Schedule Note the change
Due to almost certain rain, Tuesday’s practice will be SPIN at ironworks. Meet at 4:05. We do not have enough bikes there for the whole team, so if you have adequate clothing, I will lead a road ride from the team office starting at 3:45. Thursday should be clear, so MTB ride on thursday, meeting at live oak park at 4:20. Normal team ride on Sunday at 10am.
Registration
Time is running out for registration to get your number by mail. You really want to do this. Do it now.
Team clothing
Team clothing is days from being done. We will only have a short turn around from the time we get it to our first race. Attached is the clothing order form if you haven’t received it yet. Please fill it out and take care of it early, and you will for sure get your clothes on time.
Race #1
Race #1 is fast approaching. I will be writing a complete guide to this race this week. Beyza, Mekayla, Simeon and Rowan raced this past weekend at the same course. The promoter said that it will be nearly the exact same setup, which is different than the fort ord courses in years past. You can ask them if you wish. I want to give a ton of respect for these four, as the conditions did not make it easy, but everyone finished and Mekayla made it onto the podium.
Training tip
Drink One thing I learned this weekend: I was about to hand Simeon a water bottle in the feed zone, and then saw that he hadn’t taken a single sip of water. So it’s time to talk about hydration. Others have said a ton, so this is snipped and edited from: http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=1325
Make no mistake about it, short of sickness or injury, NOTHING will affect your daily performance more than your hydration status. Study after study has demonstrated that even a very slight amount of fluid loss (1% body weight) results in significantly decreased performance in both endurance and power sports. In fact, my own Ph.D. research (2) found that proper hydration prior to exercise (i.e., making sure you’re not dehydrated to begin with) is more important than either fitness or heat acclimation in determining your tolerance to exercise in the heat.
What’s so bad about dehydration? The first place that fluid is lost from is your blood. With less blood to pump throughout your body, your heart has to pump more frequently to maintain the same rate of blood delivery to the muscles. This results in ìcardiovascular drift,î where your heart rate increases even though your power output is constant, placing unnecessary stress on your heart.
In addition, the body also tries to preserve blood flow to the muscles, meaning there is less blood going to the skin to dissipate heat. Keep this going much more and the elevated body temperature will ultimately cause fatigue by actually decreasing the ability of your brain to activate your muscles (3). When dehydration gets even worse, then the water loss from your muscles themselves will cause cramps, spasms, or worse.
Planning to Drink
You’ve all seen the images of Paula Newby-Fraser staggering and collapsing within sight of the Hawaiian Ironman finish line, so take steps to make sure nothing like that ever happens to you. It is absolutely critical to plan out and practise your hydration strategy. Here are some things to consider:
The average cyclist can easily lose over 1 kg of sweat every hour, and it is critical that you train yourself to replace as much of the fluid loss as possible DURING the workout. How do you figure out how much fluid you need? Take your weight before and after training and a record of how many bottles you drank to estimate your typical sweating rate. Set your watch alarm every 10-15 min to remind yourself to drink.
In addition to getting water into your system, the overall goal is to get about 40-60 g of carbohydrates into your body each hour during exercise. For reference, 60 g of carbohydrates works out to about one large water bottle of Gatorade. This is a case where more is not necessarily better, as your body can’t seem to absorb more than 60 g per hour, and cramming more carbohydrates in may just simply cause gastric distress (fancy term for tummy troubles). Don’t get too hung up on what kind of carbohydrates, though fructose (common in apple juice) seems to take longer to absorb than other types.
The biggest things you can personally alter are the sweetness of your drink and also the rate at which you drink it. Generally, the ìsweet spotî at which the fluid enters your bloodstream fastest is with a carbohydrate concentration of ~2-8% (for reference, Coke is about 10% and Gatorade about 6%). If it’s a hot day, you’ll generally have a decreased tolerance for sweetness, so dilute your drink. Don’t worry that you won’t be getting enough carbohydrates, as you’ll very likely be drinking more fluid.
Unless you’re into ultra-endurance events, you won’t lose enough electrolytes (salts and minerals) in your sweat during exercise, and what you do lose you will easily replace with a balanced diet. However, electrolytes do tend to improve taste and also helps improve absorption of carbohydrates, so it’s generally a good idea to include moderate amounts of electrolytes (mainly sodium) in your drink (Coke has almost none and Gatorade has a moderate amount). Most sport drinks will have the appropriate ballpark amount already.
A recent study has shown that carbohydrate drinks are beneficial even in a 40 k TT, an event which takes < 60 min for good roulers (and me every night before I wake up!). The reason for this is not clear, as too little carbohydrate may have actually passed through the digestive system and into the bloodstream to fuel the muscles significantly. However, as the brain generally runs only on carbohydrates, there may be some mental stimulation involved.
