Events that span multiple days require special preparation and consideration. Wahoo coaches Mac Cassin and Jeff Hoobler serve up some top tips on how best to tackle your next multi-day race or event.
Whether it's a stage race, a bike packing trip, or something like the upcoming Tour of Sufferlandria, back-to-back days on the bike put additional demands on you, both physically and mentally. In this episode, Wahoo Sports Science coaches Mac Cassin and Jeff Hoobler offer up essential advice on how to prepare for and crush your next multi-day event.
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Mac Cassin 0:00
Hey, listener out there. Welcome back to another episode of the knowledge podcast by Walker. I am Mac Cassin and a senior sports scientist joined by El Hefe'.
Jeff Hoobler 0:08
I'm Jeff Hoobler, Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Today we're going to talk about how to get through multi-day events.
Mac Cassin 0:15
So multi-day event, what is a multi-day event? Jeff? Does the name have any bearing on it?
Jeff Hoobler 0:19
Hmm, I think that might be more than one. Yeah, there are a lot of varieties though.
Mac Cassin 0:24
You're talking about your cyclo touring your backpacking, bike packing your training camp stage, race,
Jeff Hoobler 0:29
stage race, the whole deal. Yeah, all of those things. In general, we're looking at back to back to back to back to back to back to back hard days. And, you know, we got to figure out how to deal with that. It might not be that many back-to-back. But there's a few, at least one back to back at least one
Mac Cassin 0:45
back to back. Okay. So we're talking about hard days in succession getting through doing your best each and every day. So number one key to this is probably going to be your preparation.
Jeff Hoobler 0:53
I think that's a big key to success.
Mac Cassin 0:57
And so if we talk about preparation, there's obviously the first thing that comes to mind is going to be your training for an event. And now we're not going to dive too deep into that specific type of training. Because like we listed out, there's a lot of different types of back to back to back to back activities you can do your prep is going to be really geared, it's going to be individualized to you and what you're going after. But the one general thing we can say is you don't need to do your complete event distance beforehand. So when you were training for unbound last year, what was your longest ride before?
Jeff Hoobler 1:27
Yeah, I think six hours is about half that half. But that wasn't back to back. Well, I suppose if you count getting off at the aid station, and then getting back on but it wasn't back to back today. But the point is, you don't need a ride the length of your event before the event.
Mac Cassin 1:43
Right. You don't need to do seven hard back-to-back days in preparation for seven hard day events. What about tapering? What is tapering? Jeff?
Jeff Hoobler 1:51
Wow, tapering. We're, we're talking about backing off your training, letting your body recover, preparing so that you can come out of the gates rolling, and about a week out, you're not really going to gain fitness. But you can definitely become significantly tired during that time. You know, there's a thing we like to say it's better to come in 10% undercooked rather than 1% over your event,
Mac Cassin 2:16
right. And it's very easy to get 1% overcooked in that final week.
Jeff Hoobler 2:19
It is you know the anxiety and excitement, it's really easy to think, oh gosh, did I do enough and then end up doing too much?
Mac Cassin 2:28
Call that taper madness, where you know, you're getting fit, you're primed, you're ready, you're motivated. And you're asked to not ride your bike. It's difficult, it's a difficult time. So we've got that's the training side of it. What else goes into prep?
Jeff Hoobler 2:40
Wow. Well, as you said, there's a lot of different things that we could be prepping for and these back-to-back events. And depending on what that event is, it's going to determine how you prepare for that. But one of the things we need to look for is the mechanical prep, make sure that that your bike is ready for what you're going to do. And you know, there's, I'm sure we have a few stories about this. But just like that taper madness, people can get a little anxious about what they're going to do to their bike, and, hey, I'm going to get new tires, I'm going to get a new drive train, blah, blah, blah, and you end up making some changes that might cause you some problems.
Mac Cassin 3:18
I've had, I've had quite a few of those incidences between my teammates and personal anecdotes. Definitely. Yeah, definitely don't leave anything the day of or the day before the race. It's not always true. I had one of my best tee tees at Redlands when I got the bike the day before building it up the morning of and the first time I wrote it was in the race. It didn't do that bad. It does it so happened. I couldn't get the rear brake to work. And it was a slightly technical course. And I'm pretty sure I did well, just because
Jeff Hoobler 3:42
because you can slow down, I couldn't slow
Mac Cassin 3:43
down. I didn't have a choice. So
Jeff Hoobler 3:45
that's a good thing. You can handle your bike. But yeah, so
Mac Cassin 3:49
prep mechanical prep, don't let you know months of prep go down the drain just because you decide to play a home bike mechanic the day before, or, you know, try to make some big change without testing it out adequately. Part of that having the mechanical prep goes into the mental side of things, mental prep confidence in your equipment in yourself, that becomes a really important part of the preparation. Again, people like to think about just the bike, they're training on it and getting it ready. But mentally, you need to prepare yourself for the event. So when we're talking about mental preparation for an event, what aspects, in particular, are we talking about? Well,
Jeff Hoobler 4:24
I think you nailed it on the head. The biggest part of that mental prep is the confidence that you've done things the way you like to do them. You made a list, you've checked it off. And part of that mental prep is the mechanical prep, you checked all those boxes. got that out of the way. You've done your training, you've got that out of the way. But then you can take it another step and you can prepare for you know, things that might happen during that time that you don't expect. You know, we've got a few episodes that talk about how to handle adversity, creating positive self-talk and goal setting but the mental prep is I think like you said, the number one thing is to be confident that you've done what you need to do. And so that when you go in, you're just ready to roll.
Mac Cassin 5:08
Yeah, so do what you need to do that flows nicely into, again, more prep comes to logistics. Having that figured out beforehand is going to take the stress off of you during the event. And again, it's going to lead to that confidence that you've done everything correctly. And now logistics, we can break that down even further into things like logic and sleeping nutrition, making sure you know what the routes are demands. So nutrition can be a really finicky one. And it can vary from person to person, you need to know what works for you. And that becomes significant if you're doing even if you're maybe in a location where they have significantly different culinary preferences. Or if an event is potentially sponsored by a specific producer of nutritional supplements, and you can they'll have them to give to you, you need to make sure that you've tried it before. The last thing you want is to rock up to an event expecting just to have the provided nutritional stuff and find out during an event that it does not agree with you. That's
Jeff Hoobler 6:03
absolutely key. Also, as you mentioned, lodging and sleeping. What are your accommodations going to be? Are you going to be camping? Are you going to be staying in a cabin? Are you staying in somebody's tricked-out sprinter? Van?
Mac Cassin 6:16
Are you going to have an air mattress? Are you going to be sleeping on the floor? Are you gonna be camping outside? Are you going to be sleeping in an old Verizon Wireless store?
Jeff Hoobler 6:24
Oh, that sounds interesting. Yeah,
Mac Cassin 6:26
that's ECI stage racing for you. That's a whole separate issue. But seven dudes in one large room separated by all of our collective stuff. It doesn't make for the best sleeping arrangement,
Jeff Hoobler 6:36
did you like to make little cubbies out of bike boxes and partition off your areas?
Mac Cassin 6:40
By the end? We definitely did. Getting to the final stages. Yeah, so with that, okay, if you know for a fact you're gonna be sleeping on an air mattress, or in a sleeping bag, camping, the number one thing I would recommend is to do that at home, like have a night if you're camping, have a night where you just sleep on the floor, in your sleeping bag or sleep on your air mattress. What you don't want is to get to an event and want to recover between days. And the big part of that is sleeping well. And all of a sudden be put in a situation where you're completely uncomfortable. Not used to it and you can't sleep.
Jeff Hoobler 7:08
Yeah, does that go as far as bringing your own pillows,
Mac Cassin 7:12
if you have the luxury and capacity to bring your pillows and you're either coming back to a central location where you can leave it or someone else is going to be hauling your stuff around? I'd say so I mean, I've got a little inflatable pillow for camping that again, I'll from time to time, just use that at night. It's not the most comfortable. But it's better to remind me what it's like to sleep with that every once in a while when I'm in the comfort of my home. It's nice and light folds up small and gets the job done. It's not the most comfortable. But I'm used to sleeping that way. So when I'm out and about don't have any problems.
Jeff Hoobler 7:41
Yeah, I think probably the biggest part of that logistic prep is where are you going to recover? And where are you going to eat? So that's, that's important. But routes, you know, especially if it's not an organized race, it's a bike packing tour or something like that, or even something that you've put together with some friends and is going to do multiple days. You got to know where you're going.
Mac Cassin 8:06
Yeah, probably make sure that you're not trying to ride through some closed off Army military base,
Jeff Hoobler 8:11
huh? Yeah, yeah. I seem to remember, towards the end of a coastal ride down on the coast of California and nearly getting to the end, and rolling up to the Gates of Camp Pendleton. Where my friend with an automatic weapon, told me that I was going to have to take a detour. And that the detour was about 85 miles. So it was a little bit of a shock. So a
Mac Cassin 8:42
little lack of preparation, a little lack of logistic preparation added a bit of undue stress.
Jeff Hoobler 8:48
Yeah, I did end up sweet-talking him. So it took a while. But yeah, that was, it was gonna be quite a detour. Yeah. So make sure you know where you're going check trails, closures, that kind of thing. detours, you know, the other thing we didn't really mention is the weather. And that can play a big factor. You know, especially for folks that are doing something like the Rajah divide, or something where you're in high elevations where the weather can change quite quickly.
Mac Cassin 9:18
Make sure you know, you know what to expect to a certain point, and be ready for some unexpected, yeah, throw it out the window. And that really transitions nicely into when we talk about, okay, now you've done all this prep, and it's time for the event, or one of the things you've done in your prep is the mental side, you've made a plan. But what's going to happen nine times out of 10 is you're going to get thrown a curveball
Jeff Hoobler 9:38
which make for the best stories though, even though you don't want them. They're great in the rearview mirror.
Mac Cassin 9:44
They really are. That's what I think that's type two fun where it's not fun at the time, but it's fun when you look back Funny. Funny, okay, yes. There's type one where it's fun at the time fun to look back type two where it's not fun at the time. fun to look back, and there's type three when it's not fun at the time and not fun. back, do you want to avoid type three fires?
Jeff Hoobler 10:03
Right? So anyway, what else do we want to do during the event,
Mac Cassin 10:07
sleeping, eating that recovering. So I point out we talked about the preparation making sure sleeps important. And this is really where during the event, getting a full night's sleep every night is your best recovery tool. And again, the eating side of things, again, staying fueled, when you're doing back to back days, you're not just eating for today's ride, you're eating for tomorrow's ride and the ride the day after that,
Jeff Hoobler 10:28
I think you're right about that. And you know, it's really easy to get distracted in these multi-day events with you know, if it's a stage race, there's a lot of things going on, maybe there's a podium presentation, or you there's a
Mac Cassin 10:40
transfer or whatever, or you're setting up your tent, or you're setting up
Jeff Hoobler 10:44
your tent in the middle of the woods. And, you know, preparing for these things. But often it's easy to skip a meal and say, oh, I'll just pick that up when I get back. And that can cause you to be unhappy down the road.
Mac Cassin 10:58
And it's really, it's kind of a cruel, cruel trick of the body. It's sometimes when you do really long, like longer events that are several days, you know, you start to lose your appetite, which is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing. If you're doing that much riding and going that hard, you need to be fueling yourself and your body can start to shut down, you're not going to feel like eating. And that can be a time when again, depending on how many more days you have, you might need to just kind of force-feed yourself. From time to time.
Jeff Hoobler 11:23
It's easy to say this at the time and preparation, but taking things just rolling with the punches and kind of smiling go, oh, okay, yeah, maybe that wasn't the best choice. But here we go, you know, getting back on track.
Mac Cassin 11:36
I mean, I'd say from personal experience, I think what the event that made me understand that appreciate how big of a difference, being relaxed and rolling with the punches can go into how you feel was a did a 10-day stage race down in Guatemala, the Mexican team, and there were only one and a half people who spoke English and that one of them spoke English pretty well. The other one, not some not so much. And then the rest of the team day just spoke Spanish. And it was a state race in Guatemala. So basically, everyone in the field spoke Spanish, the one guy on the team who did speak English, he DNF the third day, I think, so you
Jeff Hoobler 12:08
had to break out your Duolingo. Well, this was slightly
Mac Cassin 12:11
before I had international data. So I just kind of would get pointed in the right direction be vaguely gestured where to go what to do. And I just kind of relinquish to that just rolled with, okay, this is what it's going to be there's nothing I can do to change this right now. So I'm just gonna roll with it. And yeah, rolling with the punches being on point about your recovery, which is sleep, and then nutrition. And I completely lost my train of thought on where this was going.
Jeff Hoobler 12:36
You know, the other day, it was Groundhog Day. So we'll just go back and do it again. So I think that the two most important things during the event, well, maybe three, sleep when you can eat more than you probably think you should. And roll with it. Yeah, there's
Mac Cassin 12:52
a great, great stage racer expression of what it's Don't, don't stand if you can sit and don't sit if you can lay down, and he can lay down You should sleep. Yeah,
Jeff Hoobler 13:03
you know you brought up a point there. So in some of these events that people are doing now, you know, there's so much variety and, and a lot of times you'll come into the say it's the point to point and you come into town and there's an expo or there's something going on. Yes, probably not best to go mill around, unless you know, really don't have any time agenda. You know, if you're just out cruising and you know, on vacation, and you're going to take however long it takes, yeah, go see the sights. But if there's a time or performance objective there, conserving your energy and being efficient is quite important.
Mac Cassin 13:41
And the one thing we haven't touched on is probably the most important thing. Have fun. Oh, yeah. Why are we doing this? You're doing it because you like riding your bike. You love riding your bike, you're excited to get a free license to ride your bike back to back to back to back days back to back.
Jeff Hoobler 13:57
Yeah. And you know, it goes back to that having a great attitude is just being grateful that you're out there. Have fun, even if things go south. Just roll with it. Have fun.
Mac Cassin 14:08
Alright, so you've done this. You've had fun. You've had your recovery. you've rolled with the punches. Now the events are over oh, gosh, it's a bit of a comedown. Yeah, especially if you got to go back home and go back to a job in real life. That's it's a bummer. The end of the event can be a big bummer. Regardless of how the outcome of it maybe you didn't reach your goals. Maybe you did. But when an event is over, there's
Jeff Hoobler 14:30
what's the first thing you do when you come back you go sign up for another one.
Mac Cassin 14:33
I used to have a margarita.
Jeff Hoobler 14:36
But I guess, Okay, fair enough.
Mac Cassin 14:39
Yeah, sometimes you get back from something and you say, I'm never doing that again. And then a week later, you sign up for it again next year.
Jeff Hoobler 14:46
I'm starting to feel like you're looking straight at me again.
Mac Cassin 14:50
Well, we do happen to be sitting across from each other. Oh, well, yeah,
Jeff Hoobler 14:53
true. So you know, there's a couple of things obviously, back-to-back days, a multi-day event. You're gonna have, you're probably going to be a little smoked physically. So you're gonna need to take some time to rest and recover properly, don't jump straight back into whatever your normal calendar is, you know, if you're doing a stage race, and then you have races coming up the next week, you may want to think about pushing those off a bit, or really managing the amount of stress that you can have during that week and the training load.
Mac Cassin 15:25
If you did things properly and were well-rested going into the event and then hit the event super hard that essentially turns into a really great training load and a really big training load like that your body needs time to adapt to it. And you can either keep digging yourself in a hole and be down on a hole for a while, or you can dial it back after this event. Let your body absorb all that and it'll make you faster. Well, that is it for another episode of the knowledge podcast by Wahoo. Hopefully, you'll be able to put some of these tips into action on your next back to back to back to back to back event. Thanks for listening