Wednesday, July 29, 2009

A revolutionary breakthrough in cycling endurance nutrition!













-- Get your next generation adaptogens now!!

Why are we suckers for nutritional witchcraft? Science be damned. Give me any day the pill form of herbs and spices Amazonian pygmies have for 250 years rubbed on their loins before the full moon rave and chicken slaughter.

Marketers have successfully commercialised this kink of human nature – a helpless attraction to unproven claims and hyperbole. Millions are being made from the promise of improbable gains.

Lord knows, I’ve been there myself, believing that somehow I can short circuit hard work and experience the miracle edge delivered by two pills, containing the grinds of a mythical sounding root extract, taken three times daily with meals.

Maybe if we better understood the psychology of this voodoo attraction we’d force manufacturers to better substantiate their claims.

Who better to get to the bottom of this ruse than Lunn Ave rider and Doctor of Bicycle Engineering Mike P.

He writes…….I just had to reef off. Can't help it. Because deficient and spasmodically variable diets still work for sedentary life, we probably never know until we cycle hard, that they were. One thing is for sure though, a properly balanced diet is a must if top level extended performance is required.

But how to assemble it, is the question. The answer for most is to grab "the products". They promise it all, and list so much bio-blurb we tire reading it, and just say Yes! YeS! YES! I must have it! And then the pill and powder popping becomes encouragingly placebic, and maybe even beneficial, especially if we had just depleted one or more of the harder to replace but fairly necessary micro-unknowns.

(We then become equally unwitting and enthusiastic peddlers for the product, even though the chance of our personal deficiency aligning with those of our associates is low.) So, why am I going on again? Because I read some stuff on vitamin C absorption that identifies that although a vitamin C pill carries mega vitamin C compared to an orange or a kiwifruit, the real food delivers in inverse proportion.

Extrapolating on that hugely (as my view is "Why not?") a balanced diet of minimally processed food is the real means to get the intake levels right. And better to fiddle with that, in the first place, than just estimate, then top-off with supplements.

But how to fiddle with any accuracy? My view, again, and it's just a hunch based on The Naked Ape etc, is that stuff just tastes great, when you really need it, and ever blander, when you don't.

This is my view on the food part of heavy training. Of course if I can get it there or thereabouts, toping off with supplements near race day, and when I next ride the Tour then it just becomes a be-sure to be-sure as opposed to an obsessive compulsive superstitious ritual. Do it the other way round - supplement up, and eat haphazardly - is not only not so good in terms of absorbability, it is likely to mask the taste-hunt.

So, yeah I will buy the stuff, but only for use after I work out on my primary (which I will spend the $128's on first). Hey - don't take this as a rejection of first-endurance etc. Far from it. When we earn, best we use the good shit.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Boonen’s Tour back on, by a nose (and a handshake)


















-- Boonen can’t say no to cocaine; Tour organisers can’t say no to Boonen

Dear Quick Step

Just a quick note congratulating you on Tom Boonen’s reinstatement to cycling’s showpiece, the Tour de France.

It’s a great credit to you and your fine legal representatives that you were able to fix Tom’s drug addiction so quickly and convince Tour organisers that nose candy shouldn't interfere with professional sport.

(I suspect that he doesn't actually engage in all that ghastly snorting - rather, he gets his fix with a handshake - works in has favour).

Finally, cycling is coming around to what baseball has known for years: sporting integrity is so last century.

Yours in fondness and admiration.

Lester

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Cycling Sauce: Chopper Guard Bicycle Lovelies



















-- July Sauce – The Kreitler Rollers Girl

Kreitler founder Al Kreitler was rarely seen without his Yorkie, named Killer, stuffed down the front of his shirt. Naturally, for a bloke who spent 40 years mostly alone in his workshop, Yorkie was the obvious choice to spearhead Al’s marketing strategy. Since Al’s passing in 2001, Kreitler marketing has turned over a new leaf and settled on an entirely different creature to promote the benefits of rollers. Woof!