The Megahopper, in Hindsight

I could go on and on about the Megahopper, explaining the who/what/why/when/where, but I’ve already done that here on Cyclingnews. Plus Velonews had a nice write up about it too. In this column I wanted to explain a bit more of the analytics of the ride, namely what it took calorically and physiologically, to ride the 415 miles. But first, a photo montage.

All said and done, calories expended can be calculated on a cycling computer. Watts produced equate to calories so 25,500 calories were expended over the 27 pedaling hours to move me and my bike along the route. There’s also the intangible basal metabolic rate so given that the ride was about 39 hours in total, let’s throw in a few thousand more calories.

As my memory goes, here’s what I consumed over the ride:

8 UnTapped packets (800 calories)
6 Mapleaid pouches (420)
8 UnTapped waffles (1200)
Large Payday bar (440)
Snickers (280)
Ginger pear muffin (500)
Chocolate croissant (550)
Chocolate chip cookie (450)
Bag of BBQ chips (900)
Sandwich (600)
Chocolate milk (400)
Breakfast burrito (800)
Chocolate chip cookie (400)
Zucchini bread (400)
Soda of some type or another (400)

That totals 8,540, which is obviously an enormous deficit. Even if I’m forgetting a solid 25% of what I consumed, that would only bring me to close to 10,000 calories consumed.

At the completion of the ride, I ate a lot of pizza. Like, a lot of pizza. I also ate a box of Brussels sprouts that were the type that resembled sponges meant for absorbing oil more than cruciferous vegetables. And covered with cheese. That is all to say, a ride of this magnitude is the type that puts you in an enormous hole which is why I remained very sleepy and hungry for the rest of the week.

WHOOP Data:

Below is a two week window at my WHOOP strain versus recovery. It’s almost comical how much I was biting off to tackle the Megahopper. On Friday the 24th, we went to Ian and Gretchen Boswell’s for the shake out ride before Saturday’s Peacham Fall Fondo. Then on Sunday the 26th I raced the Vermont 50, a legendary marathon mountain bike race in Vermont. That required a 4am wake up, as did Monday the 27th which was a travel day from VT to CA. Then I jumped straight into the business end of things and began the Megahopper at 545am on Tuesday the 28th, so that was another 4:30am wake up. And Tuesday night’s mid-ride rest was a 4 hour sleeping affair, so the alarm sounded at 2:30am that day.

It’s nice to see how well I rebounded from the Megahopper. Sure, it’s unexpected that my recovery would be in the green as early as Friday, just two days after this endeavor, but what I’ve learned from a few of my enormous, multi-day rides is that my resting heart rate is lethargic and my HRV is respectably high resulting in a “good” green score. I was also sleeping and eating a lot in those days afterwards, to recover as best as possible. And because I never dug super deep, but instead was on a constant steady, dieseling burn, my muscles were a bit bruised and beat up after their 27 hours of exercise, but it was never a ferocious cardiovascular effort.

That’s a similar explanation to why my second day was “only” a 20.6. The second day of a pair of all-day efforts means that lethargic heart isn’t hitting those tip top numbers, so it’s actually expected that it’s lower than the previous day’s 20.7. Heck, I’m impressed it wasn’t even lower, closer to a 20.5 or 20.4 strain.

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