Two Wheel Blogs

It's a fairly simple idea. Look at professional teams who play during the fall and winter and see if their location in terms of latitude shows any significant performance correlations. This blog appears to be exploring this simple idea. American football is an ideal sport to track since training starts in the late summer and the season begins in the fall and goes through winter. Check out his thoughts on recent super bowl winners.

If an amateur racing cyclist wanted to see if supplemental vitamin D could make a difference in their performance, here's a few things they could do.

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A few weeks ago, a well known professor of nutrition referenced this study (which was published in the AJCN) on our local cycling message board and cautioned people about using vitamin C. Her message seemed to indicate that, in general, people should follow the FDA RDI for vitamin C rigorously and that going above this value could be detrimental and dangerous.

This is a great video of Dr. Linus Pauling, who was probably the second most important scientist of the 20th century. Listen to how much vitamin C he was taking at the time this video was made. I don't know when it was made actually but I suspect it was early or mid 80's. Perhaps the most compelling part of the presentation is at the end when he describes the commonly suggested needs of monkeys. It reminded me of this quote by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi: "The purpose of science has gone from making discoveries to getting grants granted."

Well there you have it. I went vegan.

OK, not entirely. Just for dessert.

Have you ever had any of these? I about fell out of my chair when I learned the truth about them. They're vegan! But I gotta tell you, these bad boys are so good I could eat a whole bag in one sitting. Not that I'd want that much of a sugar high, but at least I wouldn't be compounding it with partially hydrogenated this and that.

Went out today hoping to complete a longer ride than I have done in a while. I also wanted to learn more about my diet and diet considerations for the upcoming Ouachita Challenge. This may sound a bit stupid....

I started the day by eating a small breakfast (couple eggs, and coffee) around 8:00. Did not eat anything else before I started the ride at 1:00. Sound stupid? I wanted to test out the new nutrition items that I bought to consume during the long race. My thoughts were: I normally am nervous so I rarely eat much before a race, and this race is 60 or so miles long...so I am basically going to have to eat on the ride (I can not hope for some large breakfast carrying me through the event).

As I started the ride I took a couple swigs of the endurance drink, took a few electrolyte tabs, and a couple supplement tabs (basically OKG). I also made sure I took a shot of gel about every 45 minutes. I continued to take OKG tabs hourly, 2-3 electrolyte tabs hourly, gels regularly, lots of water, and a pull off the endurance drink every 20 minutes.

Last night, mid-ride, I decided to remove the dual bar set up. I put a wrench next to the trainer just in case I would want to do this. After about 30 minutes of tempo, I wanted to drop down and stretch my back, so off came the bars (only 2 bolts to do so...so I never stopped pedaling).

The wrist seems to be healing up well. No pain, no problems. I can put pressure on my hands and don't even notice that there is an injury...must be the 9 grams of C I took yesterday.

Speaking of Vitamin C. I thought that it would cause me to need to defecate profusely to triple my normal daily intake...so far no changes. Don't fear the Vit. C folks! I slept well last night and other than a slight increase in gas there is nothing bad to report about the major upswing in Vitamin C intake.