I think that Fat Cyclist’s entry Respect for the Bonk is quite applicable to roller speed skating- and perhaps to ice as well.
I’ll never forget bonking… at the New York 100k. And at A2A. And again at the next 100k & A2A I tried to race in.
Not fun at all. And not cool either.
No, not fun or cool.
And even though I remember the utter misery and hell I experienced when bonking, I wonder why I keep going back to the races in which I suffered and experienced things that I will never be able to explain or communicate to anyone.
Now that enough time has passed and I’ve recovered, I can look back and laugh about the times I’ve bonked.
On bonking, Fatty writes ‘Now, I don’t know if anyone who doesn’t do endurance sports really knows what a true bonk feels like. It’s actually kind of interesting. First of all, you have only the slightest amount of power… Next, you stop caring. You know that you must look ridiculous, riding your bike at three miles per hour (yes, really), but you just don’t have the energy to care about appearances. You completely lack the ability to rally — it doesn’t matter how bracing a pep talk your friends give you, you aren’t going to be able to buck up and go faster. In a really good bonk, I’ve experienced a disconnectedness between my mind and body: this can’t be my body inching along, right? Surely, if this were my body, I’d be able to tell my legs to go faster. Sometimes — not always — I’ll feel cold.
All of these sensations, though, are pretty much secondary to the main emotion: misery. It’s a self-pitying, helpless, weak, beyond-tiredness, beyond-hunger, beyond-thirsty, miserable misery.
And the thing is, as far as bonks go, the one I had last Saturday was pretty minor. I had, after all, a mobile phone; I could quit any moment and call for help. And I knew I wasn’t far from home; Once I got to the top of the hill, I knew I’d be fine.
A bonk underscored by lack of options, though, is something special. It’s something to behold if you’re with the guy who’s bonking, and something you never forget if you’re the guy who bonked…
Bonk Recovery
If there’s a silver lining to the bonk, it’s the feeling of recovering from a bonk. Eating everything in sight, as if it were a contest, as if you have a capacity for an infinite amount of food, as if every kind of food really does go with every other kind of food (ketchup and whipped cream on rye? Excellent!)
And then laying down, knowing that you really are as tired as you can possibly be. And that you survived a bonk‘.
Filed under: General
Happens to me all the time. When you have a 70 kilometer bike commute, ridden almost every day, some days you forget to eat properly. I try to carry a gel or something but it doesn’t always work out that way. The last time I bonked, it was last summer. I was in the middle of suburbia without any stores around.
I was moving so slowly that a group of kids joined me on my “ride”. Lol. They marvelled over my blinking tail and headlights. More interested in where I got them from and not wondering so much about why I was riding soooo slowly.
They told me that if I had more gears on my bike, I’d be able to go faster. I only had two chainrings and 5 cogs so that’s 10 speeds. One of the kids was so proud that his bike had 21 speeds. All I could think of was food.
I asked one of the kids and fortunately for me, they lead me to a local convenience store. Yay! I wolfed down two Snickers and a Mars bar, then left the kid with the 21 speed bike in the dust.