RiderX

Faster #8 - Recovery Nutrition...

ericgu — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:32:00 GMT

You may have heard mention of limiting the amount of food that you take in while riding to 200-250 cal/hour (or in that range - it varies based on who you are and how hard you are riding). Because that's considerably less than the amount you are expending (in many cases - if you are riding slowly and are quite fit, you may be able to take in enough food to meet your needs), even if you are getting carbs/protein from food during the ride, you will be typically finish your ride with depleted glycogen...(read more)

7 Hills 2008

ericgu — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:15:00 GMT

The 7 Hills of Kirkland marks the unofficial real start of the riding season for me. It takes me over hills that are close to my house that I've ridden a lot, and has a decent potential for pain. Last year I did the Metric Century (58 miles (yes, I know...)) and felt pretty strong, and that was the plan this year. Until I cracked my rib . I went out last Thursday and did some steep hills, and the pain was bearable but I was only at about 70% on breathing before it hurt. I decided to do the 7...(read more)

Faster #8 - Cadence

ericgu — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:49:00 GMT

Armstrong had a fast cadence, and he won a millon Tours de France, so we should all ride at a high cadence, right? If you ask 10 cyclists about the importance of cadence, you'll get 3 different answers and 7 blank looks. Cadence is confusing, but the basic fact is that riding at a higher cadence is faster, except when it isn't. High Cadence is Faster So, you went out on that hilly century to ride with some friends. You felt good and fast on the hills, but by mile 50 your legs were burning...(read more)

The unbearable suckiness of trainers

ericgu — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:08:00 GMT

During the winter, you have few choices: You can focus your training on keeping the couch from floating away, and watch much of your fitness vanish. You can ride in the cold, rain, wind, and snow You can do another sport Or you can ride inside Riding inside is the choice of many, and it's been a common choice for me, with my bike mounted on a Kurt Kinetic trainer. Some people say that riding on a trainer is tiring. Some people say it's tedious. I think that is unfair. Riding on a trainer...(read more)

Faster #7 - Heart Rate Monitors

ericgu — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:08:00 GMT

Lots of the cool guys have heart rate monitors. Should you get one? I'm going to assume that you are doing a set of structured workouts. So, if you're doing that, you need to set your training zones. You can do that by taking a percentage that you determine use 220-age or one of the other formulas, and then train based on that. But there are a few problems with that. First of all, none of the formulas to determine max hr are of much use, as there are wide variances of maximum heart rate across...(read more)

Faster #6 - Cadence drills

ericgu — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:07:00 GMT

To travel at a given speed, you need to put out a given amount of power. You can either do that by pedalling slowly and putting a lot of pressure on the pedals, or by pedalling faster and putting less pressure on the pedals. Since the more pressure you put on the pedals, the faster your legs get tired, it's preferable to pedal faster. Within reason. First of all, there is a limit to how fast you can comfortably pedal. And second, spinning generally stresses your aerobic system more, so you can...(read more)

Faster #5 - Specificity

ericgu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:17:00 GMT

Initially, you just start riding. Perhaps you're doing it for fitness, or to lose weight, or just for recreation. And then, at some point, you decide that you want to get a bit more serious, so you start riding a bit faster, riding a bit farther. And then you plateau. You're riding harder, but not getting any better. The problem is that you're riding "sorta hard". A bit of digression into training theory... The purpose of training is to impose training stress on your body. The...(read more)

Faster #4 - Ceramic bearings...

ericgu — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 05:34:00 GMT

Ceramic bearings - bearings with ceramic balls rather than steel balls - are a common choice by the top-end cyclists. So, how much do they really gain you? If I can, I try to figure out what sort of maximum gains you might see when from a specific increase. In this case, we can do a decent job, as we know roughly how efficient bicycles are. The best data that I've found suggests that modern drivetrains are about 95% efficient (though it's hard to know exactly what they're measuring)....(read more)

Faster #3 - Ride with the fast guys

ericgu — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:30:00 GMT

or girls... This is probably the most common suggestion that riders give when asked how to get faster. I know that I got it, and it led me to head out on a lunch ride with some co-workers. At the time, I'd been riding for about a season, and had only done a small amount of riding with other people. The "slow warm up" consisted of a 20MPH ride on a slight uphill, and then continued through a flat section. I spent the first 20 minutes dropping off the back, chasing, dropping off the back...(read more)

Faster #2 - Light Wheels

ericgu — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:01:00 GMT

This time, we'll talk about whether lighter wheels make you faster. This last summer, I upgrade from a set of Bontrager Race X Lite wheels (which run about 1900 grams) to a custom set from OddsAndEndos (which run around 1500 grams). That's about 400 grams difference, which is about 0.9 lb. The lighter weight will have two effects. First, it's going to give me less weight to climb. With me at about 165 pounds during the season and the bike overall weighing about 20 pounds, that means a...(read more)

The ultimate food for long rides...

ericgu — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:49:00 GMT

Phatty's fictional post on how to be popular - fictional because of his delusion of popularity - reminded me of something that happened the last time that I did RSVP . I was riding with a group of guys that work at the same large software company that I do (yes, *that* large software company). The second day of RSVP starts in Bellingham, goes north and across the border into Canada, and wends its way north. After a while, it runs into the Fraser river in Fort Langley, where you will catch the...(read more)

Faster #1 - Aero bars

ericgu — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:41:00 GMT

I've wanted to write more, but I've kept getting involved in big articles, and running out of steam partway through them. Instead of that, I'm going to write a series of short articles about whether something will make you faster or not. First up: Aero bars Drag reduction is important in going faster, and aero bars definitely do it. So, put the bars on your bike, and you'll go faster... Well, not so fast (ha ha!). You have to get used to the aero bar position, which requires flexibility...(read more)

Nutrition Tips

ericgu — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 20:25:00 GMT

My triathlete friend Chris wrote a nice post a while back with some nutrition tips. It covers a lot of the same topics that I've been meaning to write about, so I'm going to use his post as a starting point. Carbohydrates and athletes Philosophically, my nutrition is very close to what Chris advocates - I eat one way for my normal diet, and eat differently around my workouts. As Chris notes, simple carbs are fine during exercise, but should be limited other times. The difference is because...(read more)

2007 Summary

ericgu — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 02:38:00 GMT

Last year I did a quick summary . And here's this year's data: Distance: 2090 miles Elevation Gain: 105,446 ft Average Speed: 14.7 mph Calories: 83,399 Time: 143 hours Heart Beats: 969109 beats That's about 500 miles shorter than what I rode last year, but given that I haven't ridden much in the past 8 weeks, that's not surprising. This doesn't contain any time on the trainer or the rain bike as I'm too lazy to track anything that doesn't show up automatically on my...(read more)

A ride

ericgu — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 02:28:00 GMT

Today, I went on a ride. The first ride since I got hurt. I have been on the bike since then. But, it was a very controlled ride, on my rain bike, where I found that my "leave it on the trainer" approach to maintenance didn't do anything to make the "broken-when-they-made-it" Shimano RSX drivetrain on my 30 lb LeMond Tourmalet work better, and in fact it meant that I broke a rear spoke and my bottom bracket started creaking. And my body hurt, so after about 45 minutes I limped...(read more)

Deep breath...

ericgu — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:57:00 GMT

Deep breath. Unclip. Sit up. Knee hurts. Left shoulder hurts. No pain on the clavicle. That's good. Sit for a little. Scoot left, off the trail, take off the helmet, gloves, sunglasses. Move around experimentally. Ouch. Is the kid okay? **** I've been under the weather for a week or so - skipping the Tuesday and Thursday night rides - and I really wanted to get out on Sunday. I did shopping in the morning, and then headed out for an easy 20 or so. An easy 20 because I came really close to...(read more)

Getting Faster - Training philosophy

ericgu — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:17:00 GMT

When people first start riding, they rarely have any training philosophy other than "just go out and ride". And initially, that's enough - the mere act of riding at all puts a fair amount of training stress on your system, and you therefore improve. But as you start to ride more, you'll get to the point where your body has adapted to the way that you are training. Or, to put it another way, the workouts that you are doing aren't putting sufficient stress (or, more specifically...(read more)

Carmichael Field Test Protocol

ericgu — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:04:00 GMT

The Carmichael Field Test can be used to get a decent estimate of your lactate threshold, and then used to set your training ranges. The course consists of two 3 mile time trials with a recovery period between them. WARNING: There's a lot of pain to be had here, 'specially if you do it right. But I found the zones I got from the test to be very useful, and well correlated with my "seat of the pants" estimate of LTH The steps are as follows: Find a 3 mile course. Ideally, it will...(read more)

Floyd and innocence...

ericgu — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:12:00 GMT

Phatty wrote a post about the recent Floyd Landis verdict, and I thought I'd expand a bit on his theme. Doping and cycling is a complex subject. I'm not naive enough to think that cyclists don't dope. But the question is not whether Floyd doped. The question is whether he can be judged to have doped under the applicable rules. In other words, the question is not one of right or wrong. The question is one of legality. From my perpective, just as the athletes have rules that they are expected...(read more)

Getting faster

ericgu — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:19:00 GMT

Post 1 of several It's a pretty common question... "I've been riding for a while now, and I'm the slowest in my group. How do I get faster?" There's no simple answer to this question, because getting faster isn't one thing, it's a whole lot of things. In this series, I'll write about what those things are....(read more)

Popliteus

ericgu — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:48:00 GMT

Question: Popliteus is: The last european book craze The right-hand-man of Alexander the Great The cause of pain and anguish for RiderX Back in June I was on a ride in Issaquah, on a road that features two things: 1) A "bypass the light" right lane (of 3) that can only go straight at a light 2) A bike lane that stops very soon before that point. So, I was out riding, and got stuck at that light, with a very impatient car behind me (which, I presume, was occupied by an impatient car, and...(read more)

The importance of staying salty...

ericgu — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:59:00 GMT

Salt (or at least the sodium component of it) is perhaps the most underappreciated and under-discussed nutrient for endurance cyclists.

Given my recent history, I've been doing a fair bit of research into the topic, and frankly I've been surprised how little information there is. That, coupled with a lot of bad press around sodium because of its well-established link to hypertension, means that most cyclists don't think about salt. They do perhaps think a bit about hyponatremia.

Which is really a bit strange, when you think about it, as many of us have white stains on our helmet straps and that sandy feeling on our faces after a hard ride.

So, here's what's going on WRT salt, and a few things that you might want to think about.

When you sweat, you lose salt, along with a number of other electolytes.

Here's a table I pulled from Burke's Serious Cycling

	Sodium (mEq/L)	Chloride (mEQ/L)	Potassium (mEq/L)	Magnesium (mEq/L)
Blood Plasma	140	100	4	1.5
Muscle Tissue	9	5	160	30
Sweat	40-60	30-50	4-5	1.5-5

This chart uses mEq/L, which is basically a measure of the concentration of the various elements. What we'd like instead is a chart that shows the actual amount of the substance (which we get by multiplying by the molecular weight). My wife tells me that medicine is the only place that uses mEq/L as a measure...

Here's the converted chart:

	Sodium (mg/L)	Chloride (mg/L)	Potassium (mg/L)	Magnesium (mg/L)
Blood Plasma	3220	3550	156	18
Muscle Tissue	207	172	6240	365
Sweat	920-1380	1065-1775	156-195	18-122

This chart shows the difference between salt (sodium and chloride), and the other major constituents of sweat. For potassium and magnesium, the concentration in the blood is fairly low compared to the concentration in muscle tissue. This means that loses of those two elements through sweat are relatively unimportant to the body's total supply.

For sodium and chloride, however, the amount stored in muscle tissue is fairly minor. The majority of the storage is in the blood. And there's really not that much there.

So, say that you're out riding and only taking in water. Your sodium level drops. Your body wants to get rid of the water, but it doesn't want to lose more sodium, so it stashes the water between cells, and you're on your way to hyponeatremia.

This happens more quickly if you're on a low-salt diet, which is what got me into this topic in the first place.

What that means is that you need to replace the salt. Serious Cycling suggests that you need from 400-1100mg of sodium and 500-1500mg of chloride. ACSM recommends 500-700mg of salt/liter.

Many hydration drinks have some salt in them - here's a good comparison chart. Searching through that chart, I find that the accelerade that I drink only has about 500 mg of sodium per liter. That's at most around 50% of the amount I need to replace the salt I sweat out (I'm a fairly salty sweater). Which explains a lot.

Almost all of the the drinks have some electrolytes - as they're needed to help you absorb the drink - but some of them are pretty low. So, take a look at what your drink has in it, and that will help you figure out if you need supplementation. If you are riding for long periods, my guess is probably *yes*.

Symptoms:

Fatigue (yeah, I know, it's a bit hard to judge after 60 miles)
Upset stomach
Headache
Aversion to sugary foods (I get this rather than a salt craving, though salt tastes good. This may also just be food fatigue)
Weight gain during the ride
Lack of urination, especially if you are drinking a lot.

A note on hypertension...

If you have hypertension (high blood pressure), this is an area that you will want to be careful with, and you may want to consult your physician before supplementation.

What supplements to use

A classic supplement is beef jerky, which tends to be around 1000mg per service. If you want a capsule you can swallow, both Lava Salts and Succeed E!Caps have a good reputation on the ultra (bike/run) sites.

A lot of people talk about Hammer's Endurolytes capsules. The hammer hydration products are quite low in electrolytes (see the chart I linked to earlier), and frankly, I'm mystified by what's in the endurolytes - they only have 40mg sodium and 60mg chloride, which is a really small amount. They suggest that you can take up to 6 of them per hour, but even that may not be enough. They do have other electrolytes, but you are probably okay without supplementation of potassium and magnesium during exercise.

One final note

As with all things related to nutrition/hydration, people have different responses, so you'll probably have to play around to find out what works for you. If you are used to sweating a lot, your body has likely adapted so that you don't lose as much electrolyte when you exercise. Conversely, if you don't work out in the heat and/or don't sweat as much, you may be near the upper end of electrolyte loss.

References

Ultracycling has two great references on this:

Low Blood Sodium

Water and Salt Intake during exercise

Another ride report...

ericgu — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:55:00 GMT

Go read what Elden wrote about his leadville ride...

Your weight loss goal is reasonable...

ericgu — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:44:00 GMT

I was playing around, and came a cross a diet evalution page. I entered my weight (165 pounds), my height (6'2"), and my desired weight (120 pounds), and hit "go"

It replied with "please go back and change your target weight to at least 140.4 pounds. For the sake of your health, we refuse to accept a lower target than this."

So, I go back, and set my desired weight to 141 pounds, and it says:

Though your current weight is already within normal limits, your weight loss goal is reasonable, because when you reach 141 pounds, your new BMI will be 18, still within the 'normal' range.

Umm... Yeah...

I have some muscle on my legs, not much on my upper body, I'm somewhere below 10% body fat, but yeah, I'm sure I can find 20 pounds to lose somewhere.

Disappointed...

ericgu — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:38:00 GMT

It's happening again.

I'm on acuweather, weatherunderground, and my local news sources throughout the day - trying to find a forecast I like. It's been a bit wet, but it seems like it's clearing up.

I get home from work, mix up my hydration drink, get my newtons ready, put on my riding clothes, and head downstairs to play Halo until it's time to go. I munch on a Clif bar and drink a tall glass of water. And then it's 5 after 6, time to go.

I head upstairs, grab my cycling bag, go into the garage, open the door, pull the bike off the wall, pump up the tires, and roll it out to put it in the truck.

And then it happens.

A tickling on my bare arms. I stretch my arms out and stand still.

It's definite. It's drizzling.

I wheel the bike back into the garage, and hang it up. Head back inside, go downstairs, and get on the trainer, trading two hours of fun with my friends for 45 minutes of boredom on the trainer.

Disappointed