride and from then on I could actually feel my body healing during the night. I would fall asleep in so much pain, legs aching, stiff and sore, whichever side I lay on was painful. If I woke up before midnight the muscle pain was constant, but after 2a.m I could turn over on the stretcher and the pain had gone. We learnt, quite literally, to heal overnight. We had the odd day that we finished between 3 and 4p.m (usually closer to 5.30p.m) and quickly found that these days were almost like having a rest day. That extra one or two hours of recovery made a huge difference to our overall strength. The unexpected extra 40km we had to ride on the Tuli rest day was actually good for us and we felt rested even having cycled on our rest day as it was just an easy 3hr recovery spin. With the wonderful vision of hindsight we should have had more days of only 70 or 80km interspersed in our schedule as they were a tonic in themselves. The Vic Falls rest day was wonderful as was Kariba but we had not anticipated the general low grade fatigue that set in with still around 1500km to go after 4 weeks at the coal face. This fatigue got worse and worse. It was not the muscle stiffness or pain from the first two weeks but just an unrelenting tiredness on the bikes and a general feeling of dullness when trying to power through sand or up short hills. We did find some firepower to sprint away from angry elephants but no doubt that was powered by adrenaline and didnt last long!! In hindsight I believe that we should have been kinder to our bodies and not set such a ruthless daily distance. 110km was achievable in a day but could easily have been offset by a shorter 80-90km the next day. The hectic drive through the Zambezi Valley was where we began to realize the toll being taken on ourselves and the gradual downhill slide began here. Being joined by five sets of fresh legs when our friends arrived at A Camp put Ashley and I on the ropes and this fatigue would stay with us right through to the end. Between Bots and Agis competition for the yellow jersey the pace was high from the very start of each day and even though it slacked off a lot later in the day the damage was already done as well as the toll the heat of the Valley took and especially as it only compounded our already exhausted bodies. Of course at this point we didnt realize it. We were so happy to have different people to talk to and ride with and the non stop humour was an energy source all of its own. It was only when we left our friends after Kanyemba and began the last week of Zimboundary that we realized the accumulative fatigue of the last six weeks was firmly in place and would haunt us for the next seven days. In hindsight (always perfect vision!) we have agreed that the demands of the last week were too high and also underestimated the mental and emotional strain that was a result of our physical exhaustion. With over 100km per day the set distance in the last week yet in actual fact we made so many bad decisions with an already unsure route so our actual distances were closer to 110km and this translated to over an hour daily of extra time on the bikes which was not even coming off the total mileage. This really crushed our spirits and without doubt the last week was the worst, we were so tired and simply wanted the job to be done and over. Ashleys decision to not take the final rest day and therefore finish the whole ride one day early was not the right decision but was an indication of how much we wanted to be finished and how unclearly we were thinking at that point. Even now almost a month later I am still fuzzy brained and not sure if my clear thinking cap will ever come back!! All in all the impact of this kind of physical test was a remarkable experience and learning curve. We would have been far more productive in all ways if we were less tired and both now know how to tackle something this big with regard to the endurance capacity required. Of course the physical is only a very small part of it with the mental strength required being far greater, however anyone in this kind of situation would benefit hugely from a more structured routine of rest, even reducing the daily toll by one hour would have helped hugely. Nonetheless the ride was completed one day earlier than planned and although Ashley has been on his bike once since then I have yet to saddle up again, although this is more because I have been on holiday than a lack of desire to do so but I will let you know as soon as that happens!
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 15:25:56 +0000
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