"Check out my 1st of many video's to come on Cycling nutritional and performance products"
Living in a town where ones only outlet is to cycle to the local shop and laugh at how ridiculously expensive the food is goes to show how boring Lierde is. But I am not here for entertainment, TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING, RACING, RACING, RACING, RACING AND EATING is all that's on my agenda. My time here is passing by pretty quick, most days I follow my usual routing of breakfast train or race and back in the evening where I work on my blog, chat on facebook, or just relax in the evening sun. Whats a shocker to the system is that Belgium is like one of the warmest countries I’ve been in for a long time. It was 36 degrees Celsius yesterday and since we have no air con or fans it got pretty warm in the house, I ended up going for a cold bath to try and cool myself down but the cold water from the tap was luke warm.
Most of the races I'm riding at the moment are kermesse events; I haven't had anything major since oomlop het niewsbland. But the kermesse's aren’t easy, usually up to 50km from home you have to ride there complete the 120km race, try your best to get a prize and earn some money for food and then battle your way into what always seems to be a block head wind on the way home. I am feeling pretty strong these days, managing to get a few top 20's even with the races being day after day and with all the mileage to get there. I'm taking care though to make sure the adequate rest is in there since I'm not super human, if I over do it I will be in a body bag for weeks to come.
Did some interesting training rides using my Garmin edge 500, I'm really impressed with it as a training tool, managed to find a website were I can pre plan my rides and set up a virtual partner whom I have to keep ahead of. This is great since I only know a small portion of the roads here in Flanders and being able to pre plan rides allows me to set in place routes that involve climbs, cobbles, flat roads for tempo work and rolling countryside.
In terms of my diet and body weight, I can honestly say I'm steadily losing the lard and leaning out, focusing on getting a high carbo breakfast prior to training and making sure I stay fuelled on the bike is giving me the energy to train and race hard. After events I make it my number 1 goal to get in the Kinetica recovery shake, which is magical stuff, in that narrow glycogen window the body is craving carbs to replace what has been lost and when taking on this drink you get the carbs and a small dash of protein to kick of muscle recovery. I have also changed what I'm taking on the bike; the bottles of sweet tasting carbo drink are killing me in the heat so I’ve turned to 1 bottle with a dissolved caffeinated zym and one of water. To make up for the loss of calories that I was getting from the carbo fuel, I’m simply just taking in an extra gel or bar instead. Up until recently I had been very influenced that High-5 products were the route to go, they offered reasonably priced, energy food and drink which was not overloaded with caffeine or stimulants and I found during hard bouts of exercise or racing my cramping was minimal whilst using them which was my major reason of my choice. Last Month my nutritional Sponsor Molloys Lifestyle and Healthstore provided me with some of Maximuscles new Viper products, at first I was highly dubious of the high caffeine content and felt in the warm conditions it could lead to dehydration and cramping, but I was ensured that I would see an improvement in performance and an increase in time till exhaustion by using them. In order to test them out I would need a race that would 100% fatigue me and push me to the max and during which I would use the products to keep myself going. I choose the next interclub event that I was scheduled to ride; it was a 170km race across cobbles and up savage steep climbs which would make it perfect. on the day I was fully rested and had consumed my normal breakfast, the race as expected was very hard and when the times came for me to feed I consumed my Viper extreme bars and viper Boost gels, I am happy to say that I rode well and didn't at any stage feel any drops in energy or feeling of hunger knock, I mostly noticed the kick that I got from the gels, possibly due to the caffeine content in them. It was a very warm day and another thing that surprised me was the lack of Cramping that I sustained during the race. Each gel has magnesium and electrolytes which increase hydration levels and replace salts and minerals lost through sweating.
Most of the races I'm riding at the moment are kermesse events; I haven't had anything major since oomlop het niewsbland. But the kermesse's aren’t easy, usually up to 50km from home you have to ride there complete the 120km race, try your best to get a prize and earn some money for food and then battle your way into what always seems to be a block head wind on the way home. I am feeling pretty strong these days, managing to get a few top 20's even with the races being day after day and with all the mileage to get there. I'm taking care though to make sure the adequate rest is in there since I'm not super human, if I over do it I will be in a body bag for weeks to come.
Did some interesting training rides using my Garmin edge 500, I'm really impressed with it as a training tool, managed to find a website were I can pre plan my rides and set up a virtual partner whom I have to keep ahead of. This is great since I only know a small portion of the roads here in Flanders and being able to pre plan rides allows me to set in place routes that involve climbs, cobbles, flat roads for tempo work and rolling countryside.
In terms of my diet and body weight, I can honestly say I'm steadily losing the lard and leaning out, focusing on getting a high carbo breakfast prior to training and making sure I stay fuelled on the bike is giving me the energy to train and race hard. After events I make it my number 1 goal to get in the Kinetica recovery shake, which is magical stuff, in that narrow glycogen window the body is craving carbs to replace what has been lost and when taking on this drink you get the carbs and a small dash of protein to kick of muscle recovery. I have also changed what I'm taking on the bike; the bottles of sweet tasting carbo drink are killing me in the heat so I’ve turned to 1 bottle with a dissolved caffeinated zym and one of water. To make up for the loss of calories that I was getting from the carbo fuel, I’m simply just taking in an extra gel or bar instead. Up until recently I had been very influenced that High-5 products were the route to go, they offered reasonably priced, energy food and drink which was not overloaded with caffeine or stimulants and I found during hard bouts of exercise or racing my cramping was minimal whilst using them which was my major reason of my choice. Last Month my nutritional Sponsor Molloys Lifestyle and Healthstore provided me with some of Maximuscles new Viper products, at first I was highly dubious of the high caffeine content and felt in the warm conditions it could lead to dehydration and cramping, but I was ensured that I would see an improvement in performance and an increase in time till exhaustion by using them. In order to test them out I would need a race that would 100% fatigue me and push me to the max and during which I would use the products to keep myself going. I choose the next interclub event that I was scheduled to ride; it was a 170km race across cobbles and up savage steep climbs which would make it perfect. on the day I was fully rested and had consumed my normal breakfast, the race as expected was very hard and when the times came for me to feed I consumed my Viper extreme bars and viper Boost gels, I am happy to say that I rode well and didn't at any stage feel any drops in energy or feeling of hunger knock, I mostly noticed the kick that I got from the gels, possibly due to the caffeine content in them. It was a very warm day and another thing that surprised me was the lack of Cramping that I sustained during the race. Each gel has magnesium and electrolytes which increase hydration levels and replace salts and minerals lost through sweating.
Here is a cycling training Article that i picked up on Peak Performance:
My prep for the Suir Valley 3day is going as planned and im hoping that if progress continues on a positive note then I will be in for a chance of a good result. Looking back on the season and my past blog posts I have seen a lot of room for improvement in both performance and story telling so stay tuned to "The Chronicles Of The Cobra"
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