Eat To Ride and Have Fun

 

Bicycling is a great way to improve your health.  Bicycling builds your heart muscle, it improves your lung function, your circulation and just about every body part you have. 

 

Bicycling at a brisk pace forces you to breathe rapidly and deeply as long as you are riding.  Your heart rate increases, as it pumps vital nutrients to every fiber of your body.  Your lungs grow larger and more efficient and your heart muscle continues to strengthen.

 

The surging blood flow flushes the toxins in your body and replaces them with vital nutrients.  Fat converts to sugar that burns to fuel your pounding muscles.  As your ride continues, minute amounts of fat convert to sugar to continue fueling your muscles.

 

The more frequently you ride and the further you ride, the stronger your body becomes.  If you can ride three or four days a week, for one to two hours at a time your body will quickly grow stronger and more efficient.  Excess fatty tissue will naturally convert to energy, and slowly disappear.  Within months you could be in the best physical condition you ever been in.

 

You can have all of these benefits while enjoying the great outdoors, the company of great friends and the satisfying accomplishment of goals set by you alone.  You can change your route on a whim.  You can stop for lunch or just to smell the roses.

 

Ok, this sounds great but it can’t be this easy and wonderful.

 

Everything I just said is true, but there are some pitfalls along the way.  If you are just starting this and try to go out to ride for two hours or more, you may never get on a bicycle again.  Your body will rebel; you will be exhausted for days and have some very sore body parts.

 

This section will tell you what your body has to do to accomplish to propel you and bike at over 12 mph (Doesn’t sound so fast does it?  The Pros ride at about 30 MPG for hours and hours.) for over an hour and a half. 

 

It is totally amazing what this body of our can accomplish, but we have to feed it right, hydrate it right and give it the rest it needs or we won’t be riding long enough to stop for lunch or smell the roses.

 

On the next page I will begin the discussion of nutrition for bicycling or any endurance sport.  It is vitally important to understand what is happen in your body during a long ride and what you have to do to keep it going for hours.  Otherwise, you will probably fall into some of the traps I did when I started riding.  A good example is riding out on a beautiful day, not realizing you have a strong tail wind whisking you along.  You are having such a great time that you ride until you start to get tired.

 

Only then do you turn around to continue you beautiful ride home.  And WHAM!  The wind hits you square in the chest.  Already tired, you now have to struggle against that awful wind all the way home.  By the time you get back, you can you can barely get that #@$%^ bike put away and it will be a long time before you want to see it again.

 

Yes I have done exactly that, riding my new bike from my apartment in downtown Chicago, North along the lake shore, then along the roads to, I don’t know how far north of Evanston. 

 

BikeTiresDirect.com has everything you need for great biking nutrition. Visit them here.

 

Getting back was a drag. Then carring my bike back up the stairs to my apartment was about all I could do.  And I was in my late twenties at the time. 

 

You have already learned one import lesson.  If you can, always start you ride into the prevailing wind.  By the time you get tired you will find a welcome tail wind pushing you home.  Believe me, it will improve your biking attitude.

 

If you have to start with a tail wind, just remain aware of it and turn around long before you feel fatigue setting in.  You can handle it if you are still fresh.

 

The next important point you are going to learn is that you are must eat while you ride.  And you probably have to eat a lot more than you imagine. 

 

All of the diet info you have read and any diet you might be on is out the window anytime you ride for more than an hour and a half.  Snickers Bars and HoHo’s become good things, a loaf of bread will work and donuts will work; a great big piece of pie or cake at the turnaround point is a good idea.  An apple or peach won’t work.  As steak or hamburger are little help. I'll tell you why in the next section.

 

Here is a funny story from my past that I didn’t understand at the time, but do now.  My stingy eating got in the way of a romantic get away.

 

Back to Chicago; I talked my girl friend, Kathy, into going up to the Dells in Wisconsin for a long bicycle ride I had read about.  They have miles and miles of beautiful bike trails along old unused rail lines.  They have removed the rails and paved the old rail bed, reserving it exclusively for bicycles. 

 

The trails go through beautiful dairy farms, over rivers on the rail bridges and through long dark tunnels (bring a light).  Along the way there are many quaint towns were they make their own cheese and always have plenty of wine.  They all have great bed-and-breakfasts to stay at.

 

Our destination was one of those bed-and-breakfasts at the end of our route.  It sounded great and romantic but it didn't turn out that way.

 

I was probably trying to maintain my trim figure so I didn’t eat much on the ride.  At the end we enjoyed some of the great local wine and cheese. 

 

Not eating on the ride was a big mistake and our recovery meal was totally wrong.

 

Well, that romantic night was a real disaster.  I was wreaked and exhausted.  Neither of us could understand why I was “too pooped to pop”, or anything else when I had ridden so strongly that day.   She had been eating all day and was fine.

 

She thought I had lost interest.  That turned out to be the beginning of the end of a lovely relationship.  I passed her in Orange County airport a few years ago and she was still mad.

 

Read the next section and this won’t happen to you.  You will find out what you have to eat while riding and why it can be so different from your normal diet.

 

[To be continued]