A boat full of carbs

kennyb3 wrote: »

€4 a pack - about 7 slices of decently cut pieces for that, nice thick fat layer usually too. I'm sure you can haggle too. I usually buy in bulk and do a deal.

boards.ie bulk order?!

I find myself strangely drawn to the idea of a bacon bowl, but holy god that voiceover doesn’t half make me want to throw myself from a tall building.

I thought that my turbo trainer could never be equalled as a means of making a short period of time feel like it’s going on f o r e v e r but a 20 minute interval would have been easier to bear than 1 minute of that video.

I’m cranky today, and that sets the tone for this post.

I just followed a link from Wiggle to this nutrition guide by High5. They are obviously in the business of selling their products so they’ll emphasise how “vital” those products are to you, but I’m still a bit taken aback by what I would consider misinformation in that guide. It’s arguably subtle enough but phrases like “[fat fuel] is not designed for performance” and “You can lose 1 litre of fluid for every hour that you exercise”, while perhaps strictly true, seem designed to reinforce such misconceptions as you need to consume almost exclusively carbs when exercising and that your volume of fluid intake needs to be around that mythical figure of 1L per hour.

Out of curiosity, I briefly looked at their “Advanced nutrition guide for stronger sportive” and it suggests a breakfast of the usual high carb foods (cereals, porridge, etc.), plus a 750ml bottle of High5 (to “Caffeine Load”), plus a High gel (or 2, or 3, depending on your weight). For during the event they suggest that “you could comfortably drink up to 1000ml per hour” in warm/hot conditions, but if it is cooler you might drink less “and you will need to boost [your carbohydrate intake] with gel”. Each to their own, but that volume of consumption would be physically beyond me, yet High5 would like me to believe that it’s somehow perfectly normal (even in my high carb days I’d never have consumed as much as that), if not necessary.

I do actually use High5 products. I’m a fan of their (chocolate) protein recovery shakes, though once I’ve worked my way through my current stock of it I probably won’t get it again (I’m going to try a “pure” protein shake plus fruit or fruit juice immediately after a ride instead - just as convenient and quick but potentially “better” and would give me more control over nutrient portions). I also use High5 4:1 energy drink for races. I’m not a fan of their marketing blurb though, and it annoys me more over time. I’m afraid to look at High5’s guide to racing nutrition.

I’ve been on a LCHF diet now for a little over 9 months and during that time I’ve cut my daily carb intake by more, and perhaps far more, than half. I’ve also learned that I can ride my bike without having to essentially attach a nosebag of food for the duration of every ride. I learned that early enough in the diet by heading out for a 3.5hr ride and ignoring the hunger pangs that kicked in early on. A week or two later I headed out without any breakfast and ignored the hunger pangs again. I didn’t die, I didn’t bonk, and my average speed was on a par with what it would typically be if I were grazing for the entire ride. That was quite a surprise for me, while I would always have been sceptical about the likes of the info that High5 spout above, I was always convinced that I didn’t have enough fuel available within my skinny body to do more than get me up a flight of stairs before having to refuel. The likes of High5’s blurb feeds on that uncertainty, I suppose you could say.

Anyway, I was intimidated by the prospect of racing on this diet. Training on it was fine but the level of intensity of a race is a different matter, I expected. I read various positive online anecdotes from some notable riders but I’m no more than an average rider and I wasn’t convinced that it would work so well for me. I’ve been racing A4 this year, so the races have generally been not much more than 2 hours long, and usually less. To my surprise this diet has worked very well for me. In the hours leading up to a race I’d eat low-carb food as usual, but shortly (about 10 minutes maybe) before each race I ate a banana. During the races I ate nothing, but I sipped on High5 4:1 every now and again in the latter half of the race - usually if I drank anything during the first hour it would be only water. On average I drank between 100ml and 200ml of High5 during a race, and some of that I consumed simply due to the nagging fear that the inevitable bonk was on the horizon. I never felt hungry, I never bonked. I was even competitive in some of those races so I would say I was never short of carbs.

Of course, I may simply have been depleting my glycogen stores during a race, and perhaps I was starving my body of the more readily accessible fuel it craved. I can’t say for sure, maybe a longer race would confirm that one way or the other, but I generally finished the races feeling relatively strong so I had no sense of an impending energy crash. I didn’t earn enough points to upgrade to A3 this year, maybe I’ll get them next year and then I can put this approach to racing to the test in the longer and faster challenge that an A3 race poses. Not that I found A4 racing easy, quite the contrary, but I suspect that A3 will be so far beyond my comfort zone that I’ll quickly show up any deficiencies in my diet and my approach to nutrition on the bike, amongst other things. Apologies in advance to High5 though, I won’t be hooking up a trailer containing litres of fluid plus boxes of gels to my bike, I’ll take my chances, thanks!

petethedrummer wrote: »

Just get cheap chocolate milk from the supermarket.

I've seen that suggested before but when I looked at the ingredients list of some brand or other of chocolate milk in a supermarket I was not impressed. Take Tesco's own brand for example with its stabilisers and sugars (sugars are a good thing after training, of course, but I'd prefer getting them directly from fruit instead).

Chocolate milk also doesn't keep as easily or as long as powdered options so loses out on convenience. The cost difference isn't huge either, depending on which products you use.

All in all I think that going for milk/water, powdered whey protein, and fruit juice or solid fruit, after a ride will be a better bet for me. I will miss the taste of the (chocolate) High5 protein recovery though!

doozerie wrote: »

SNIP

I eat carbs as part of my day to day diet, but often race or train for 80-130km+ without eating anything from waking til race end. I don't see a correlation between the LCHF diet or a normal diet, and the need to eat before or during races or long spins. I generally get through less than 750ml of MiWadi in a race unless it's very warm in which case I might bring 2 bottles of same.

@ford the content of my diet hasn't changed since I started cycling but since being inspired by one of your posts to start cycling without sny special fueling I've noticed several benefits aside from the obvious of getting out of the house sooner, the most prominent one for me is that I feel less hungry subsequent to the spin and I feel like I'm also recovering better.

My pet theory is that my body is relearning realistic resource usage.

rollingscone wrote: »

@ford the content of my diet hasn't changed since I started cycling but since being inspired by one of your posts to start cycling without sny special fueling I've noticed several benefits aside from the obvious of getting out of the house sooner, the most prominent one for me is that I feel less hungry subsequent to the spin and I feel like I'm also recovering better.

My pet theory is that my body is relearning realistic resource usage.

On this topic of fueling and recovery... I've been following what I would called a "Half-arsed Paleo diet" for the past while, meaning wholefood based as much as possible, plenty of fat and protein, with lower than normal but not low carb. Also very little white carbs. In general I've found it great and, also having done some fasted training early on in the year, I find that I can cycle up to 100k or so at a decent pace without eating very much before or during. I recently started reading the Paleo Diet for Athletes (by Friel and Cordain) and I see that they emphasise very much that you should eat carbs before and during workouts. Otherwise, according to the book, as glycogen runs low, your body will start breaking down muscle for energy, resulting in longer recovery times etc. In fact the authors recommend in a sample scenario, that an athlete have a couple of gels 10 mins before exercise, and sports drink during it, which surprised me.

That got me thinking, as I found while training for long events this summer past, that I built up an accumulation of muscle fatigue that was hard to shake. I know that to analyse my specific situation would need a lot of detail which I'm not providing here, but want to ask instead what people think in general of the need to consume carbs before and during exercise at levels that would include a mix of threshold and endurance work. I'm particularly interested in the aspect of speed and completeness of recovery.

I definitely was doing something wrong, and I don't think I was overdoing the training, so am wondering about the diet aspects.