AZT, I am nothing without her.

For me to get a high or max heart rate, I need adrenaline, competition and fresh legs. The other factor is cadence. A slower cadence climbing equals lower heart rate. Hence, heart rate is a very rough to poor indicator of anything other than how fast your heart is beating. Heart rate trends over time are more relevant and how you feel very important.

I attended a racing club meeting last night and we had a speaker from Echelon Grand Fondo. They promote a couple of very cool local Grand Fondos. After his sales pitch, he talked about nutrition, weight loss and cycling. Here we have a skinny bike racer talking to a bunch of skinny bike racers on how to lose another 10 pounds. Anyway, you got the picture.

The key takeaway was do not eat for at least 3 hours before you ride. If you get up in the morning and are going on a ride or race, you do not need to eat anything and it is better if you do not. Just drink water and eat 200 calories per hour on the bike. Cyclists eat way to much. There is no eating after 8PM at night and absolutely no alcohol after 8PM. Isn't that special.

This is not the first time I heard the do not eat anything in the morning before cycling. We got the same lecture from a nutritionist who plans meals for RAAM. The theory is when you wake up in the morning, you are fully stocked and you have plenty of glycogen for a couple of hours. If you do not eat anything, the body selects fat burning and is very efficient. And there is no blood diverted for digestion leaving more available for power production.

This morning I did a track workout and decided not to eat anything. I was a little hungry at first but it passed and I did my efforts with minimal caloric intake. I must admit, I felt pretty good and the efforts seemed easy although they were not.