161–170 of 253 posts
> "The food I make is all transparent," says (chef) Blandy. "There are no rich sauces, it's all plain, simple cooking with a light amount of seasoning, light amount of oil, fresh herbs and citrus. That’s some top-notch nominative determinism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
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At the top level - which is pretty much the definition of a tour winner - grams make the difference between a win and loss, so of course they will not be riding steel. I'm not at top level and never will be. If I want to go faster there are many things I can do that are more effective than playing what my bike is made out of.
Somewhat. UCI has a minumum weight (6.8kg) for bikes and often teams have to add weights to their bikes to hit the minimum limit. You easily get lighter bikes but your bike needs to be 6.8kg to be race legal. It certainly limits how many bits and bobs on the bike get switched over to using titanium or carbon fiber.
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>> The cheeseburger calls to us all. One my trainers when I was in college told me that when you crave foods, its not your lack of willpower, its actually your body telling you it needs certain nutrients. He told me when you crave chocolate its because your body needs carbs, so if you get some carbs, your chocolate cravings will go away. I'm guessing the idea you crave a cheeseburger is the same thing, his body was i…
Someone told me once that food cravings are often driven by our gut's bacteria. We eat what they want us to eat.
Nowadays, some riders use glucose monitoring devices during training with relation to how long it takes from ingesting and getting into blood. They are now measuring more and more things, and food is a crucial role. Glucose monitoring is banned during races, but I guess that is why you don't see some cyclist collapsing like as 15 years ago is because they understand their glucose levels. For sure, doping it's still a…
I haven't been a cyclist since about the time that the market of energy drinks first exploded. And at the time there were a number of articles that said that really all you need is Gatorade, that most of these new drinks were advertising more calories per liter, but Gatorade was already tested out on absorption rates and dialed in to the maximum calories per liter of water that the average human stomach can absorb. T…
I don’t think modern professional cyclists even can ride at 20 miles an hour ;-)
20 miles an hour didn’t win you the Tour de France in 1950. Nowadays, with better tech, better training, and shorter stages, you have to do over 25 miles an hour to win it, and the last rider in the general classification easily is within 10% of that.
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the long history of cheating at the highest levels of every sport indicates that if there is not mechanical doping in cycling, it's because the mechanical technology is not as good at hiding yet as it needs to be. We are talking about human beings here.
I really, really want someone to commercialize the mechanical doping tech they've been using. Get caught and go straight please. Give me a bike that looks like a normal bike and gives mere mortals like me an extra 5 mph (power law makes that a lot worse for pros).
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I really, really want someone to commercialize the mechanical doping tech they've been using. Get caught and go straight please. Give me a bike that looks like a normal bike and gives mere mortals like me an extra 5 mph (power law makes that a lot worse for pros).
That's basically already a thing. There's a big market for older riders who want a little bit of discreet assistance on their group ride. https://www.orbea.com/us-en/ebikes/road/gain/
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It's a bit of both. If you're an athlete being tested at that level, you have to keep your country's antidoping agency informed of your whereabouts at all times. They will randomly send testers to wherever you are and you have a short time window, like 1-3 hours to show up. If you no-show 3 times (I think) it counts as a positive test and you're banned. I really don't know how someone could run in the trials with too…
The athlete may have had a third failed test, but still had time to protest that. There have been examples where athletes filed changes to their schedule, but doping authorities missed those and ended up at the wrong place for a random test, for example. (Having to file your whereabouts is horrendous, by the way. https://www.wada-ama.org/en/athletes-support-personnel/provi... : “RTP athletes are required to provide t…
More likely you're young, mad fit, and have some energy you want to burn off with a friend. You've heard about the Olympic Village.
No way do I want to tell some official whose apartment I'm visiting.
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>> The cheeseburger calls to us all. One my trainers when I was in college told me that when you crave foods, its not your lack of willpower, its actually your body telling you it needs certain nutrients. He told me when you crave chocolate its because your body needs carbs, so if you get some carbs, your chocolate cravings will go away. I'm guessing the idea you crave a cheeseburger is the same thing, his body was i…
Someone told me once that food cravings are often driven by our gut's bacteria. We eat what they want us to eat.
There's certainly circumstantial evidence that's true.
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Seconded, there is no clear line between banned drugs that help you cheat and drugs that fix medical conditions. There are drugs that are allowed if you have a doctor's note, and there are drugs that you can use only up to a certain amount. Asthma meds for cycling, some of which are steroids, are one of the more popular examples: https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/the-truth-abo...
WADA rules do not ban a drug just because it is performance enhancing. Otherwise caffeine would be banned. Two out of three factors have to be present to ban a drug: - be performance enhancing - present a health risk - violate the spirit of sport The third one is a bit harder to define but there is a WADA code defining the spirit of sport. Most banned drugs are banned because of the first two.
> - be performance enhancing - present a health risk - violate the spirit of sport
There also are drugs banned that mask the use of performance enhancing drugs. You could call that “violate the spirit of the sport”, but that’s so vague a term it could cover anything.
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I haven't been a cyclist since about the time that the market of energy drinks first exploded. And at the time there were a number of articles that said that really all you need is Gatorade, that most of these new drinks were advertising more calories per liter, but Gatorade was already tested out on absorption rates and dialed in to the maximum calories per liter of water that the average human stomach can absorb. T…
There are multiple kinds of carbohydrate and the differences can matter. Gatorade’s ingredients list shows sucrose (glucose+fructose) and dextrose (glucose). Maltodextrin is isotonic in a 6x stronger solution than fructose and glucose. This means you need to drink meaningfully less water during a race to digest maltodextrin. So do we want all maltodextrin? Nope! Fructose can be absorbed by a separate pathway, which i…
It turns out though that maltodextrin didn't exist in manufactured quantities until the mid 1970's, which was after Gatorade was a national brand. That they never changed their formula is disappointing but maybe not surprising (especially after Quaker Oats bought them in '83)
But none of the 'sports drinks' that Coca Cola and friends were pumping out in the 90's had maltodextrin in them to my knowledge. It was just more sucrose and glucose, so its star fell a bit more recently.
Do you know when the isotonic research was done? I don't have any recollection of that being even mentioned in the tests I talked about.
Also maltodextrins are made from wheat in Europe and a problem for celiacs.