Comment by ajuc
3 years ago
When cycling there's this "wall" you hit after a few hours. At least I do. After that it's much harder to keep pace or go uphill.
3 years ago
When cycling there's this "wall" you hit after a few hours. At least I do. After that it's much harder to keep pace or go uphill.
There's nothing special about cycling. You can deplete your glycogen stores and hit the wall with any aerobic activity. If you have a healthy metabolism and stay in heart rate zones 1-2 then you'll mostly burn fat stores and can cycle for many hours without hitting the wall. At higher zone 3+ efforts you'll need periodic carbohydrate supplements to keep going.
Indeed, but you can keep going just about. I've properly hit the wall once, and that was an unpleasant experience - nearly fainting and seriously in danger of falling off my bike, but I think that was largely a hard removal of all accessible glycogen, and it was years ago when I was relatively green. Now I just tend to eventually find it hard and unpleasant.