8 minutes per stop is ridiculous and TOTALLY UNNECESSARY!
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The bottom line here is that you should stop whenever you need or want one and take as long as you need. Do not tell yourself you can't stop until the next time you get gas! On the colder days, my bladder likes to remind me it's still working and I frequently have to stop every 100 miles or so for about 500-600 miles. It's annoying, but it beats having to hold it in, especially on bumpy roads.
Real-life, no kidding data right here from that ride I did a year ago. Overnight stops are removed from this data, which was collected by my GoPro camera taking photos every 30 seconds as well as correlating that with GPX data. My average stop time was
11 minutes. I had 16 stops above average, while
46 stops were below average. This is a total of
66 stops over 8+ days.
Not many are going to hit that 8 minute mark at every stop, I didn't. Yet, I did hit a decent percentage between 7 & 8 minutes
when I could. The configuration of stop location, and a whole host of things you mentioned may inhibit those kinds of stop times.
As you know, sometimes it's much easier to get gas, roll 90 miles down the road, and hit that rest area for relief, a pocket full of food, and a quick break. I was needing some of those 20 & 30 minute long stops - and as you noted, I took full advantage of them. That 40 minute stop was on day 1...I was feeling miserable.
Ref: Items #11, 16 and 19 in the Archives of Wisdom:
http://www.ironbuttrally.com/tech/aowprintout.cfm
The neat part about this activity is that there's a lot of different ways to accomplish the same thing. There are riders that can very easily understand the time-drain that
can happen at fuel stops. Those that come into this activity that believe every fuel stop is another chance to have a lengthy discussion about what they just did for the last two hours is the group to learn time management - IBA style.