boston mobile bike service -- blog

Most endurance athletes think in terms of fueling primarily with carbohydrates, whether complex or simple, whether sourced from grains, fruits, veggies or plain old sugar; when most coaches and athletes think about fuel, they think first about carb intake. That doesn't mean we don't value fat as a fuel, I think most endurance athletes understand that training and racing for periods longer than a couple of hours can only be accomplished because our bodies source substantial energy from burning fat stores, but we tend to think in terms of 'sparing glycogen' more than 'metabolizing fat'.

At shorter distances and in competitions lasting 2 hours or less this may indeed be the entire story. Trained athletes typically store enough carbohydrate (in the form of glycogen) in the musculature and liver to sustain about 90 minutes of activity at high output, and certainly, the highest-output efforts -- sprinting, hill climbing, taking your turn at the head of the pace-line, etc can only be fueled by going into anaerobic (i.e. burning glycogen) output zones. We are mostly also well versed in how to fuel to restore glycogen reserves, and how to do so rapidly for days with multiple scheduled workouts.

Take-away: -- It is possible to train the body to burn fat stores at 70% effort levels this is aided by increasing intake of (healthy) fats

Riding a bike without hands on the bars is illegal so you shouldn't do it ... I say the Man can stick it, there are good reasons and times when you want to ride with hands-off the bars.

Safety-tip Don't try or practice this on a bike that's not in good alignment, in or around traffic in high winds or a crosswind, on rough road surfaces, or riding in close-quarters with a group!

Here are some reasons to ride hands-off:

• Opening the hip angle and fully shifting weight to sit-bones will ease fatigue
• fully straightening the spine will ease fatigue
• You can add/remove gloves, open energy bars etc
• You can eat/drink more comfortably
• You can take in the surroundings

Writing to thank everyone who came to my booth to talk about bikes today. I enjoyed meeting lots of folks as well as seeing many friends and teammates.

Sincerely -- forrest

Reasons to fixed gear & SS, pros/cons

Fixed gear and single speed bikes have seen a big resurgence in the last 5-10 years, They're popular as simple, easy to maintain transportation and they're certainly the rides that today have the biggest 'cool factor'.

Simplicity is the biggest common element between fixed and SS bikes. Derailleur bikes need a whole lot of cleanup after riding in rain or snow, the absence of derailleurs, cassette/freewheel and associated cabling greatly simplifies maintenance.

Road cyclists favor fixies, especially in the off season because they require the rider to work in a higher gear up hills and force them to spin faster riding down, this builds strength and smoothness at high cadence.

Rapidly available carbohydrates are a keystone of endurance training and performance. Nearly all specialty nutrition suppliers are using one or another form of sugar polymers which have the advantage over simple sugars of allowing absorption of more calories per hour than simpler sugars, while still not requiring the additional digestion time associated with starches (the most common form is malto-dextrose from brown rice syrup).

Small or single serving sports nutrition products offer athletes of all types highly convenient energy, however it comes at a price both economic and environmental. 100 calories of energy in Gel form costs about $1.00-1.50, single-serving drink mix packets run about the same and every serving includes non-recyclable packaging.

Bought in bulk, the same products come down significantly in price, Cytomax (which happens to be what I use) runs $0.42 per serving. However, if this still sounds expensive it is; brown rice syrup costs $0.25 per 100 calorie serving at Whole Foods, honey is a similar cost and plain sugar (organic) is $0.14 per 100 calories.

I train about 500 hours per year and averaging an intake of about 100 calories per hour during training, I certainly would rather be getting that fuel for less than the $500 it would cost if I used primarily single-serving sources.

Supplements, of course include more than just calories, nearly all include electrolytes, most include some vitamins and anti-oxidants. I already have sources I like for vitamins and antioxidants, however when I mix my own nutrition, I do need to add electrolytes. Of course plain salt is trivially cheap, but I prefer to get the potassium, magnesium, calcium etc that are included in something like Nuun or Hammer's Enduralytes.

So I mostly train using my own mix. I use drink mix as a base because frankly un-flavored Malto-dextrose or malt sugars are pretty seriously unpleasant. Typically I mix up 1/3 drink mix, 1/3 brown rice syrup and 1/3 sugar along with the additional electrolytes I've found I need to avoid muscle cramping. Using Hammer's Enduralytes powder is cheap enough, althogh I've also gone with table salt in a pinch. I put as many calories as I need of this mix into one bottle. A second and sometimes also a third bottle carried in a jersey pocket are filled with plain water which is more refreshing and also allows me to only need to do bottle exchanges for plain water on a race course.

I've been able to nearly eliminate the use of gels this way. When I go into the mountains I will go with just drink mix because I can carry it dry in a Nalgene or doubled ziploc bags and mix it as-needed. I don't like bulk gel containers in the mountains because if they leak they're incredibly hard to clean up. For long training rides, centuries or races, I mix up a concentrate as described above, but with 600-1200 calories in a single bottle, however this will ferment if you try to prepare it more than a day in advance, don't try!

The dead of winter is the time that folks are thinking about a new bike for the next season. I'm dropping this entry to suggest if you are thinking about this, look at a Campagnolo groupset. It's not hard to find Shimano-vs-Campy advocacy on the 'net and if you want that, google will find it quickly, I'll try to avoid advocacy and simply relate the features and my experiences with both. Im leaving SRAM out of this article for two reasons, first, I've never ridden on SRAM, second SRAM designs their gear to be interchanged with Shimano, their cassette and chain dimensions are identical, as such I expect their maintenance requirements to be identical.

Up until 3 years ago, all of my riding was on vintage stuff, standard 3/32" chain and 6 cogs on the rear/freewheel. I rode this setup on my '83 Peugeot in my first two '06 triathlons, looking on with envy at the more modern gear that's most folks were riding. I'm still riding that bike, although it's now my second-choice commute/work bike behind the fixed gear.

In early winter of '06/7 I found a great titanium triathlon bike at an attractive price on Ebay, outfitted with 9 speed Shimano. Over the course of the next two seasons I ran up a little under 6000 miles on that bike, (along with another 2500 miles ridden on the trusty Peugeot). I liked the bar-end shifters, and was quite amazed at how well indexed shifting worked. True, it needs adjustment every so often to keep running smooth, but that's a fine trade off against having to reach down to the down tube for shifting.

Over the course of the next 2+ seasons I found I could get about 2000 miles from a chain (I check both using Park's go/nogo gauge and by measuring chain 'stretch' over a 12" length*). This is about the same life I get from 3/32" chain on my Peugeot.

In late '08 I put together a new bike, selling the tri bike (for more than I'd paid for it, always nice). I decided to go with a road bike, and commenced with research into a groupset, choosing to go with Campy in part because I've always lusted after it but also because what I read about the features sounded right on the money for what I wanted. I've now gotten in a year of riding on it.

Summary:
Because so few bike manufacturers spec Campagnolo groups on anything but the high-end bikes (Bianchi would be a rare exception), to get the long term cost advantages that campy offers, you pretty much have to select a frame and component set and build the bike or have it built, this is going to cost more up-front.

The break-even point is hit if you're going to keep a bike for 4 years or longer. Select the full article below for the details.

I find it hard to dial in the right amount of electrolytes when training. The first time I became aware that there was a problem was in the '07 Mooseman Olympic when I was beginning to experience cramping in my calves and quads by the end of the bike leg and after finishing the run, my hamstrings got into the act also so that for an hour or so my legs were trying to cramp in both directions at once -- not good.

Until then I'd been hydrating with alternating bottles of Cytomax™ and water, which gave me about all the carbohydrate I could absorb, I'd experience some issues with cramps in training but written it off to muscle fatigue. After the painful post-mooseman experience I started adding more electrolytes to the mix and found that my problems with cramping had passed.

This fall I had a routine physical and checked in with my doctor about my tendency to experience passing out when I stand up during periods when I'm training hardest. I've always written it off to my relatively low blood pressure and heart rate. The doc suspected insufficient hydration / blood volume but we ruled that out because I routinely check my weight after training to ensure that I'm hydrating well enough. What she suggested is that I'm down on electrolytes. Since then I've further upped the amount of salt I take in when training and I think I can say that this is addressing the problem ... a happy thing as needing to be frequently cautious about the simple act of standing up gets tiresome.

How to manage hydration requirements

The first thing is to measure your sweat rate, this will vary depending on exertion levels and the weather conditions you're training in, so do check in a variety of circumstances. It's a simple thing, just get on the scale before you head out and then again when you're done.
([start weight]+[water intake]-[finish weight])/[time training] = sweat rate.
I lose something north of 3lbs per hour of water when going hard in high temperatures, given that, it probably shouldn't have taken me so long to figure out that while I was hydrating fine, I was losing more salt than I was replacing.

live and learn :-)

Usually I talk about bike repair and safety here but this week I'm thinking about training, so here goes.

I think all endurance athletes fully understand the need to fuel with preferably organic, high-nutrient foods, lean proteins, highly-colored veggies etc. We also understand the need for active recovery to build the muscles that we're developing in training.

One of the keys to repairing the damage done in training and accelerating recovery is ensuring that your body has a healthy supply of antioxidants. Endurance training creates significant stress on the body in the form of free radicals, which are damaging to cellular membranes, antioxidants are responsible for cleaning up these free radicals.

See the full article for ways to get antioxidant's in your regular diet as well as ideas on supplements ->>

Anyone who works on bikes that are ridden regularly is familiar with dirty hands. Whether you're simply cleaning your bike(s) or fixing, adjusting and maintaining or doing full overhauls, unless you wear gloves (not a cheap solution) your hands will come up at the end of the work with a level of embedded grime / grease that's seriously hard to remove with just soap and water.

My solution is to scrub with used coffee grounds -- Read the full article for details ->>

For many riders, flat tires are high on the list of repair problems, usually running second to drive train maintenance. Here are some tips on flat prevention and fast flat-fixing. A flat while riding is never fun, a flat while braking hard or in a turn can result in a dangerous accident!

The easy stuff, avoid 'em, sweep 'em off, inflation

Broken glass is the cause of most of the flats I've experienced, when riding, look ahead for glass in the road and if possible (i.e. be sure there's no cars-back) try to avoid riding through it. When you see you've ridden through some glass, you can reach down with your (gloved) hand and sweep the wheel, just touch the surface while continuing to ride for a couple of seconds, this will dislodge most glass shards, avoiding the flat. It's possible to reach down to the rear wheel between the seat stays and seat tube, but I prefer to unclip and sweep the rear tire with my shoe, either way sweeping the rear tire MUST be reserved for a straight secton of road. If you are going to do the rear with your hand, my friend Ulandt pointed out the correct way to do this:

I.e. HOW NOT TO MANGLE YOUR HAND
Hook your thumb firmly into the seat-stay above the brake bolt and then *LIGHTLY* touch the moving wheel surface to sweep off glass .. again, you're wearing gloves when trying this right?

For what to do back home and products to help minimize occurrence of flats and repair them quicker, see the rest of the article ->>