After 5 years of organizing long-distance events, the evolution of them and of the participants has led to more and more engagements, and year after year the participants come well-trained more prepared.
That’s why this year we implement this sleep/stop period formula in our rules:
N period of 4h = |Total H/24| – 2
*giving the option to take the rest whenever you want, or spend a few nights riding (2 nights).
However, limits are also increasingly being sought, taking them to the edge of safety. In this regard, the experience throughout the years suggests a duality, between taking “regulatory” measures to prevent this sport from becoming high risk, and taking sleep deprivation and self-management as a part of the whole event in terms of managing a long-distance race.
At this point, we believe that the less it is regulated, the better, to keep the essence of the sport as pure as possible, but seeing that more and more participants exceeded the limits and that after these 5 years, 986 participants have gone through our events, they make us somewhat responsible to think about the formula that allows combining the spirit of self-sufficiency with certain limits which we believe can represent an aggravating factor to the accumulated danger of sleep deprivation.
Therefore, we have thought that, although intervening may be a somewhat unpopular measure, we must think that after 7-8 days of maximum effort, the need for rest must be paramount, and the participants, instead of taking this measure as a grievance about their freedom or time management, we believe that the rider owes a time of pause and respite that makes the right to rest equitable.
Allowing in any case the management of rest periods, giving a margin of 2-3 nights in which they can manage sleep deprivation as well as the choice of when to rest, trying to influence as little as possible in possible strategies.
–
