Originally Posted by
Dropp
Good day, everyone! I wanted to get your opinions on what foods are appropriate for a Clydesdale who just had his first day out riding. In grand and careless fashion, I ended up with zero energy and dizziness due to that fact that no food was consumed before hand. A light ride turned quickly brutal as my energy plummeted. I was too excited to begin and was careless. The morning could have ended badly. Thankfully, my riding partner was there to see me safely back.
I attributed this to low sugar. Considering I am a Clydesdale who is not so aerodynamic around the midsection, just amping up on sugar heavy products does not seem wise. Eating the carb gear that athletes chew on does not seem appropriate either. I don't mind snatching a HyperPro ExtremeX Flavor Nugget from my man-pouch and sink my teeth into it if that is in fact what is required. My nutritional knowledge is good, but only in the realm of weight-loss, not for maintaining the necessary energy to sustain activity of this nature. My cycling friend tells me I need to up my sugars and get the spike... AND then ride. BUT everything I have been told shows that sugar... simple sugar... is no good for me. There is a lot to go over, I am sure. I will just leave it at that. What do you all recommend for a heavy Clyde before a ride?
I did not jump into this first day of riding without some prep. I managed to lose 65 lbs. and rebuild some of my endurance through basic activity (ie walking, walking faster, and just a bit more walking). My friend, a century rider himself, encouraged me and kept the notion fresh that one day I could be doing that very thing.
The pains will be plenty, but my tummy takes priority on my Clydesdale To-Do list... for now.
Thank you again for your time and answers.
This is probably elsewhere, and the info has been around for a donkeys age, this is the simple version, you could take 25 pages to explain it using lots of scientific and medical terms, but requires a doctorate of science (biology) to understand. There are really 2 fuels for the human body, glucose, there are tiny amounts in various tissues and the blood, it burns like dry paper though, and you can use up what you have very quickly, there is a reserve tank in the liver where long chains of it are stored and called glycogen, and when your sugar gets low, the liver splits some off and sends it into the blood, when there is too much the liver puts these chains together using the hormone insulin. The other fuel is fat, it burns very slowly and needs a small amount of glucose to burn at all. When the liver's tank of glycogen runs out, you get what is called The Bonk, runners call it The Wall. The key in all this is balance, you want to eat enough that your glucose stores are kept up enough to continue functioning, but not enough to end up storing it as fat. A half a cup of nuts and dried fruit once in a while is probably sufficient.
Now there is another point in all this, hydration, you need to make sure, while riding that you drink at least 1L of
WATER per hour. Most bike bottles are 750ml, so a bottle and a third in cool weather (temps below 20℃/68℉), the warmer it is, the more you drink. You should be pretty much double that at 30℃/84℉, often dehydration will offer similar symptoms to running out of glycogen.