Living and riding in the Pacific Northwest wet winter weather, my family sets up trainers in the sun room to start indoor spin season. I catch up on watching race coverage while turning the cranks. While watching professional road races, I …
Category: Nutrition
Diet Tips for Cyclists & Endurance Athletes [Four Complete Fueling Plans for Success]
Nutrition can make or break an athlete’s performance. For the best chance of success in cycling and other endurance activities, different eating regimens are appropriate at different times. Athletes will utilize the following four basic eating plans: Different foods and …
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Notes for the Gravel-Curious Cyclist
This year, admittedly bored with a Virginia/Maryland road racing calendar featuring a dozen races I had done at least a dozen times already, I decided to focus on a gravel grinder. The 72-mile Gravel Race Up Spruce Knob (GRUSK) over …
Is Your Relationship with Food Undermining Your Athletic Goals?
Relationships with food are complex, particularly for athletes. Adequate and ideal nutrition for health, appearance, and performance can suffer when the focus primarily is on reaching a fixed “ideal” body weight. While a high power-to-weight ratio is essential for success …
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How to Support an Athlete Who May Be Vulnerable to an Eating Disorder
As coaches and friends of endurance athlete, we need to be aware of the ways in which discussions of weight-optimization can trigger eating disorders in vulnerable individuals. Weight loss can lead to improved performance in some athletes in some disciplines, …
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2017 Holiday Eating Survival Guide for Athletes
When fitness goals are only one of your many priorities, social eating around the holidays can be a challenge to your ideal training and athletic body weight. Having well-defined, motivating goals can help avoid excess and junk food, but even with …
Healthy Weight Loss Part I: Shedding Fat to Make Race Weight
For a cyclist, appropriate weight is just as important as aerobic fitness, strength and skills. However, many riders under-perform in hilly races because they carry too much body mass. They hope to ride off their excess weight in time for …
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It’s Okay to Make a New Year’s Weight Loss Resolution
So many people approach the New Year with diet resolutions that it often becomes a joke, with the long-term fitness crowd viewing their gyms and classes full of “resolutioners” as a temporary annoyance before those folks give up on their …
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Discipline: Good and Bad Habits and Why We Mess Up
It’s 9 p.m. on Friday. Mary got home from a long workweek several hours ago, had a quick dinner and showered. She’s ready for bed. She’s also excited about a club ride she’ll be attending for the first time early …
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Diet Soda Makes People Fat. Here’s Why.
Here’s an interesting bit of science. There are taste receptors that are sensitive to “sweet” substances in the intestine (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070820175426.htm). They are similar to the ones on your tongue. When the intestinal receptors interact with sugar in consumed foods, they …
Defining a Meal vs a Snack
As you continually optimize your fueling needs for performance and daily energy demands, chances are that your main meals just aren’t going to be enough to get you through the day happily and productively. That’s where snacks come in. Let’s …
Tips for Weight Loss Success
Performance in most sports depends on getting your body weight into an optimum range. While some athletes need to gain weight to get to that range, the need for weight loss is much more common. Weight loss success for athletes …
Understanding the Rate of Weight Loss for Athletes
Question: What is reasonable weight loss within an active racing season where a rider is racing 1-2 times per weekend? Answer: If you are within 15 pounds of your target weight, aim for consistent weight loss of about ½-1 pound per …
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Hey Coach, How Can I Climb Faster?
The fastest climbers may not always be the fastest Granfondo riders or the winningest racers, but climbing speed is an honest measure of fitness. You don’t make a good time on a long climb by sucking wheels or otherwise taking …
Post-Ride Recovery
Over the years, watching hundreds of athletes train, it’s become clear that for most, the limiter for performance is how much training they can handle. The upper limit is not based purely on how many hours they have available to …