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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1713 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 29, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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I need to work on ignoring the discomfort and just locking in, there is no combination of things that makes riding a bike that far comfortable

Ironic. I just attended my first bike fitting yesterday to prepare for a 100-mile race next weekend. This has always been my tack - that the equipment configuration can't possibly matter that much, and the secret is to beat my body into submission and be comfortable in the suffering.

To be clear, any mileage over ~40 means some suffering. It's part of the gig. More than that, you've progressed quickly - it took me 9 months to go from zero to 100 miles. So yeah, there's some "slugging it out".

But when I basically told the fitter your/my MO, he just hung his head for a second and then recovered. "That's pretty much the opposite of what you should be doing". At the scale of a Gran Fondo and above, little adjustments matter. And frankly, the $175 I paid for a fit seemed like a deal with how fucked up my saddle height, shoes, stem, and pedals were. We spent 2.5 hours adjusting every piece of the bike, then testing how it felt with motion capture etc. It felt a lot better in that room, very quickly, and I'll be able to report back how it felt at scale soon.

Is it still overkill for my level of talent and power? Absolutely. But I would say you deserve to have the bike set up correctly and that much discomfort suggests it. At least check out some youtube videos on fit.

  • Doing an out and back is awesome, especially if you have a distance goal. I've occasionally had to zig-zag a bit near the end to hit my 62.2mi target, and that makes it easier (plus your wife not having to pick you up is a major plus).
  • The Peloton is a great way to up your cadence, the workouts really focus on that over power or distance. Plus Olivia Amato is.... motivating. Even if it's a huge rip off of a workout platform.
  • Given your progress, you'll have the capability to do this in the winter or early spring. If you're trying to prove something to yourself, fine, do it then. Frankly, I think hitting a milestone like that is best done on a warm day where you can have some fun - because it's also going to be hard. Things stop being enjoyable between 100km and 100mi IMO.
  • For a long time I was so focused on losing weight that I would not eat on rides. You don't need performance food: Some sour patch kids, one of your bottles having gatorade, and something else you just like eating are probably enough. But don't not eat, because it'll slow you down bigly. I almost never bonk, but when I do it's a frustrating waste of time to try and limp back home with cramps slowing me down to a crawl.

But when I basically told the fitter your/my MO, he just hung his head for a second and then recovered. "That's pretty much the opposite of what you should be doing". At the scale of a Gran Fondo and above, little adjustments matter. And frankly, the $175 I paid for a fit seemed like a deal with how fucked up my saddle height, shoes, stem, and pedals were. We spent 2.5 hours adjusting every piece of the bike, then testing how it felt with motion capture etc. It felt a lot better in that room, very quickly, and I'll be able to report back how it felt at scale soon.

I've been trying to put off doing all this, I guess out of embarrassment over how bad I am, like I need to earn it. Also why I've put off spending any real money on a bike. But maybe all the persuasion on here has made the bike shop up the road a few hundred bucks.

The Peloton is a great way to up your cadence, the workouts really focus on that over power or distance. Plus Olivia Amato is.... motivating. Even if it's a huge rip off of a workout platform.

I despise everything about their business model, but Mrs. FiveHour wanted one off craigslist and she loves it, it's worth any price to keep her working out, so we already have one in the basement.

For a long time I was so focused on losing weight that I would not eat on rides. You don't need performance food: Some sour patch kids, one of your bottles having gatorade, and something else you just like eating are probably enough. But don't not eat, because it'll slow you down bigly. I almost never bonk, but when I do it's a frustrating waste of time to try and limp back home with cramps slowing me down to a crawl.

For the places I've done long rides, wawa is my rest station, so I've got a wide variety of junk food on tap. Tastykakes are the thing I allow myself only in the middle of large cardio events. I doubt its optimal, but its good enough.

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