Ryan Collins' Multi-World Record Ride
By Carson Beckett
Writer, Pro Cyclist
HPT Athlete and endurance connoisseur, Ryan Collins, recently took on a big challenge: breaking four world records in one go. Ryan was able to do that...setting a new record for the 100k, 100mi, 200k, and farthest distance in 6 hours.
Ryan is no stranger to World Record attempts, endurance missions, and ridiculous efforts on the bike. He's tackled previous records, won the Race Across the East, and more just in the past couple of years. This time, however, he was going for something quite audacious...and if we are being honest, quite brutal.
Hear from Ryan about how he broke FOUR World Records and the amount of focus it required.
I took on an ambitious project to break 4 world records in one ride, the fastest completion of 100km, 100mi, 200km, and the furthest distance traveled in 6hrs.
Training for this endeavor was unique in that I was on a fixed gear bike and didn’t have much opportunity to stop and feed as I would on a tt/ tri bike on the open road. Fortunately I could control my effort and ride at a consistent pace to minimize spikes and subsequently minimize drops – all pending I stayed on top of my fueling. Given that I was on a fixed gear bike I also didn’t have any opportunity to dial back and relax. The physical strain of a compressed position added further complexity to this ride.
Realizing that fueling was paramount to this effort’s success, I reached out to The Feed’s coaches and shifted my strategy. We focused on high carb consumption with Precision Fuel and Hydration, Ketone IQ, Fastfood, and Maurten. Leading up to the record breaking ride I used drink mix at around 100-120g/hr and used Fastfood and Maurten Gels at preplanned times. With the effort being more steady, I could track glucose levels and ensure that consistent fueling matched the efforts requirements and resulted in steady glucose levels. I paired Ketone-IQ with SwissRX's Hyper Focus to help get me into “the zone” enabling me to stay concentrated on the white line for the duration of the ride.
Along with training my body, I had to train my gut to handle the higher concentrations of carbs. Given the cooler temperatures I was able to dial back hydration due to the lower sweat rate, and was able to slowly train my gut to handle increasing carb concentrations.
The best part was finishing and celebrating with Fraiche cookies. No matter how hard the effort gets, a cookie is always a happy way to celebrate a successful ride.