Calories In vs. Calories Out

Most of us want to shed a few pounds to reach our leanest, meanest, athletic perfection. ...or maybe more than a few. We know that to lose weight, calories in must be less than calories out. So just ride more, right?

We need to face the truth. It takes a massive amount of mileage to overcome poor dietary choices. And no amount of miles can overcome the most toxic foods.

This morning's 33 minute gentle ride to work burned just 171 calories.

Compare that to a soda... 150 calories! and 41 grams of sugar! That's more than ten teaspoons of sugar in each can! It's just water, high fructose corn syrup, food coloring, and more sugar. Let there be no doubt about why more than one third of American adults have Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.

My beverage of choice, red wine, has 125 calories in just five ounces! It's got a few phytonutrients to provide a tiny benefit. But it's 100% carbohydrate. One glass pretty much eclipses the caloric burn of a half hour ride home.



Forgo all tasty foods? Hardly! But, be mindful about how much each choice costs. Read the labels and make educated decisions.

Poor choices about the amount and type of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates can't all be overcome by fitness. To live healthfully requires managing what goes in, not just what you burn off.  Maximize nutrients. Minimize calories.

Easter -- A Classic Cycling Ultradistance Holiday!

While riding with the NJ Randonneurs a decade ago, I learned about Flèche rides. They are an old ultra-distance cycling challenge that's always held at Easter. They involve a 24-hour point-to-point ride of at least 360 km (224 miles) done by teams. Each team proposes their own route with all teams planning to converge on the same location at the same time. There are many formal rules, but it's not a race, just an endurance challenge. Some teams do claim bragging rights by planning and riding longer than the minimum distance in the same time period.

This history lesson is from the San Francisco Randonneurs sign-up page for their Flèche rides this past week:

Flèche California is modeled on the Flèche Vélocio. First held in 1947, Flèche Vélocio originated as a celebration and memorial to Paul De Vivie and the end of the Christian period of Lent. DeVivie, published the very influential French cyclng magazine “Le Cycliste.” De Vivie used the pseudonym “Vélocio” in his writings.

Vélocio resided in St. Etienne during the most influential period of his life. The distance between these two French cities is approximately 360 km. ACP specified that the Flèche Vélocio be a team ride from Paris to St. Etienne to be completed in 24 hours. Teams develop routes that converge on St. Etienne in the south of France, timing their arrival so that they can enjoy some rest and relaxation before a group meal and social gathering on Easter Sunday. After the event, some immediately return home by train or other means; others may spend a few days on holiday before bicycling home. 

Vélocio also experimented with the use of the derailleur and multiple ratio gearing. This experimentation occurred decades before the mechanism became widely used.

If you're deeply disappointed at having missed the 2015 Flèche rides in San Francisco and Paris, you still have time to join the Ohio Randonneurs for theirs. It doesn't take place until May 22nd.

Our family's Easter cycling tradition goes back nearly 20 years. We get up before dawn, pull on lots of warm clothing, straddle our bikes equipped with headlights and taillights, and pedal just a few miles to Rosedale Park, arriving in time for the 6:30 AM Easter sunrise service. After worshiping, we pedal home for a hearty breakfast.

Clearly, cycling on Easter is a Divinely inspired idea the world over!

Justin's Story -- An Athlete To Learn From

 Over the winter I've gotten to work professionally with Justin Grissom. He's a Texan, a top notch professional engineer, a husband and daddy, and a highly disciplined Ironman triathlete and ultramarathon racer. He does things like the Boston marathon as a preparatory event for his bigger challenges. He thinks through every detail of his training, diet, equipment, and event execution. Here he talks about the effect of his nutritional choices on top performance. 

After a lifetime of being a casual athlete and general proponent of health and fitness, I decided to get semi-serious about my pursuits 8 or so years ago. I trained for and completed my first marathon, in a less than spectacular 4:11. I was injured and it took months to totally recover. I continued running, lifting weights, eating my protein, and doing the things that most people do to stay in shape. 

Most importantly at the time, I consumed as much animal protein as I could. Like most "athletes" I knew, the key to being strong was consuming as much chicken, beef, fish, and dairy as possible.  A year later, I ran another marathon and finished (injured, again) with a less than spectacular 3:43. After this marathon, my right knee was so sore that I was unable to run for months. Since I had to do something active to maintain my sanity, I decided I might as well learn how to swim. Swimming had always seemed intriguing from afar, but I could barely swim to save my life. It took four days a week for four months, but I finally got enough skills in the pool to swim a mile.

Fast forward to 2015. I have completed triathlons from the sprint distance to the Ironman, and many other endurance runs, marathons, and ultramarathons. Over 4 years ago, my family and I made the transition from omnivorous eating to a plant based diet. No meat. No eggs. No dairy. Nothing that had a mother or a face is the easiest way to describe it to people who have never heard the term (and yes there are people who still, in 2015, have never heard of a "vegan"). I definitely did not come to this conclusion on my own; there is an enormous mountain of evidence that a vegan diet is superior to the typical animal based western diet. This is especially true for endurance athletes. 

Following the lead of amazing vegan athletes Brendan Brazier, Scott Jurek, and Rich Roll, the transition was totally painless. When you tax your body with 10, 20, or 30+ hours per week of intense training, what you choose to put in your mouth for fuel becomes critical. Animal products, while being a concentrated source of protein, are hard to digest and create additional stresses on your body at a time when recovery is critical. I have lost over 30 pounds (I was not overweight before, and I'm not underweight now) and have seen my strength and stamina increase drastically. At 33 years old, the rate at which I can recover from hard training efforts is orders of magnitude greater than my capacity for recovery at 18 ever was. My cholesterol and blood pressure, which were at "healthy" levels before the switch, plummeted to levels that I never expected to attain. Something else dropped, too-my race times.

GMTMA -- Get A Free Tee Shirt for What You Already Do

Go sign up for bike to work week (May 11-May 15th) at Greater Mercer Transportation Management Association. If you're among the first 150 registrants, you'll get a tee shirt from the cool folks who promote all kinds of transportation other than one person driving a car transporting only themselves. They work to reduce traffic issues, promote health and fitness, and reduce the negative impact of having so many people burning so much gasoline to get places close to home.

I got to be a guest blogger for them last week and offered the story of the SEPTA strike that inspired the past 30 years of bicycling to work.

Pothole vs. Godzilla

The Great Pothole of Rosedale Road 

...might not drown Godzilla...

...but it could swallow a sheep!

Ride carefully!

Assert Your Right To Ride Safely

Your safety as a cyclist will be enhanced by being more assertive (not aggressive) about your right to use the road. This is supported by psychology, experience, and the law.

My position on the road is usually near the white line. Some portion of my handlebars are usually above it.  But not always to the right of it. You have no obligation to ride through a storm drain that would grab your wheel or through gravel that would risk a spill.

You don't need to wait for this brush pile to move, to ride over it, or to ride around to the right of it on the grass. You just need to be visually clear to vehicle operators behind you that you will be riding around it to the left. Move smoothly into the main vehicle lane well in advance of the pile rather than swerving at the last second (just as you would as a motorist avoiding an obstacle). Leave plenty of space to your right between you and the pile -- so there's no question about what you're doing. Ride past the pile safely, and then gently move back towards the right. The car drivers will slow, travel around you, and drive on.

The closer you ride to that pile of debris, the closer most drivers will drive near you. That's my experience, anyhow.

This Q&A is from the NJ Department of Transportation website:

These comments obviously need to be balanced with good situational awareness. A vehicle approaching you from behind at 60 MPH with oncoming traffic is going to have much less reaction time and not much space to maneuver -- if you don't give them enough visual advance-notice. Use good sense, since the laws of physics always trump the laws of the state.

Separate, dedicated bikeways are a wonderful addition to urban streets. Bike paths like the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail and Delaware & Raritan Canal Towpath are great for recreation and for developing cyclists. I'm all for them!

But they don't go most places I travel. So it's my responsibility to learn and operate my two-wheeled vehicle in a clear consistent manner that follows the law and communicates my intent to other users of the road.

The folks at Cycling Savvy encourage us to "ride big". They have ten experience-based tips for safe road riding. I particularly like the way they describe the dance of riding with traffic!

Go Slow To Get Faster

We think of over-training as something only Olympians and highly competitive athletes are subject to. How could my modest achievements relate to over training? But it's quite possible for recreational cyclists to do sub-optimal training by going too hard too often.

What are the symptoms of over-training? General fatigue, difficulty achieving maximum heart rate (MHR), increased rate of injuries, less enthusiasm for your sport, trouble sleeping, drop in performance, change in resting heart rate. Cyclists often mis-diagnose these symptoms as poor fitness and push harder instead of what's needed, i.e., backing down.

To build up your peak power output and aerobic capacity, you want to go harder at the peak moments (85% of MHR and above) on your hard days and go extremely gently on your easy/recovery days.

To build up your endurance you need time in the saddle and miles on the road, but they don't all have to be at race pace. In fact, they shouldn't be.

What is happening in the training and recovery cycle? 
Think of your hard efforts as breaking down muscle tissue. Any effort above 70% MHR begins to do this. The harder you go, the more muscle breakdown occurs. But after breakdown, your muscles will re-build a little stronger than they were before -- if you allow them to. "Active recovery" days can bring more oxygenated blood to your muscle cells and flush out waste products. But if you go too hard, you'll break down new muscle tissue before it has a chance to fully form. Counterproductive.

An ideal training week might look like:
Day 1: gentle recovery: 20 minutes easy spin at 60 - 70% MHR, 20 - 30 minutes of stretching
Day 2: gentle recovery
Day 3: gentle recovery
Day 4: Hardest day of the week: Most of the time at 60 - 65% MHR interspersed with brief aggressive hill climbs or intervals between 85% and 100% of MHR.
Day 5: gentle recovery
Day 6: Fast group ride: Pace varies between 60% - 90% of MHR based on terrain, wind, and group.
Day 7: Endurance ride: Often the longest ride of the week. Pace varies between 65% and 80% of MHR and averages 75% or less.

You might do two weeks like this, followed by a third week that looks similar except substitute an active recovery day for the hard "Day 4". This becomes a "recovery week." After that, do two more weeks like the first two, except very slightly harder top-end efforts.  As you build strength and overall fitness, your recovery days do not get harder. They stay gentle. Your hard days get longer and the number, speed, and duration of hills or intervals you do may increase. But recovery days always stay super light.

The good news for those who want to lose weight is that the best heart rate range to build endurance and burn fat is is 60 - 70% of MHR, not higher.

This year my MHR is about 185. For me, that means:
60% = 111
70% = 130
75% = 140
80% = 148
85% = 158

To call today's bike commute a "recovery" day, required climbing hills at just over FOUR miles per hour and stopping occasionally to look at the scenery.

Even at that pace, I would briefly hit a heart rate of 75% of MHR climbing the hills on Rosedale and Carter Roads -- well above ideal. I also spent a lot more total riding time than would be ideal for recovery. It may be better to do a little strength training or take the day off if you can't go easy on recovery days.