HGH has been offered as something like a universal miracle drug for everything from building muscle mass and recovery from exercise to enhancing virility, curing depression and combating the effects of aging.  One of the ideas that is promoted by the HGH industry is that there is a two hour period after exercise, which is sometimes referred to as a “synergy window”, when consumption of  foods that are high in glucose or carbohydrates disrupts the release of HGH by the body and hence should be avoided because of all of the benefits claimed for HGH. A comment on our Eating After the Ride post  pointed out that the advice to consume a fairly large amount of carbohydrate in the first 30 to 40 minutes after exercise that is given in Eating After the Ride is in direct conflict with the recommendation to avoid carbohydrates during the Synergy Window.

Is this an important conflict that cyclists should take into account?  What can be said about the “synergy window” based on reputable research?  Are the claims made about the benefits of HGH accurate and reliable?  Should cyclists be concerned with HGH?

It is important to keep in mind that – like virtually every issue in the field of nutrition for athletes – knowledge about HGH that is based on well-designed and carefully carried out scientific research is a story in progress.  Much remains to be discovered about how chemical information carriers (i.e, hormones and neurotransmitters) affect function, how the human body processes nutrients and macronutrients (like carbs, fats and proteins), and how all of this affects exercise and athletic performance.

That being said, the HGH industry is a cesspool of outright fraud, ignorance, scams and ridiculous claims based on no scientific evidence whatsoever.  The problem isn’t that scientifically well-supported information about HGH is hard to come by; 20 minutes, google, and an open mind are about all it takes to at least raise the suspicion that many of the claims made about HGH on numerous websites and blogs are complete nonsense.  The problem is that too many people are making too much money selling quack nostrums to gullible people who are ignorant of the science involved and who aren’t willing to spend the time or effort to look beyond what the hucksters are pitching at them.

What about the concern that ingesting carbohydrates will interfere with the two hour HGH “synergy window”?

If, at the time of this writing, you google “synergy window” and “HGH”, you get several pages of hits from many, many websites and blogs that all reproduce the same text.  Many of these pages are headed “Two foods you should never eat after exercise”.  The text copied on all of these websites and blogs claims, among some other things, that sugars (i.e., carbohydrates) must be avoided during the two hour synergy window in order to reap the supposed benefits of increased  HGH production after exercise. This advice is accompanied by a citation to a well-designed and well-executed research study and gives the impression that the research study supports the claims being made about HGH, the “synergy window” and avoiding carbohydrates in the form of sugars after exercise.

The research cited in the “synergy window” blurb was carried out by S.A. Newsom and colleagues and appeared in the March 2010 Journal of Applied Physiology.  You can read it for yourself here.  The study contains research that may be of interest to cyclists and is described in detail in Eating After the Ride Part 2.

Our question here is how much support does the cited research give to the claims being made about HGH, the “synergy window” and avoiding carbohydrates after exercise?

The answer is – none whatsoever.

The Newsom study has nothing at all to do with HGH.  The investigators are interested in the consequences of replacing calories lost during exercise by ingesting either fats or carbohydrates after exercise.  They don’t consider, or even mention, HGH.

What about a two hour window after exercise?  In the study, participants ate meals with carefully controlled amounts of fats and carbohydrates 30 minutes, 5 hours and 10 hours after exercise.  Nothing was manipulated nor measured at a two hour interval.  Nothing can be concluded from this study about the consequences of eating or not eating carbs, fats, proteins or anything else during the two hours after exercise because the study doesn’t have anything to do with a two hour post exercise period.

In short, while the Newsom research contains much of interest to people who are engaged in regular exercise, it provides no support whatsoever for the claims about HGH, the so-called “synergy window”, or the advice to avoid carbs after exercise that appear on all of the websites and blogs that cite the research. The people who are posting this “synergy window” nonsense all over the internet either didn’t read the research paper they cite, read it and didn’t understand it, or read it, understood it and are making fraudulent claims based on it with the expectation that their readers won’t bother to check their source.

The websites telling you not to consume carbs after exercise because it will interfere with HGH have nothing  to offer in the way of scientific evidence to support their stories.  Does HGH provide some other benefits for cyclists? Or any other basically healthy person for that matter?

The first thing to keep in mind is that for HGH to have any effect at all, it must be taken intravenously. HGH is a peptide and peptides are broken down by gastric acid in the digestive tract which means that taking HGH orally is pointless.  It is most likely to be destroyed before it enters the bloodstream.  This is fairly elementary biochemistry and you would expect people who are recommending and selling dietary supplements to know it.  The HGH mongers apparently didn’t, however, and at first they were hawking HGH as a dietary supplement.  Now they are hawking “HGH releasers” which aren’t HGH but are supposed to trigger the release of HGH by the body.  What they are in fact selling are branched-chain amino acids which account for approximately 35% of the amino acids found in muscle proteins.  You can get a roughly equivalent amount of branched chain amino acids as are present in high-priced “HGH releasers” by eating a piece of steak.  There is no credible evidence that these so called “HGH releasers” have any of the beneficial effects claimed for them.  If you are taking HGH or an “HGH releaser” orally as a dietary suplement, you are throwing your money away on a scam.

When pressed for evidence by fraud litigation or by consumers who want evidence rather than unsubstantiated advertising claims before they take dietary supplements, the HGH industry has consistently pointed to a study published by D. Rudman and colleagues entitled “Effects of Human Growth Hormone in Men over 60 Years Old” in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 1990.  You can read the Rudman study for yourself here.

What Rudman et. al found was that a six month program of  high-dose intravenous injections of HGH reduced the percentage of body fat and increased the percentage of lean muscle mass and bone density in a group of men aged 61 to 81. This study has been so widely misunderstood, misinterpreted or used in support of outright fraudulent claims about HGH that the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine took the highly unusual step of attaching editorials written by Dr. Mary Lee Vance (who was the editor of NEJM when the Rudman study was originally published) and Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen (who was the editor when the decision to add the attachments was made) that pointed out that the research reported in the Rudman article does not providence evidence to support the claims about the benefits of HGH or “HGH releasers”  made by the people in the HGH industry who cite the study as scientific support for their products.  You can read Dr. Vance’s editorial here, and Dr. Drazen’s editorial here.

Subsequent research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (an Abstract can be found here) that has followed up on the Rudman study and which is cited in the Vance editorial has replicated Rudman’s results with regard to HGH producing a decrease in body fat and an increase in lean muscle mass.  While the Rudman study did not examine differences in muscle function as a consequence of HGH treatment the follow up study did and what was found is of great interest to cyclists who are considering taking HGH.  The increase in lean muscle mass was not accompanied by any increase in either strength or endurance (as measured by maximal oxygen uptake, i.e., VO(2)max) in women.  Strength increased slightly and VO(2)max increased in men but only if the HGH treatment was accompanied by testosterone injections.   HGH without testosterone produced increases in lean muscle mass but no increases in either strength or endurance.  Negative side effects, primarily diabetes and glucose intolerance, were frequent in both men and women who were administered HGH.

These results may sound encouraging for some body builders for whom the increase in muscle mass combined with a decrease in body fat (which makes the musculature easier to see) may contribute to the goal of displaying muscle development.  Body builders are essentially developing muscles to serve as decoration or ornament.  Their competition does not involve using muscle strength in any way and so the lack of increase in strength or endurance accompanied by the increase in muscle mass that is produced by HGH alone would not hurt them when they compete.  For athletes who are interesting in building stronger muscles as opposed to bigger muscles the story is entirely different.  For the cyclist, increased muscle mass that is not accompanied by an increase in strength or endurance is simply dead weight that has to be carried uphill.

So, what’s the story on HGH for cyclists?

HGH or “HGH releasers” taken as orally administered dietary supplements are scams.  There is no credible scientific evidence that these products have any of the benefits that are claimed for them.

Intravenous injection of HGH increases lean muscle mass without an increase in either endurance or strength.  It adds weight without improving function which is something every cyclist wants to avoid.

Patrick Sinkewitz

HGH injections that are accompanied by testosterone injections increase endurance and marginally increase strength in men.  While the increase in VO(2)max may be of value to competitive cyclists, the HGH injections have serious negative consequences such as the development of diabetes and glucose intolerance (which will more than offset the competitive benefits gained through HGH use).  HGH is also banned as a performance enhancing drug.  Patrick Sinkewitz tested positive for HGH and was the first rider banned from the pro peloton for HGH use.

For professional cyclists there is a temptation to inject HGH and hope to avoid a positive drug test.  For the non-professional cyclist there is no reason whatsoever to take HGH and many reasons to avoid it.

For cyclists, HGH is an epic fail

The study was carried out by S.A. Newsom and colleagues. It is titled “Energy deficit after exercise augments lipid mobilization but does not contribute to the exercise-induced increase in insulin sensitivity” and you can read it for yourself here.  The investigators were interested in the consequences of replacing the energy stores burned during exercise with either fats or carbohydrates.  They carried out a carefully controlled study that involved different groups of experimental subjects engaging in a period of controlled exercise followed by the ingestion of carefully controlled meals and snacks for the rest of the day.  The investigators varied whether energy stores were replaced by carbs or fats and measured insulin sensitivity (an indicator of the degree to which the system is primed and ready to process glucose into glycogen) and lipid metabolism (an indicator of the extent to which adipose tissue, i.e., fat, is being mobilized or broken down) the following day.

Here’s what they did.

Nine men between 28 and 30 years of age participated in the study.  There were four experimental conditions and each participant took part in each of the four conditions over four different experimental sessions.

The following general procedure was carried out in each of the four experimental sessions.  Participants fasted over night and were admitted to the hospital where testing would take place the next morning.  After admission and a 30 minute rest period, oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production were measured.  This was followed by approximately 90 minutes of exercise in 3 of the 4 conditions.  The 4th condition was a control where participants did not exercise.  The exercise was split evenly between a treadmill and an exercise bike and each participant burned approximately 800 kilocalories (kcal) during the exercise period.  Oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production were measured at several points throughout the exercise period to insure participants were exercising at the required rate and expending the required amount of energy.  The participants ingested meals at periods of 30 minutes, 5 hours, and 10 hours after exercise.  The experimental manipulation was in the nutritional make-up of these meals.  Three hours after the last meal all of the participants ingested an identical snack to control for any effects of the last food eaten.  They spent the night at the hospital and a variety of physiological measures were taken the following morning.

There were four experimental conditions in the study.  These were:

1. A Control condition in which participants did not exercise.  Participants were fed meals that maintained their fat and carbohydrate balance.

2. A Balanced condition in which participants were fed enough carbohydrate to replace the glycogen lost during exercise and enough fats to replace the fats lost during exercise.

3. A Low Carbohydrate condition in which participants were fed meals that did not contain enough carbohydrate to replace the glycogen burned during the exercise period.  The total energy loss of the exercise (kcal burned from both fats and glycogen stores in the body) was offset by increasing the amount of fat in the meals.

4. A Low Energy condition in which participants were fed enough carbohydrate to replace the glycogen lost during exercise but were not fed enough fat to replace the fat burned during exercise.

There are two important comparisons to consider with regard to the consequences of failing to replace either fats or glycogen (by ingesting carbs) after exercise.

(A) In the Control condition no exercise takes place and energy balance is maintained by replacing energy lost (during rest) to fat metabolism with fat in the diet and energy lost to burning glucose with carbohydrate in the diet.  In the Low Carbohydrate condition energy balance is also maintained but it is accomplished by shorting the amount of carbohydrate in the diet and replacing the missing carbohydrates with fats.  Testing the next day showed that the amount of glycogen stored in muscle tissue was significantly lower in the Low Carbohydrate condition than in the Control condition.  Insulin sensitivity was also higher in the Low Carbohydrate condition than in the Control condition.  This means that insulin was more active the following day in the Low Carbohydrate condition.  Insulin plays a critical role in converting blood glucose into glycogen that can be stored in the muscles (and liver) and the system would be expected to show higher sensitivity to insulin when it is in glycogen debt and operating to replace lost glycogen stores.

(B) In the Balanced condition exercise take place and energy balance is maintained by replacing energy lost (during exercise) to fat metabolism with fat in the diet and energy lost to burning glucose with carbohydrate in the diet. In the Low Energy condition energy lost to burning glucose is replaced by carbohydrates in the diet (in other words, muscle glycogen lost to exercise is completely replaced) but energy lost to burning fats is not.  Testing the next day showed no differences in muscle glycogen between the two groups.  However, there was an increase in plasma fatty acid mobilization and oxidation and an increase in plasma triacylglycerol concentration the next day in the Low Energy condition as compared to the Balanced condition.  This means that fat metabolism was higher in the Low energy group.

What does this mean for the active cyclist?

The results discussed in (A) above provide another source of evidence that failure to ingest enough carbohydrate following exercise results in lower stores of muscle glycogen the next day.  A deficit in muscle glycogen translates into less energy on the bike, lower performance levels, and an increased tendency to bonk on the ride.  The critical need to replace muscle glycogen after exercise is the basis for the recommendation made in Eating After the Ride to ingest a heavy carbohydrate load during the first 30 minutes after you get off the bike in order to take advantage of the brief period during which  a high-efficiency glycogen storage process take place that allows blood glucose to be stored as muscle glycogen without the use of insulin.  Note that this study by Newsom et. al. provides evidence that muscle glycogen is depleted the day after exercise if carbohydrates are not consumed in sufficient quantity during the 12 hours or so after exercise.  Although the investigators made sure that participants were fed a meal withing 30 minutes of exercise, the study is not concerned with the brief period of enhanced, efficient glycogen storage that takes place immediately after exercise and provides no evidence one way or the other about the consequences of ingesting or failing to ingest sufficient carbohydrates immediately after exercise.

The results discussed in (B) provide evidence that fat metabolism is higher the day after exercise if fat intake in the hours after exercise is depressed.  This is of interest to cyclists who are concerned with losing weight.  Body fat is being burned at a higher rate the day after exercise if the fats burned during exercise are not replaced with fat in the diet.  Note that there is no indication here one way or the other whether the increased amount of fat metabolism shown the following day is sufficient to produce noticeable weight loss.  However, if you are interested in losing weight through the loss of body fat, increased levels of fat metabolism have to be better than no increase in fat metabolism in the long run.  Note also that fat metabolism was increased in the Low Energy condition even though carbohydrate intake was kept high enough to replace the muscle glycogen lost to exercise.  Taking in enough carbohydrate after exercise to replenish glycogen stores allows you to be ready for an exercise session the next day and does not stop fat metabolism that is breaking down body fat to supply energy.

In summary, what you eat after a ride makes a difference.  It isn’t the case that calories ingested from fats are equivalent to calories ingested from carbohydrates when replacing the calories burned during exercise.  Eating carbs after a ride replaces lost muscle glycogen, gets you ready to ride the next day, and does not stop fat metabolism.  Refraining from eating fats after a ride increases the burning of body fat the day after the ride and does not interfere with glycogen storage.  The take home message seems simple: Replace glycogen by ingesting carbs after a ride; metabolize fat and possibly lose weight by not eating fats after a ride.

On Thursday July 17th yet another high-profile cyclist was thrown out of the Tour de France when Riccardo Ricco was taken into custody by the French gendarmes after he tested positive for a synthetic variant of EPO.  This post is in no way intended to express sympathy for Ricco or to argue that what he apparently did was justified.  As the rules currently stand EPO is a banned substance.  Riders who use it are cheating and they should be kicked out of the race.  Unless the drug test was a false positive, Ricco got what he deserved.  Throw the bums out.

The issue I want to consider here is not whether Ricco should have been punished, but whether blood doping and the use of EPO should be prohibited as forms of performance enhancement.  They are currently banned and there are good arguments for continuing to do so.  However, I think there is an alternative way to look at doping and EPO that should be considered.

The use of performance enhancing drugs in competitive sports is an enormous problem.  Many professional sports are addressing the problem by identifying banned substances, instituting testing procedures for those substances and legislating penalties to be applied to athletes who are found to have used the banned drugs.  From professional leagues that are more interested in maintaining the image of being anti-drug than in actually dealing with the problem, to drug tests that are often not conclusive, to athletes that lie about their drug use or insist they didn’t know they were taking a banned substance the problem of performance enhancing drugs in sport seems almost impossible to solve. 

And this is only the tip of a much larger iceberg.  I think consideration of this issue opens up a world of deeper questions about what constitues performance enhancement, whether some practices that are currently considered as illegal forms of enhancement might be acceptable or even desirable at some levels of sporting competition, and what functions we want different levels of sporting competition to fulfill in our culture.  Consider the following.

One of the desired ideals for sporting competition is that the competitors should begin from a level playing field, that none of the athletes be given an unfair advantage over the others.  The competition begins on a level playing field and the athlete who has trained harder, who understands the game better, who is more skilled, who is better able to maintain focus during the heat of the battle wins in the end.  At least that’s the way it should be.  A fundamental objection to the use of performance enhancing drugs is that they upset this level playing field by giving the drug user an advantage that is not due to his training, knowledge or skill.  Is this always true?  It depends on how you look at it.

The amount of oxygen carried by the blood is an essential determinant of performance in sports.  Oxygen is used to both carry energy to the muscles so that they can perform the work the sport requires and to carry waste products away from the muscles.  Oxygen carrying capacity is especially important in long term endurance events such as road racing in cycling where athletes must sustain very high levels of performance for hours without a break.  Many world-class athletes in high endurance sports have used artifical means to increase their oxygen carrying capacity in order to gain what can be a substantial competitive advantage.

Red blood cells

Oxygen is carried in the blood by red blood cells (RBCs) and an increase in the density of RBCs in the blood can greatly improve performance in endurance sports.  The two methods most commonly used to do this are blood doping and the the injection of EPO (erythropoietin).  Blood doping involves extracting blood from a donor, concentrating the blood so that it has a high proportion of RBCs, freezing the concentrate and then thawing it and injecting it into the athlete before the competion or during the competition in the case of multi-day events such as the Tour de France.  The donor can be either the athlete himself (autologous blood doping) or someone else with a compatible blood type (homologous blood doping).  EPO is a hormone that is naturally produced by the kidneys and that stimulates the production of RBCs in the bone marrow.  EPO can also be made in the laboratory and this type of pharmaceutical EPO can be injected under the skin to increase the body’s RBC production.  Ricco was charged with taking a variant of pharmaceutical EPO called CERA.

The use of EPO or blood doping can be difficult to detect.  Subcutaneously injected EPO typically cannot be detected 3 to 4 days after injection yet it has its maximum effect stimulating high levels of RBC production approximately 3 weeks later.  For that reason, banning an athlete for EPO use usually depends on catching him with EPO paraphanalia in his possession.  In Ricco’s case, the manufacturer, F. Hoffman-La Roche, worked with WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) to develop a test for the drug.  Homologous blood doping (using someone else’s blood) can be detected by DNA differences between the donor and the athlete’s RBCs.  Autologous blood doping (using your own blood) is extremely difficult to detect and no tests are currently available that are considered reliable enough to use in competitive sports.

In addition to relying on blood tests that are specific for EPO use or doping many professional sports use hematocrit as an indicator of illegal performance enhancement.  Hematocrit measures the proportion of the blood volume that is composed of RBCs.  Hematocrits above a certain level are taken to be abnormal and are officially used as indicators of doping or EPO use.  The UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale), the organizing body of professional cycling, has set 50% as the upper allowable hematocrit level.  If a rider tests with a hematocrit above 50, he is banned from competition. 

It is often cited that the “normal” hematocrit range in adult males is between 41 and 50.  This is the two standard deviation range which encompasses approximately two thirds of the general population.  The upper level of the three standard deviation range for hematocrit is 54.  Approximately one third of the general population falls outside the two standard deviation range that is cited as “normal”.  More to the point, approximately one sixth of the general population (about 16.6%)  will have naturally occurring hematocrit levels above 50.  We can also expect that those individuals with higher than normal hematocrit levels will be disproportionately represented in the population of endurance athletes because the increased oxygen carrying capacity of their blood gives them a natural advantage in endurance sports.  The UCI recognizes this problem by allowing exceptions to the 50 hematocrit rule for cyclists who have a long and consistent history of hematocrit measures above 50 as indicative of a naturally occuring high hematocrit level.

All professional endurance sports ban both EPO and blood doping as illegal forms of performance enhancement.  Should they do this?  If we consider them as a means of gaining an unfair advantage over the opponent, which is the way they are currently used, the answer is clearly “yes”.  However, I think another perspective is possible. 

Everyone has a naturally occuring hematocrit level that is genetically determined.  This natural hematocrit is not subject to training, it is what it is.  Natural factors such as training at high altitude or anemia, and artificial factors such as the use of EPO and blood doping can temporarily increase or decrease hematocrit but they do not affect the base hematocrit that each of us is born with.  This means that independently of any steps the competitor may take to increase hematocrit, some endurance athletes have a competitive advantage because of their genetics.  In other words, with all other things such as training regimen, skill level, knowledge of the sport, strength of will and competitive focus held equal, the endurance athlete with a naturally high hematocrit will have an advantage over the athlete who was born with a low hematocrit. 

With regard to hematocrit, a critically important factor in endurance sports, the playing field is not level.  The low hematocrit athlete starts at a disadvantage that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything that is relevant to the sport.  It’s not about training regimen or intensity, it’s not about knowledge of the sport, the competition or the opponent, it’s not about trained skills and it’s not about heart, will or desire.  It’s about which sperm happened to fertilize which egg when the athlete was conceived.

Suppose we shift the common perspective on the use of EPO and blood doping.  Rather than think of them as a means to unbalance the competition by giving an athlete an unfair advantage, suppose we think of them as medical technologies we can use to level the playing field so that some athletes don’t begin the competition at a marked disadvantage because of their genetic inheritance?  Viewed from this different perspective, EPO and blood doping could be used to bring all of the athletes up to the same hematocrit level so that the competition could be decided on the basis of factors the athlete can control such as training, knowledge and desire. 

Under the current system EPO and blood doping are used surreptitiously by some athletes to give them an unfair advantage over their opponents.  These techniques unbalance the playing field.  However, if we make EPO and blood doping available to any athlete who wants to use them, these technologies can eliminate a naturally occurring advantage that benefits some athletes but not others.  The technologies level the playing field.

How might EPO or blood doping be used in this way?  Set a hematocrit level as a cut off point such as the level of 50 currently used by the UCI.  Competitors may use any means they wish such as training at altitude or using EPO to bring their hematocrit up to this level.  The athelete is tested before every competition, or in multi-day events such as the Tour de France before every stage, and they must have a hematocrit level below the cut off.  Under this system hematocrit level would function like weight levels in wrestling or boxing.  If you don’t make level, you can’t compete in the event.  You’re not labled as a cheater, fined and banned from the sport.  You simply cannot compete in the current event because your hematocrit level gives you an unfair advantage. 

This approach to the problem has several advantages.  First, by reorienting our thinking away from the view that these medical technologies are a means of introducing unfair advantage to the view that they are a means of eliminating unfair advantage we reorient the relationship between the athlete and his sport.  The athlete is no longer a cheater who is afraid of discovery and the organizing body of the sport is no longer treating its athletes like criminals to be caught.  Second, medical technologies that currently are used in secret and not in the best and safest of ways would be used in the open and in much safer conditions.  Third, as athletes strain to get as close to the cut off point as possible without going over and being eliminated from competition, our knowledge of how to use technologies like EPO and blood doping would increase and the conditions under which these technologies can be safely used would become better understood. Fourth, and perhaps most important of all, a playing field unbalanced by genetic factors is leveled so that competitions are less likely to be determined by the DNA of the athlete’s parents and more likely to depend on what the athlete has done to prepare for the event.

The underlying issue here is how professional sports in general and cycling in particular should respond to advances in our scientific understanding of the anatomical and physiological factors that affect athletic performance and the medical technologies that are developed from this understanding.  New technologies in the fields of drug treatments, prosthetics, and genetic engineering have the potential to substantially alter human capabilities and performance levels. How should sport respond to this advancing knowledge?  One possibility is that medical technologies could be evaluated individually to determine whether they can be used to enhance fair competition if made available to all of the competitors as opposed to unbalancing competition when they are only used by those who are willing to cheat.

Is this the right way to think about EPO and blood doping?  I don’t know but it’s worth considering.

Many new cyclists or cyclists who are thinking about using their bike to commute to work are anxious about riding in the road with traffic.  It’s not as scary as it looks and in many circumstances riding with cars is actually safer than riding in segregated bicycle lanes or what are euphimistically called “bicycle paths”.  If you’re going to be at all serious about road cycling or are going to commute to work you are going to have to share the road with cars.  How to ride a bike in traffic can be a controversial topic that generates discussions informed by passionately held ideologies and beliefs.  The advice and opinions expressed here are based on many years and tens of thousands of miles spent sharing the road with cars.  I ride with cars every day and I don’t want to be killed, maimed or seriously injured on the bike.  These are some of the ways I’ve found to most effectively accomplish those things.  Keep in mind that there are no hard and fast rules about riding in traffic.  You have to evaluate and adapt to each situation separately.  Riding safely with cars involves riding defensively and riding the line, among other things.

Riding defensively boils down to always being aware of where the cars are and what they’re doing, and knowing about, and being on the lookout for, the situations that most frequently lead to collisions between cyclists and motorized vehicles.  If you hit a car or a car hits you, you’re going to lose almost every time.  It doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong and it doesn’t matter how much of a hardass cyclist you think you are.  What matters is physics.  Cars have a lot of mass and you don’t.  That gives slow moving cars a lot more momentum than fast moving bicycles and that means the cyclist loses.  Don’t want to get hit?  Recognize the circumstances in which cars hit bikes and avoid them.  Ride defensively.

Intersections.  Intersections of any kind – cross streets, side streets, traffic lights, parking lot entrances and exits, driveways and so on – can be dangerous for cyclists and an entire post could be devoted to them. 

Picture from www.slowtwitch.com/

Here I’ll only discuss one particular type of collision that can occur in an intersection; the car makes a right hand turn and hits the cyclist who is riding through the intersection on the right hand side of the road.  This is widely thought to be the most common way a car hits a cyclist in urban settings.  Washington DC, where I live, was reminded of this several days ago when a young woman commuting to work on her bike was hit and killed by a garbage truck turning right.  Drivers may be looking for pedestrians in a crosswalk when they turn right at an intersection but they usually aren’t looking for something going as fast as a bicycle moving past them on the right.  Whenever you are in a situation where a driver may turn right, watch for it.  What do you watch for? 

Directional signals.  Always look for a car’s flashing directional signals – never trust what you see.  Drivers will often turn without using their directional signal.  This can be expecially dangerous when they turn right.  Less frequently, drivers will signal a turn and then not make it.  You can sometimes read a right hand turn that is not signaled from the car’s front wheels.  Drivers who are stopped at an intersection and plan to turn right will sometimes turn the steering wheel while stopped to prepare for the turn.  Be aware of vehicles that swing left before they turn right.  A slight jog to the left can indicate the vehicle is going to turn right. SUV drivers tend to drive like this.  Always be wary and alert at any kind of intersection and never take a car’s movement path for granted.

Parked cars.  I mentioned this problem in the post about riding the line.  When you are passing cars parked along the side of the street, always try and see if there is someone inside the car.  If there is, approach the car with care because they may open the roadside door suddenly to get out of the car.  People in cars look for oncoming cars but they almost almost never look for cyclists before they open the door.  Sometimes they open it just as you go by and knock you over out into the roadway; sometimes the door opens a split second before you arrive and you smash into it and catapult over the handlebars. 

Some people recommend that you ride far enough out in the traffic lane so that opened doors won’t touch you.  However, this can be impractical if there is a lot of traffic, especially fast-moving traffic, on the road.  You can ride close to the parked cars without hindering traffic as long as you’re vigilant and careful.  If you see someone in a car, slow down as you approach.  This gives you more time to see whether they look like they’re preparing to exit the car or just sitting there waiting.  It also gives the person in the car more time to see you.  If their window is open, call out that a bike is approaching.  If there is someone riding behind you, call out “Person in parked car” so the other cyclist knows to be careful.

Underestimating your speed.  If you are riding fast, drivers will consistently underestimate your speed.  The faster you’re going, the more of a problem this can be.  I’ve seen this happen time and time again.  A driver is pulling out of a side street, they see you coming, they start to pull out anyway and then jam on the brakes in a panic when they realize you’re right on top of them. 

This happens so frequently because of the way people identify objects in the environment.  We take in information from the world around us and use bits and pieces of it to identify objects like “car”, “tree”, “guy on a bike”.  We then fill in the bits and pieces with what we already know about these objects based on our past experience.  For example, when you see a car you process just enough to identify it as a car and then use what you already know about cars to formulate a prediction about what it’s going to do next.  It may turn right, it’s unlikely to jump up on it’s hind wheels and salute as you ride by.  People see you riding, identify it as “a person on a bike” and predict your speed based on what they know about bike riders.  If you’re going fast, most of the driver’s experience has been with slower moving bike riders.  Based on their prior knowledge and experience they are likely to underestimate your speed. 

Underestimating your speed can be a problem in two situations.  The first is any time a car is going to pull across your line of movement either by coming out of a side street, driveway or parking lot entrance or by turning left across oncoming traffic.  The second is when you’re going straight on a road that has a right hand turn lane leading to an access ramp to a cross street.  You are riding the line separating the through road from the turn lane because you’re going straight.  Some idiot is afraid to pass you on the right in the turn lane and decides to pass you on the left in the through street and then cut in front of you onto the ramp.  You’re going faster than they think and they make a screaming high speed turn in front of you or jam on the brakes in a panic stop when they realize they’re not going to make it.

Learn to recognize the circumstanes where underestimating your speed can be a problem and be alert.

Evaluate, predict, plan, adapt and execute.  When you’re approaching an intersection or any circumstance that might pose a problem for a cyclist such as a car parked on the side of the road, road debris or potholes that you must navigate around, or loss of the shoulder as the road narrows to go over a bridge examine the upcoming situation.  Are there any moving vehicles around?  Where are they?  How fast are they going?  What are the potential dangers for a cyclist?

Based on your examination of the current situation, predict what the circumstances will be when you arrive at the problem point.  Where will the cars be?  What will they be doing?  Might the car in front of you turn right?  Does that guy who wants to pull out of the parking lot look like he’s underestimating your speed?

Use your prediction to formulate a plan of what you will do when you arrive at the problem point.  Should you slow down to hit the intersection after the only car you can see has gone through it?  Speed up to get there safely before the car arrives?  If you speed up or slow down are you going to be in trouble if the guy makes an unsignaled right turn?

Constantly reevaluate your plan as you approach the problem point and adapt it to changing circumstances.  Vehicles moving faster or slower than you first thought?  Pedestrians or cars appear that you didn’t see before? 

When you hit the problem point, execute the plan.  Getting to the problem point and then dithering about what you should do can be dangerous because any cars or pedestrians in the area may have been formulating their own plans and when you do something unexpected at the last instant because you lost confidence it can mess everybody up and lead to accidents.

I'm a Dumb Ass

looking behind you and continuing to ride a straight, sure line takes practice and you can’t be looking behind you all the time.  Make use of all the information available to you, both visual and auditory.  Listen for cars or bikes coming up behind you.  Learn to estimate their speed from their sound.  Know when they are going to pass.  Never wear earbuds and listen to your iPod on your bike like the guy in the picture on the left who not only has earbuds but special shields to block out external noise so he can hear his iPod better.  Wearing earbuds on a bike is like having “I’m a dumb ass” tattooed on your forehead.

Know your route.  Whether commuting or training, most riders ride the same route time and time again.  Learn your route.  Know where the danger points lie and be prepared for them.  Learn where the bad sections of pavement are that narrow your options of where on the road you can ride.  If you go through an intersection with traffic lights, learn the signal pattern so you can accurately predict what state the light will be in when you arrive.  Is it a smart light that responds to waiting traffic?  Learn the typical taffic patterns at an intersection.  Are right hand turns frequent or unlikely?  The more you know about your route, the better your chances of accurately predicting what will happen when you arrive at the danger points.

Aggression, timidity and defensive riding.  Riding defensively doesn’t mean you can’t ride aggressively.  The agressive rider who thinks everybody is looking out for him and he always has the right of way is a danger to himself and everyone around him.  The cyclist who rides hard and fast is often easy for drivers to predict and if she rides defensively as well, she’ll avoid potentially deadly situations.

Likewise, riding defensively doesn’t mean you should be a timid rider.  Accurately predicting what the situation will be when you arrive on your bike is an important part of riding defensively.  Just as you are predicting where the cars are going to be when you get there, they are predicting where you are going to be. Timid, frightened riders who lack confidence are more likely to do unexpected things, are more difficult to predict, and often make their ride more dangerous than it needs to be.  Be aware, don’t be scared.

Riding defensively is all about learning to recognize the circumstances that pose a danger to the cyclist and learning to predict when those circumstanes might occur in order to minimize the danger as much as possible.  You can recognize a potentially dangerous situation 1000 times and nothing bad happens.  It’s easy to lose focus, to lose awareness, to take it for granted.  Bad idea because the 1001st time might be the one that saves your life.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again.  Laura and I have had the good fortune to go on several bicycle tours that last one to two weeks.  The tours are advertised for advanced or experienced riders and typically feature hilly or mountainous terrain and daily rides in the 60 to 125 mile range.  You ride from place to place and a van carrys your luggage.  The other riders on the tour are almost always experienced cyclists, at least in the sense that they have been riding for many years and are used to riding long miles.  These tours usually schedule a day or two off when the riders are free to do whatever they want.  This has always puzzled me.  Why would experienced cyclists pay the steep cost of going on one of these tours, go through all the hassle of getting their bike to some exotic location, and then spend a day or two not riding in terrain that provides spectacular cycling?  The people who run these tours obviously know more about it than I do because by the third or fourth day of the tour almost all of the riders are noticeably lacking in energy and enthusiasm, are irritably fretting about why they feel so tired, and are looking forward to the break.  Meanwhile, Laura and I are riding extra miles every day because we’re having so much fun, are fresh and ready to go every morning, and are typically the only ones out on our bikes on the day off.

What’s going on?  Why are we riding more miles with less overall fatigue than almost all of the other riders?  I don’t know for sure, but I’m fairly certain the answer lies in post-ride nutrition.  Many of these other riders are active members of their local cycling clubs.  They shine on organized centuries and long weekend rides with members of the club.  After the ride everyone goes out for ice cream or pizza and beer.  They are clueless about post-ride nutrition and have given no thought at all to how what they eat when they get off the bike can affect how they will ride the next day and the day after that.  They finish the first day in glycogen debt and fail to adequately replenish their glycogen stores before the next day’s ride.  Every day the situation gets worse and the riding becomes more unpleasant until by the third or fourth day their blood sugar levels are so low they’re grinding it out with their head down and need a day off to physically and mentally recover.  All of this can be avoided if you pay attention to what’s happening in your body when you get off the bike and take advantage of the opportunity your body gives you to prepare for strenuous activity on the following day.  Most of it comes down to what you eat in the first 30 to 40 minutes after you get off the bike.

When you finish a long ride your glycogen stores are exhausted and you are very likely to have low blood glucose.  Your body responds to the glycogen debt by going into overdrive to replace the missing glycogen.  Excess glucose in the bloodstream is converted to glycogen and stored in the muscles and the liver.  Under normal circumstances insulin is used in this conversion process.  However, after an extended period of exercise when the muscle glycogen stores are exhausted an abbreviated and accelerated glycogen-storage process kicks into gear that converts glucose into glycogen and stores it in the muscles without the need for insulin.  This period of intense glycogen production and storage lasts for 30  to 60 minutes.

In order to take advantage of this brief period of accelerated glycogen storage the system must have blood glucose that can be converted to glycogen.  And there’s the problem.  When you finish a long or intense ride you are almost certainly low on blood glucose.  Your system is ready to rapidly and efficiently replenish your empty glycogen stores but it doesn’t have the glucose it needs to make the glycogen.

The solution is to flood your system with carbohydrates that can be quickly converted to blood glucose which will in turn supply the accelerated glycogen production and storage mechanism with the glucose it needs.  Although the enhanced glycogen production mechanism will operate for roughly 60 minutes after exercise has stopped, keep in mind that it takes time for carbohydrates in the stomach to be broken down into useable blood glucose.  Food you eat during the second half of that 60 minute window may still be in the stomach being digested when the enhanced glycogen-storage process ends.  The first 30 minutes after you get off the bike are critical.  If you are going to fully replenish your glycogen stores for the next day’s ride, you must ingest enough carbs during those 30 minutes to flood your system with glucose.  If you don’t, it doesn’t matter what you eat for the rest of the day; you will be building on a weak foundation and you won’t have the glycogen reserves you need to ride with strength day after day.  This cannot be stressed enough; you have to reload your system with carbs during the first 30 minutes after you get off the bike.

How many carbs do you need to eat during the critical 30 minutes?  Current thinking holds that you should aim to ingest one half gram of carbohydrate for each pound of body weight during the 30 minutes after you get off the bike.  This is easy to figure out; simply divide your weight in half and eat that many grams of carbs.  For example, I weigh about 160 lbs so I need to eat 80 grams of carbs within 30 minutes of getting off the bike.  There is also some evidence that combining these carbs with protein may facilitate the glycogen production and storage process.  The recommended ratio of carbs to proteins is 4 to 1.  Thus, at 160 lbs I need 80 grams of carbs and 20 grams of protein.

Eating enough food to provide this much carbohydrate in the first 30 minutes after you get off the bike can be very difficult.  The 30 minute part is much more important than the specific amount of carbs and protein part.  If you can’t manage to choke down the full recommended amount, eat as much as you can, but make absolutely certain you do it in the first 30 minutes after you get off the bike.

You can eat any kind of food you like as long as it’s high in carbs.  Simple carbohydrates that can be more quickly broken down into blood glucose are better than complex carbohydrates that take a longer time because you need to get the glucose in the blood stream within a short window of time.  There are two key factors that will end up driving your 30 minute carbohydrate feast; the food has to be available immediately when you get off the bike, and you have to be willing to eat it.  The carb sources you’ve been eating on the bike will work equally well during this critical 30 minute window but you may be sick and tired of sports drink, energy gel, low-fat fig newtons or whatever you’ve been eating by this time.  Laura and I drink a recovery drink called Endurox that contains carbs and proteins in the recommended 4 to 1 ratio.  We find it’smuch easier to drink a large number of carbs than eat them immediately after a long ride.  It’s also very easy to have the drink ready at the end of the ride.  Endurox comes in a powdered form that you mix with water.  We premeasure the powder, put it in a baggie, and carry it with us on the ride.  Water is almost always available at ride’s end and we simply mix the powder with fresh water in our water bottle and chug it down.  Although the manufacturer would have you believe otherwise, there’s nothing special about Endurox other than that we like the way it tastes.  A number of companies make recovery drinks that provide huge carbohydrate loads for immediate post-exercise glycogen replacement.

After the critical 30 minute window, try to continue to ingest carbohydrate at regular intervals throughout the remainder of the day.  Eat small amounts steadily rather than eating nothing and then pigging out at dinner.  Avoid alcohol because it will interfere with the uptake of glycogen and will also dehydrate you.  Avoiding alcohol is especially important immediately after the ride when the body is in the critical glycogen restocking period.

What you eat during the 30 minutes after you get off the bike is probably the single most important factor affecting how you will fare if you’re riding more than 90 minutes a day for more than 2 days.  If you get the carbs you need during this 30 minute window, you can ride for days and days without problems; if you don’t, you’re most likely going to be tired and out of energy by the third or fourth day.

For more information about what to eat (and what to avoid eating) after a ride, see Eating After the Ride Part 2.

“Bonking” is what cyclists call hypoglycemia which is the medical term for abnormally low levels of blood glucose.  You bonk when you have exhausted your glycogen stores, haven’t ingested enough carbs to produce more blood glucose, and are still riding the bike.  Anyone can bonk if they don’t eat properly on the bike.  Lance Armstrong, who probably knows as much about cycling as anyone on the planet, got wrapped up in the race on a stage in the 2000 Tour de France, forgot to eat, and bonked on the climb up the Col de Joux Plane in the French Alps.  The only reason he didn’t lose the Tour de France that day is because he had an iron will and an inhuman capacity to suffer.  Afterwards he called it the worst day on the bike he’d ever had.

Bonking can be especially deadly for cyclists because your muscles aren’t the only things in your body that burn glucose for fuel.  Your brain burns glucose too.  That means that not having enough glucose in your blood to fuel the system has mental and emotional effects in addition to physical effects.  If blood glucose levels drop too low, the body will act to protect the brain and will begin to shut down the muscles first.  However, the muscles won’t completely shut down before the brain begins to be affected and the mental and emotional consequences of bonking can be more dangerous to the cyclist than the physical consequences.

When you bonk, physical exertion becomes extraordinarily difficult.  Your muscles don’t have the fuel they need to operate effectively and forcing them to work becomes more and more difficult.  You feel extremely weak and lethargic.  You may tremble and shake uncontrollably and sweat profusely.  You feel dizzy and light headed.  Your sense of balance is upset.  You may have heart palpitations.  You will probably feel ravenously hungry.  On the mental and emotional side you will probably feel nervous and anxious.  You may become confused and disoriented.  You will have low emotional control and will become hostile, belligerant and easily irritated.  You may experience overwhelming feelings of being defeated, hopeless and unable to go on.  Your awareness of what’s going on around you will shrink and can arrive at an extreme form of tunnel vision in which the only thing you’re aware of is the spot on the road ahead that you’re staring at.  You may have difficulty speaking.  At the extreme, hypoglycemia can produce seizures and coma.  In a word, it sucks.

What do you do if you bonk?  You need to get your blood glucose levels up and you need to do it quickly.  Ingest simple carbohydrates that can be rapidly processed into blood glucose by the digestive system.  The best source for these kinds of carbs that you’re likely to have with you on the bike is a sports drink like Gatorade.  Other sources of simple carbohydrates include energy gels (make sure you drink plenty of water with these), sugar cubes or sweet candy like gumdrops or jellybeans.  Complex carbohydrates like energy bars will take longer to process into blood glucose and will only provide relief in the longer term.  If you catch the bonk early, you can keep riding while you  refuel.  If you let the bonk go too far, get off the bike until you recover.  You don’t want to be riding when your sense of balance is bad, you’re disoriented and you’re unaware of what’s going on around you.

After you’ve bonked and begun to recover, pay careful attention to what you eat for the rest of the ride and make sure you keep your glucose level up by regularly and frequently taking in fast absorbing carbs.  Sports drinks are very good for this.  Perhaps the hardest part of reacting to a bonk is mental.  You need to try and be aware that you’re not thinking clearly and not being as aware of what’s going on around you as you need to be to ride safely.  Forcibly arouse yourself from your lethargy and pay extra attention to what’s happening around you.  Of course this is easier said than done; it’s not easy to be aware that you’re not thinking clearly when you’re not thinking clearly. 

Whether you’ve started to bonk or not, try and get in the habit of monitoring yourself for the early signs of a bonk.  The ride beginning to feel like a chore?  Getting irritable and angry?  Not paying as much attention to what’s happening around you?  If you catch it early and replenish your blood glucose before it gets out of hand, you can usually keep riding safely and effectively.  If you have a regular riding partner whose riding abilities and demeanor on the bike are familiar to you, be aware of their condition as well.  A rider who isn’t thinking clearly is likely to misinterpret or misunderstand what’s happening to them in the early stage of a bonk.  Help them out.  Be aware that you may have to treat them carefully as they may be experiencing increased levels of irritability and hostility combined with decreased emotional control.  If you think you might be bonking, tell your ride partner so they can help you.

Most of the time bonking happens when you’ve ridden for a long time and haven’t been eating properly.  However, a bonk can also happen in unexpected circumstances.  Laura and I once rode in a week-long cycling tour through the Rocky Mountains in the Glacier National Park area in Montana and Canada.  We approached this tour as a cycling vacation rather than a training opportunity and rode at a much slower pace than we usually do.  We also stopped and had lunch mid-ride with other riders on the tour which was something we had never done before.  The lunches were great with good company and good food but we had no experience in how to incorporate eating a meal like this into a long ride.  The first time we had lunch mid-ride I completely screwed it up.  We continued riding after lunch and when we were about 20 miles from finishing I began to experience the early stages of a bonk.  What had happened?  I hadn’t pigged out at lunch but even a small lunch was much more than I would typically eat during a ride.  My stomach was full and the idea of eating either didn’t occur to me or, if it did, it wasn’t attractive.  Although my stomach was full, it was full of mostly protein and fat which could not be broken down fast enough to provide the energy I needed to finish the ride.  I was getting very little glucose from the food I’d eaten and my glycogen stores were exhausted so I started to bonk and didn’t recognize it for what it was.  Those last 20 miles were miserable; the temperature had dropped, we were riding directly into a strong headwind, and I was completely demoralized and shivering uncontrollably by the time we reached the lodge where we were scheduled to stay the night.  Fortunately, the lodge had an enormous fire roaring in the center of the main area with a bench-like hearth running around it on all four sides.  While we waited for the van to arrive with our luggage, I sat huddled by the fire in a private little world of misery slowly recovering and getting warm.  The lesson I learned?  You can bonk on a full stomach if your stomach’s full of the wrong things.

As unpleasant and dangerous as bonking can be, the good news is that it’s easily avoided.  Start your clock as soon as you get on the bike and eat regularly and properly throughout the ride and you’ll never have to experience a bonk.  Eat before you’re hungry, eat before you bonk.

As detailed in another post, muscles burn glucose for fuel and the body stores glucose in the form of glycogen which can be broken down into useable glucose when working muscles need an increased fuel supply.  The body can store enough glycogen to support approximately 90 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise.  If you are going to ride more than 90 minutes, or if you are going to experience periods of high intensity riding, such as strenuous hill climbing, on a ride of less than 90 minutes, you are going to need to get glucose to fuel your muscles from food you ingest during the ride. 

What kind of food should you eat?  The answer is well known and well supported by decades of research into endurance athletics.  Carbohydrates.  Why carbohydrates?  Primarily because their chemical structure is such that they can be broken down quickly and efficiently into useable glucose.   Glucose can be derived from fats and proteins as well as carbs and fats might seem to be an especially good source of energy because fats have roughly twice the number of calories as carbs or proteins.  The problem with both fats and proteins is that the process of breaking them down to extract useable glucose takes a long time and is inefficient.  You have to burn more energy to extract glucose from fats than you do to extract it from carbs.  In fact, fat metabolism (the process of breaking the fat down) requires carbohydrate that could have been more efficiently burned for glucose if wasn’t used to break down the fat.  Moreover, and possibly of more importance to you while you’re on the bike, it takes a fairly long time to extract glucose from fat or protein.  If you eat fat or protein loaded food during a ride, the ride may well be over by the time the fats and proteins have been processed to the point where you can get energy from them.  In the meantime, all the energy used in breaking down the fats hasn’t been available for powering the muscles.  Carbs, on the other hand, can be broken down quickly and efficiently to provide the glucose needed to keep going on the bike.  They are absolutely essential for the long-distance cyclist.

Where do you get the carbs you need during a long ride?  Some high-carb foods like pasta and rice are impractical to eat during a ride; you need high carb, low fat foods that you can easily carry with you on the bike.  Good on-the-bike foods include dried fruit like raisins or dates, bagels, and low fat bite-sized cookies.  Energy bars are a terrific source of carbs.  For example, a single Powerbar has 45 grams of carbohydrate and only 2 grams of fat.  There are also energy gels made specifically for endurance athletes such as Power Gel or Goo that have very high doses of carbs.  If you eat high density carb supplements like energy bars or gel, make sure to drink plenty of water with them or they will sit like sludge in your stomach and you won’t get the quick transfer of carbs into blood glucose you need.  Another excellent source of carbs are sports drinks like Gatorade.  These drinks are usually loaded with carbohydrates and although they are marketed as important sources of electrolytes, the carbs they supply are probably of much more importance for the endurance cyclist.

When do you eat?  A common cycling mantra is “Eat before you’re hungry and drink before you’re thirsty”.  This is excellent advice.  By the time the body reacts to low levels of fuel or fluid and sends hunger and thirst signals it’s too late.  Rather than stopping and eating a large amount of food (such as lunch) mid ride, nibble high carb foods frequently throughout the ride.  This not only provides immediate glucose, it can help protect the body’s glycogen stores; if the muscles are burning glucose from the low-fat fig newton you just ate, they’re not burning your stored glycogen.   Try to ingest some carbohydrates every 30 minutes or so.  Start eating during your first hour on the bike.  The sooner you begin drawing needed energy from food intake the longer you can keep a reserve of stored glycogen.

How do you carry the food?  Eating on the bike isn’t easy, especially in the first hour when you probably won’t feel hungry.  Stopping to eat makes eating even more of a hassle which makes it more likely you’ll skip it.  Bad idea.  When pros like the rider in the picture at the top of this post ride in a race, they have feed zones where they pick up a musette bag filled with enough food to get them through the next segment of the race.  You won’t have this luxury so you’ll have to carry nibble food in a fanny pack or your rear jersey pockets and learn to eat while you ride.  Because I don’t like to hassle with getting food out of wrappers or putting uneaten food away while I’m riding, I usually bring bite-sized foods with me on the bike.  If I have something larger like a Powerbar, I cut it up into bite-sized pieces before the ride.  To get at food easily I put it in a baggie and then roll the baggie up without sealing it.  When it’s time for food, I simply unroll the baggie, reach in and pull out something to eat.  No fuss, no muss and no garbage like food wrappers to put away when I’m done.  It takes a surprising amount of practice to get in the habit of eating regularly on the bike.  Practicing eating may sound like a crazy idea but it’s very easy to forget and run into trouble later.  Note the time your ride starts and make yourself nibble some food every 30 minutes.

What’s the best kind of food to eat on the bike?  Disciplining yourself to eat by the clock on the bike is difficult.  It can be a hassle to get out the food, riding with food in your mouth can be unpleasant, and sometimes eating can be the last thing you feel like doing.  For all of these reasons one of the most important considerations when deciding what kind of food you should bring with you on the bike is whether or not you’ll actually eat it when the time comes.  Having some kind of goo, gel or energy bar with you that is marketed as “scientifically proven” to be the optimal energy source for the endurance athlete and is endorsed by famous cyclists is useless if you won’t eat it because you think the stuff tastes like shit or feels disgusting in your mouth.  It’s easy to find an excuse not to eat when you’re on the bike.  Bring food that is mainly carbs but bring food you like.  It’s better to get a little fat with your carbs by eating a low-fat bite sized cookie than getting no carbs at all because the thought of a mouthful of Goo makes you want to puke.  Experiment with different foods to find a combination that is high in carbs and low in fats and proteins that you will eat while you’re on the bike.

Can I have too many carbs?  If you’re going to be ingesting large amounts of carbohydrate during the course of a ride, you should be aware that high concentrations of carbohydrate in the stomach can cause gastrointestinal distress such as nausea.  The more you rely on dense carb sources like gels and energy bars, the more you’re likely to run into this problem.  If you listen to live broadcasts from multi-day stage races like the Tour de France you will frequently hear reports of professional riders that are having gastrointestional problems during the race.  Individuals vary widely in their sensitivity to carbohydrate concentration so you will have to experiment to find your limits.  If you’re feeling nauseous, drink water to reduce the concentration of carbohydrate in your stomach and lengthen your feed time until you feel better.

What happens if I don’t eat?  Ingesting carbs while you’re cycling isn’t always easy and it it isn’t always fun but it’s absolutely necessary if you want to have the energy you need to finish your ride.  Failing to take in the carbs you need can lead to pronounced losses of energy and strength, reduced awareness of what’s going on around you, and increased irritability and hostility, all combined with the feeling that finishing the ride is an unbearable and impossible task.  In other words, you could bonk.  Not eating can turn a pleasant ride into an unpleasant one or a challenging ride into a nightmare.  Eat before you’re hungry and continue eating throughout the ride.

The ride’s over, now what?  If your’re going to ride for two or more days in a row, what you eat iimediately after a ride is as important as what you eat during the ride.  Find out about post-ride recovery here.

While proper nutrition is one of the most important factors affecting long-distance cycling on a day-in, day-out basis, there is so much misinformation out there that knowing what to eat and when to eat it can be difficult.  Part of the reason for this is that it’s early days yet for nutrition science; much remains to be learned and nutritional theories are often revised as new information becomes available.  Another reason is that the subject of sports nutrition is confused in the minds of many with the subject of dieting.  Unfortunately, dieting in the US is a multimillion dollar industry that is fat with fads and outright foolishness.  Finally, many cyclists seem to have a deep emotional commitment to their cycling-related eating habits and resist change.  In these Cycling Nutrition posts I’ll try to present nutritional information that is based on research found in peer-reviewed scientific journals on nutrition and cycling and endurance sports in general.  In this post we look at the basics of how muscles are fueled that underlie every discussion of nutrition for cyclists. In other posts we examine eating during a ride, eating after the ride, and bonking.

Muscles burn glucose for energy.  The longer you ride or the faster you ride, the more glucose your muscles need for fuel.  When you get on the bike and start pedaling, the demand for glucose for your leg muscles increases and a signal goes out to the body to start supplying the glucose you need.

Where does the glucose come from?  The body doesn’t store raw glucose.  Instead, it makes glucose from other substances.  Glucose can be derived from breaking down stored fat and protein.  Subcutaneous fat (the excess fat stored under the skin) is an especially good energy source because fat contains roughly twice the number of calories as either protein or carbohydrate.  This means you get more fuel in the form of blood glucose from breaking down a gram of fat than from a gram of either protein or carbohydrate.  Indeed, breaking down stored fat to increase the level of blood glucose is the reason why exercise leads to weight loss.  The problem with relying on breaking down fat to produce glucose is that the process is relatively slow and energy intensive.  Metabolizing (breaking down) fat can be a useful long term source of energy but it is too slow and inefficient to support immediate and short term demands for glucose to fuel ongoing athletic activity.

In order to have fast access to glucose when needed, excess glucose in the blood is stored in a form known as glycogen.  Glycogen can be quickly broken down to supply glucose as needed.  The main storage locations for glycogen in the body are the muscles and the liver.  Liver glycogen is volatile in the sense that it doesn’t last long.  This is because liver glycogen serves as an energy source for the entire body.  When liver glycogen is metabolized the glucose that is produced enters the blood stream and can be used any place in the body where it’s needed.  If you go to bed with with liver glycogen stored at maximum capacity, a large proportion of it will be gone when when you wake up because it was used to fuel the body’s needs while you slept.

Muscle glycogen is more stable in the sense that once stored it remains in place much longer.  This is because muscle glycogen does not enter the bloodstream.  The glycogen stored in an individual muscle can only provide glucose for that muscle.

So, you’re pedaling along burning glucose derived from glycogen stored in your liver and your cycling muscles and everything’s just peachy.  Until you run out of stored glycogen.  The body can store enough glycogen to support approximately 90 minutes of moderate intensity exercise.  What happens when that glycogen is used up?  Where do your muscles get the glucose they need to keep working?  Some of it can come from fat that has been slowly breaking down while you’ve been riding but that won’t be enough to supply your needs.  Once you’ve exhausted your glycogen stores, most of the glucose you need is going to come from what you’ve been eating and drinking during the ride.  This is where carbohydrates enter the picture.

Basic nutrition for any endurance sport such as cycling is primarily about carbohydrates for the simple reason that carbs can be broken down to supply glucose much more quickly and efficiently than either fats or proteans.  While you’re on the bike you need a steady supply of carbs to both fuel ongoing activity and stretch the time before your stored glycogen is completely exhausted.  When you’re off the bike you need carbs to replace the glycogen you burned during the ride you just finished.  For anyone engaged in an athletic activity that lasts for 90 minutes or more, carbs are what basic nutrition is all about.

The first question you have to ask if you’re going to ride in the road with cars is where in the road you should ride.  People who are not used to riding with traffic are likely to say, “as far away from the traffic as I can get.”  That seems like it makes sense but in most cases it’s exactly the wrong thing to do.  Why is that?  One of the most important things to keep in mind when sharing the road with cars, maybe the most important thing, is that it is absolutely essential that the drivers of the cars see you and be aware of you.  This seems so obvious that you might wonder why it needs to be mentioned at all.  The reason is that drivers generally aren’t looking for cyclists, they’re looking for other cars, and it’s very easy not to be aware of something that’s right in front of you when you’re looking for something else.  To see a terrific example of what I’m talking about, check out this video.  It’s only about a minute long and it’s very cool. . . . .  See what I mean?  You’re already wearing that bright and garish jersey to make yourself more visible to the drivers, you also need to ride where they have a better chance of both seeing you and being aware of you.

So where should you ride?  On the outer (right hand) edge of the driving lane, not on the outer edge of the road near the curb.  Many roads have a solid white line that separates the roadway from the shoulder.  You should ride as close to that white line as you can.  Depending on road conditions and the width of the shoulder, you can ride on either the roadway side of the line with the cars or the shoulder side of the line but you should try to stay close to the line.  It’s also a good idea not to get in the habit of riding directly on the line.  Road markings are usually made using a plastic or epoxy based paint and they get slippery when wet.  You’re more likely to have your wheels suddenly go out from under you on a wet road when you’re riding over the painted lines on the road.  If you get in the habit of riding directly on the painted line in dry conditions, you’re likely to unthinkingly ride on the painted line when the road is wet as well.  Practice riding to either side of the line.

On a road with a paved shoulder of even a few feet, the closer you ride to the outside edge of the roadway, the further you move away from the area of the road the driver is watching.  The drivers may be able to see you but they will be less likely to be aware of you.  In addition, the closer you get to the edge of the roadway the more likely you are to run into road debris like stones, rocks, gravel, sand, sticks, glass, garbage, bits and pieces of metal and other junk that has been swept to the side of the road by rain and passing cars.  Riding through this stuff is dangerous and you want to avoid it whenever possible. 

Unless a road is extremely narrow, traffic lanes are usually wide enough for a car to comfortably pass you when you are riding on the road side of the line.  On roads with virtually no paved shoulder like the one in the picture at the left, you have no choice but to ride on the road side of the line.  However, even this country road is wide enough that passing shouldn’t be a problem.  If there is no line at the side of the road, ride near the outer edge of the roadway but not so close to the edge that you’re having to weave in and out of the traffic lane in order to avoid road debris.

When you’re riding down a street that has an occasional car parked along the side you want to avoid the temptation to weave out to pass the car and then drop back in toward the curb once the parked car is behind you.  When you drop in toward the curb the parked car is blocking you from the field of view of drivers who are behind you.  If there are several parked cars spaced at intervals along the side of the road, a rider who weaves in and out to pass the cars is popping in and out of the driver’s field of vision and this can be very dangerous for the cyclist.  The solution is to ride far enough into the road to pass the parked cars and stay there.  When approaching a parked car, try and see if there is someone sitting in the car who might open a driver’s side door and hit you as you go by.  People rarely look for cyclists when they’re getting out of their car and this type of collision happens more often than you might think.

Riding near the line is only part of what you can do to maximize your safety when sharing the road with cars. How you ride the line is also important.  You want to ride a smooth, steady line without weaving back and forth.  There are several reasons for this.  If you’re weaving around you may be pulling out of the driver’s zone of awareness when you go one way and into the line of traffic when you go the other.  Another benefit of riding a smooth, straight line is that it gives the driver coming up behind you confidence that you know what you’re doing so that they can reliably predict where you’re going to be when they pass you.  Think about what’s it’s like when you’re driving and come up behind a cyclist.  If the bike rider is wobbling all over the place, passing them can be a nerve-wracking experience.  If they’re riding straight and sure, passing is usually no problem.

Holding to a straight, sure line when you ride is a valuable skill for the road cyclist to have for many reasons and one of the best ways to practice this skill is by riding the line along the side of the road.  Part of this skill involves learning to turn and look back over your shoulder to see what’s behind you without straying from your straight line.  When you turn to look over your shoulder, there’s a tendency to drift in the direction you’re looking which means drifting into the line of traffic.  You can practice line riding skills like looking over your shoulder when you’re riding the line and there’s no traffic behind you.

Remember that the drivers don’t want to hit you almost as much as you don’t want to be hit.  You can make their job easier and increase your level of safety by riding the line in a straight, smooth and sure fashion.

If you are new to cycling the first thing you need to do when thinking about wearing cycling clothes is forget about what you look like.  Well-designed cycling clothes are skin tight and very few people look good in skin tight clothes.  Your ass is fat, your thighs are fat, your stomach and hips are fat and there’s no hiding any of it in cycling shorts.  Don’t worry about it.  It’s not about how you look, it’s about how you ride.

Cycling shorts aren’t absolutely necessary but they are strongly recommended.  When considering the benefits provided by cycling shorts it’s important to think about what’s going on with your legs, ass and crotch when you’re riding.  You spend most of your time on the bike seated on the saddle with your legs pumping up and down.  Every up-and-down motion produces friction and rubbing where your ass, crotch and thighs are in contact with the saddle.  The typical recommendation for road riders is to try and maintain a cadence of 85 to 105 revolutions per minute.  Say you’re a new rider, however and are riding at a cadence of 60.  That means your legs are going up and down 3600 times during an hour of riding.  A tiny amount of rubbing or chafing where your body meets the saddle that would be unnoticeable when repeated one or two hundred times can develop into raw, abraded skin that can range from uncomfortable to very painful after thousands of repetitions.  Keep in mind that 3600 repetitions of the same movment is a conservative estimate.  Two hours on the bike at a cadence of 90 produces 10,800 repetitions.

Cycling shorts are designed to minimize or eliminate chafing and rubbing.  Regular pants and shorts usually have a seam that runs front-to-back through the crotch.  If you ride wearing regular clothing this seam will produce rubbing and chafing and will put extra pressure on sensitve areas in the crotch.  Cycling shorts also have a seam down the center but the rider is protected by padding on the inside of the shorts.  Good cycling shorts will have a padded crotch that is usually supplemented with additional padding on the sit bones (the bones in the pelvis that bear much of the rider’s weight when properly seated on a bicycle saddle).  The padding not only cushions the rider but protects from abrasions caused by the seams in the shorts.

The skin tight fit of the shorts is also designed to eliminate chafing.  Loose fitting shorts can crease or bunch up between the rider and the saddle.  Every tiny crease can produce raw, abraded skin.  Loose shorts or pants will also introduce an additional source of friction and rubbing as the material of the clothing slides and moves between the rider and the saddle.  Bicycle shorts are designed to be skin tight to eliminate these two problems.  They are too tight to crease and bunch up and they are too tight to slide between the rider and the seat. 

Cycling shorts also fill an additional and very important function – they wick moisture away from the skin.  Think about what the environment is like in your crotch while you’re riding.  Hot, wet and dark.  Germs love this environment, they thrive there.  If you ride even semi-regularly it’s virtually impossible to completely avoid some degree of chafing.  Infection can turn a slight abrasion that is no more than a minor, short-lived irritant into a nightmare.  Cycling shorts are the single best thing you can do to prevent this from happening.

Cycling shorts cover a broad price range from the very cheap to the very expensive.  Like all cycling gear, I expect you reach a point of rapidly diminishing returns before you get to the most expensive shorts.  That being said, I wear fairly expensive shorts because I’ve had my crotch torn up by wearing cheap, poorly fitting shorts on a long ride.  That’s a mistake you only make one time.  There’s no particular brand or model that can be recommended to everyone because comfort depends on how the construction of the short matches up with the rider’s anatomy.  Shorts come in men’s and women’s models but some women wear men’s shorts and vice-versa because it’s more comfortable.  It doesn’t matter what the manufacturer calls it, it matters how comfortable you are wearing it.

When you buy shorts, start by following the manufacturer’s recommendations vis-a-vis size and fit.  Remember that a little too tight is better than a little too loose.  You wear cycling shorts without underwear.  In most cases underwear will completely defeat most of the benefits cycling shorts are designed to provide: underwear has abraiding seams, it holds moisture rather than wick it away, and it produces slippage and extra friction between the rider and the saddle.  Even if you wear underwear that you think doesn’t have these problems, don’t wear it with cycling shorts.  Never wear unwashed shorts, there are germs in there just waiting to attack your crotch.  Wash the shorts after every use

Cycling jerseys are not as essential as shorts but they are very useful.  They’re designed to be form fitting for two reasons.  Like shorts, they’re made of a wicking material that draws moisture away from the rider’s torso.  This plays a very important role in keeping the rider cool.  When you exercise you generate heat and the body works hard (and burns calories) to shed this heat in order to keep core body temperature within a safe range.  Sweating is an essential part of this process.  When the sweat evaporates it helps cool the body.  Form fitting clothing that wicks the sweat away from the skin surface facilitates evaporation and hence cooling.  More efficient cooling helps to prevent dehydration from excessive sweating and dehydration can be deadly.  Literally, deadly. 

The second reason jerseys are form fitting is to reduce air resistance.  The faster you go, the greater proportion of the energy you’re expending is being used to overcome air resistance.  Loose fitting clothing increases air resistance and at higher speeds can make cycling much more difficult than it needs to be.

In many ways the most important function served by the jersey is related to safety for cyclists who share the road with cars.  Bright, loud jerseys are designed to attract attention.  Specifically, they’re designed to make the rider easier to see by someone who is driving a car.  Far and away the most important source of danger facing the cyclist who rides with traffic of any kind is that the driver doesn’t see the cyclist.  Jerseys are designed to help overcome this problem.  When choosing a jersey, don’t pick colors or patterns that blend in with your surroundings.  Be loud.  It’s not about how you look, it’s about not being hit by a car.

An undergarment or base layer can be worn under a jersey and often should be if cycling in cool or cold conditions.  The undershirt should be skin tight and made of a wicking material.  Don’t wear a cotton t-shirt under a jersey.  Likewise, sports bras that wick are good, regular bras that don’t wick are not.

It used to be that all cycling jerseys were cut pretty much the same way.  Recently, however, jersey manufacturers have begun producing different jerseys for the American and European markets.  In Europe where cycling is much more popular than it is in the US and many more people both ride and are knowledgeable about cycling, jerseys are cut the way they’ve always been.  For the US market where people tend to be less knowledgeable about cycling, fatter, and more concerned with how they look on the bike, jereseys are often cut more full in the waist.   If the description of the jersey says soomething like “European cut” this is what they’re talking about.

While neither are as essential as a cycling helmet, cycling shorts and jerseys serve very useful and important functions.  Of the two, the shorts are more important for making the ride more comfortable and for keeping you on the bike longer today and making it easier to get back on the bike tomorrow.  They’re not designed to make you look good, they’re designed to make your ride easier, safer and more enjoyable.