Fuelling the FASTEST EVER Dragon Devil Ride (296km)

At Hexis it is our mission to unleash human potential. This drive to discover and develop new and improved ways to help you achieve what you are truly capable of is what fuels our team every day. One innovation we have been working on internally is Intra Workout Fuelling. This feature has been HIGHLY requested, and we cannot wait to share it with you all. As with any development, whether it's Live Energy or connecting your wearable, we know it’s important we put our tech to the test. That’s exactly what we did and here’s how it went!

Welsh Cyclist Ed Laverack was preparing to take on the Dragon Devil Ride with a clear goal in mind, smash the course record. Ed knew that if he wanted to put a dent into the time, he’d need to nail his on-bike fuelling to ensure he had sufficient energy and no bonks for what for most is a 10hrs+ day in the saddle. To start we to Ed what we would do with any Hexis user, build his individual profile by gathering some key metrics during the apps on-boarding which will be used to help determine his resting metabolic rate, sleeping energy expenditure, personalised carb code ranges and a lot more! 

Now for the fun bit. We took Ed’s Dragon Ride Wales plan and ran it through our Beta Intra Workout Fuelling algorithm which quickly identified that based on Ed’s unique requirements and the rides intensity and duration, he was going to need to consume 120g of carbohydrate per hour. This can be a daunting task for some, but the technology began to break things down and identified that higher concentration sports drinks and sports foods will be key in this process! With these numbers we were all getting more confident we’d see masterclass from Ed (hard not to draw inspiration from the last masterclass we witnessed during Bob Jungels’ Stage 9 of the Tour de France last year).

So how did it go? Here's a breakdown of the race from Ed himself after putting himself, and our latest feature currently in beta testing, to the test!

First 100k done with my amazing group of helpers who I also hope went on to crush their routes after we split. Big shout to Juliet and Trish and PK for the bottle feed on the Blacks and then Charlie (what a legend this woman is) in Llandovery. We also had Dom in the car all day taking photos, video and drone shots!! From 90km to the finish at 296km I was solo. 

100-170k I was now solo. Bulk of people had broken up and found their groups while I made hay, pressing on over the Sugar Loaf and the infamous Staircase! The loop around the reservoir was peaceful and a slight drop of rain helped keep me cool. Up till this point I was consuming 120g carbs an hour as planned and I was using Stryker drink mixes every hour too. Faultless. 

170-270k was crunch time. This 3hr period was also my strongest effort of the day, normalising about 275w and climbing around 300-330w. Catching literally hundreds of riders that were on the shorter routes made for messy roads but hats off to those that pushed on even when things seemed never ending. It’s a special kind of suffering. At this point I had Charlie dotted on the route every 25k so I would have a fresh bottle every time. Was totally worth it and dispatched the hilliest section of the route in record time, and I thought it would be touch and go for sub 9, which in the end wasn’t to be, but I felt strong in the finale and successfully peddled the FASTEST TIME EVER at the Dragon Devil Ride in 9 hours 5 minutes and 27 seconds. I’ll take that all day.

If you want to take your fuelling and performances to the next level sign up now and be the first to access this new product feature when it drops.