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.

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

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!

Aussie cyclists threatened with jail

-- What the bloody hell's going on over there? Five years in jail or a $68,000 fine if they kill or seriously injure

What's going on in Australia and why are their cyclists being threatened with jail?

Law makers say cycling is becoming a "legitimate form of transport" and the Government will "come down hard on bad behaviour because there is a real consequence".

They reckon the new penalties will "help police tackle reckless riding by cyclists, and reduce the likelihood of pedestrians, other cyclists or drivers suffering serious injury."

Drivers suffering serious injury, caused by cyclists? Really?

Apparently legislators were spurred into action when cyclist William Raisin-Shaw was fined just $400 for colliding with 77 year-old pedestrian James Gould, who later died.

I'd love to know the penalties dished out to Australian drivers who, in the fifteen years from 1991 to 2005, killed 665 cyclists. How many of these drivers spent time in jail or coughed up $68,000?

If Aussie drivers are penalised anything like Kiwi drivers I bet most of them can't even remember what it feels like to be slapped with a wet buss ticket.

Just the other day Waipu truck driver Ian Donald McLean, 51, who struck and killed a cyclist - his second conviction for careless driving causing death - escaped a jail sentence, and instead received community detention and an order to stay at home every day between 8pm and 7am.

Oh, the suffering. (He did, however, have to perform 200 hours' community work and pay $5000 as reparation to Miss MacDonald's family. And he was disqualified from holding or obtaining a driver's licence for 14 months). Still, doesn't really compare to the dark prison cell awaiting Australian cyclists though, does it.

And Mt Maunganui truck driver Kerry Bradley, 62, who smashed into a promising young cycling star competing in a major road race, destroying her hopes of international success, received 80 hours community work and was disqualified from driving for six months.

It's cyclists being maimed and killed by drivers - not the other way around.

If law makers now consider cycling legitimate transport shouldn't they be passing laws to better protect cyclists?

Why waste time concocting laws policing a group of road users representing largely imagined risks?

Even Texan legislators seem to get it.

Cycling Sauce: Chopper Guard Bicycle Lovelies

-- June Sauce – The Bianchi girl

June Cycling Sauce winner Bianchi makes it an Italian three-peat. Limar Helmets took out April; Wheelsbike owns May; and in a rather delightful act of community marketing 2.0, Bianchi sauces up June. Regimented branding guidelines are so 1995.

Specialized responds!

-- An email reply from Cody, Specialized Customer Service/Online Store, 1137 South 3800 West, Salt Lake City UT 84104. 877-808-8154

Lester,

Thanks for the e-mail and the support.

I have forwarded your e-mail on to the appropriate dept.

Thanks

Cody

Specialized cocaine help

-- A letter to Specialized: store_customerservice@specialized.com

Dear Specialized

I am writing to tell you that I think Tom Boonen might be addicted to drugs and needs urgent help.

I know right now that Team Quick-Step is "working closely with team sponsors” (that's you), but could you also please help Tom.

His lawyer Luc Deleu says Tom is wise and aware of the consequences.

So I figure Tom’s second cocaine bust in 12 months means that his dependency has addled his capacity rational thought.

Like, he knew the consequences but did it anyway.

I think this is called drug addiction.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of Tom's despite his repeated suspensions for cocaine use. Hell, I even ride Specialized.

(And I have to say that Tom’s recent Paris Roubaix victory seems all the more impressive now knowing that his system was clogged with cocaine residue – a known cardiovascular inhibitor. Imagine how much he’d have won by if he rode clean).

Please do your best to clean up Tom.

Yours in fondness and diminishing admiration.

Lester