How long is too long when it comes to riding your bike?
We all have our own personal gauges when it comes to working such things out. More often than not it comes down to plain old time commitments. An hour at lunchtime, for example, or a requirement to meet a weekend afternoon appointment.
For big events, when we have all the time we need, we tend to use common sense and a touch of self-preservation. The idea of finding yourself with 80km still to ride with your butt on fire and your legs feeling like they're someone else's is not an attractive one. Thus, if you've barely trained, you probably won't opt for the XL distance.
There's another fair indication that you might have done enough bike riding for the moment though, and that's when you start hallucinating. When your brain begins creating illusions in front of your eyes, it's probably time to have a little rest, right?
It's unlikely to happen on your weekend club ride of course. But if you tackle anything that involves riding through the night and forgoing sleep, don't count it out.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to predict when you'll reach this stage.
I'll admit to being a touch disappointed at getting through my one and only experience of Paris-Brest-Paris without as much as seeing stars, let alone phantom beings.
But the guest on Cycling Weekly's Going Long podcast this week had experiences during one race that were not just strange, they almost completely immersive.
"This was in RAAM, 2019," explained top Indian ultra-rider Kabir Rachure, who is not only a Mumbai high court lawyer but who boasts a palmarès including three Races Across America and multiple wins in some of the biggest Indian ultra races, including the Great Himalyan Ultra.
Because of 56°C heat and resulting cramps, Rachure did not sleep well from the beginning: "The sleep debt started accumulating day by day," he said.
From day three the hallucinations began, and included dancing couples and the illusion of riding under a perpetual flyover.
"I was aware this was a hallucination, but it was so clear, like ultra HD," said Rachure.
Come day nine, things took an abrupt turn for the even stranger.
Asked by his support crew why he had suddenly drawn up at the side of the road, Rachure told them: "This is the venue for the marriage, no?"
He had imagined a complete and complex scenario in which a friend had come to his house with a wedding invitation and asked him along and here, he believed, it was.
"[My driver] told me, 'there's no marriage happening boss, you're in a bike race, so start pedalling'."
There was also an imagined horse cantering beside him, as well as a conversation with a water supply pipe, but none of these things caused Rachure too much angst.
"I had read about the hallucinations even before the RAAM," he said. "For some riders there were scary hallucinations… but in my case I got all the funny and happy hallucinations. There was nothing that made me scared. I just went with the flow."
While that first RAAM seems to have been replete with enough characters and scenarios to write a novel, Rachure said he had barely experienced any further hallucinations since.
The entire conversation – a very interesting and entertaining one at that – can be heard here on the Cycling Weekly Going Long podcast.
It's interesting to note what can happen when physical effort and lack of sleep combine. Even my colleague, brother and podcast co-host Steve has experienced a phantom rider, who kept him company through part of the night last year on the Great British Escapades bikepacking event.
It sounds almost fun, but at the same time it's not something to go looking for due to the safety implications of missing that much sleep.
Have you ever experienced bike-event hallucinations? If so let us know in the comments.
