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Most endurance athletes think in terms of fueling primarily with carbohydrates, whether complex or simple, whether sourced from grains, fruits, veggies or plain old sugar; when most coaches and athletes think about fuel, they think first about carb intake. That doesn't mean we don't value fat as a fuel, I think most endurance athletes understand that training and racing for periods longer than a couple of hours can only be accomplished because our bodies source substantial energy from burning fat stores, but we tend to think in terms of 'sparing glycogen' more than 'metabolizing fat'.

At shorter distances and in competitions lasting 2 hours or less this may indeed be the entire story. Trained athletes typically store enough carbohydrate (in the form of glycogen) in the musculature and liver to sustain about 90 minutes of activity at high output, and certainly, the highest-output efforts -- sprinting, hill climbing, taking your turn at the head of the pace-line, etc can only be fueled by going into anaerobic (i.e. burning glycogen) output zones. We are mostly also well versed in how to fuel to restore glycogen reserves, and how to do so rapidly for days with multiple scheduled workouts.

Take-away: -- It is possible to train the body to burn fat stores at 70% effort levels this is aided by increasing intake of (healthy) fats

Riding a bike without hands on the bars is illegal so you shouldn't do it ... I say the Man can stick it, there are good reasons and times when you want to ride with hands-off the bars.

Safety-tip Don't try or practice this on a bike that's not in good alignment, in or around traffic in high winds or a crosswind, on rough road surfaces, or riding in close-quarters with a group!

Here are some reasons to ride hands-off:

• Opening the hip angle and fully shifting weight to sit-bones will ease fatigue
• fully straightening the spine will ease fatigue
• You can add/remove gloves, open energy bars etc
• You can eat/drink more comfortably
• You can take in the surroundings

Reasons to fixed gear & SS, pros/cons

Fixed gear and single speed bikes have seen a big resurgence in the last 5-10 years, They're popular as simple, easy to maintain transportation and they're certainly the rides that today have the biggest 'cool factor'.

Simplicity is the biggest common element between fixed and SS bikes. Derailleur bikes need a whole lot of cleanup after riding in rain or snow, the absence of derailleurs, cassette/freewheel and associated cabling greatly simplifies maintenance.

Road cyclists favor fixies, especially in the off season because they require the rider to work in a higher gear up hills and force them to spin faster riding down, this builds strength and smoothness at high cadence.

Rapidly available carbohydrates are a keystone of endurance training and performance. Nearly all specialty nutrition suppliers are using one or another form of sugar polymers which have the advantage over simple sugars of allowing absorption of more calories per hour than simpler sugars, while still not requiring the additional digestion time associated with starches (the most common form is malto-dextrose from brown rice syrup).

Small or single serving sports nutrition products offer athletes of all types highly convenient energy, however it comes at a price both economic and environmental. 100 calories of energy in Gel form costs about $1.00-1.50, single-serving drink mix packets run about the same and every serving includes non-recyclable packaging.

Bought in bulk, the same products come down significantly in price, Cytomax (which happens to be what I use) runs $0.42 per serving. However, if this still sounds expensive it is; brown rice syrup costs $0.25 per 100 calorie serving at Whole Foods, honey is a similar cost and plain sugar (organic) is $0.14 per 100 calories.

I train about 500 hours per year and averaging an intake of about 100 calories per hour during training, I certainly would rather be getting that fuel for less than the $500 it would cost if I used primarily single-serving sources.

Supplements, of course include more than just calories, nearly all include electrolytes, most include some vitamins and anti-oxidants. I already have sources I like for vitamins and antioxidants, however when I mix my own nutrition, I do need to add electrolytes. Of course plain salt is trivially cheap, but I prefer to get the potassium, magnesium, calcium etc that are included in something like Nuun or Hammer's Enduralytes.

So I mostly train using my own mix. I use drink mix as a base because frankly un-flavored Malto-dextrose or malt sugars are pretty seriously unpleasant. Typically I mix up 1/3 drink mix, 1/3 brown rice syrup and 1/3 sugar along with the additional electrolytes I've found I need to avoid muscle cramping. Using Hammer's Enduralytes powder is cheap enough, althogh I've also gone with table salt in a pinch. I put as many calories as I need of this mix into one bottle. A second and sometimes also a third bottle carried in a jersey pocket are filled with plain water which is more refreshing and also allows me to only need to do bottle exchanges for plain water on a race course.

I've been able to nearly eliminate the use of gels this way. When I go into the mountains I will go with just drink mix because I can carry it dry in a Nalgene or doubled ziploc bags and mix it as-needed. I don't like bulk gel containers in the mountains because if they leak they're incredibly hard to clean up. For long training rides, centuries or races, I mix up a concentrate as described above, but with 600-1200 calories in a single bottle, however this will ferment if you try to prepare it more than a day in advance, don't try!

I find it hard to dial in the right amount of electrolytes when training. The first time I became aware that there was a problem was in the '07 Mooseman Olympic when I was beginning to experience cramping in my calves and quads by the end of the bike leg and after finishing the run, my hamstrings got into the act also so that for an hour or so my legs were trying to cramp in both directions at once -- not good.

Until then I'd been hydrating with alternating bottles of Cytomax™ and water, which gave me about all the carbohydrate I could absorb, I'd experience some issues with cramps in training but written it off to muscle fatigue. After the painful post-mooseman experience I started adding more electrolytes to the mix and found that my problems with cramping had passed.

This fall I had a routine physical and checked in with my doctor about my tendency to experience passing out when I stand up during periods when I'm training hardest. I've always written it off to my relatively low blood pressure and heart rate. The doc suspected insufficient hydration / blood volume but we ruled that out because I routinely check my weight after training to ensure that I'm hydrating well enough. What she suggested is that I'm down on electrolytes. Since then I've further upped the amount of salt I take in when training and I think I can say that this is addressing the problem ... a happy thing as needing to be frequently cautious about the simple act of standing up gets tiresome.

How to manage hydration requirements

The first thing is to measure your sweat rate, this will vary depending on exertion levels and the weather conditions you're training in, so do check in a variety of circumstances. It's a simple thing, just get on the scale before you head out and then again when you're done.
([start weight]+[water intake]-[finish weight])/[time training] = sweat rate.
I lose something north of 3lbs per hour of water when going hard in high temperatures, given that, it probably shouldn't have taken me so long to figure out that while I was hydrating fine, I was losing more salt than I was replacing.

live and learn :-)

Usually I talk about bike repair and safety here but this week I'm thinking about training, so here goes.

I think all endurance athletes fully understand the need to fuel with preferably organic, high-nutrient foods, lean proteins, highly-colored veggies etc. We also understand the need for active recovery to build the muscles that we're developing in training.

One of the keys to repairing the damage done in training and accelerating recovery is ensuring that your body has a healthy supply of antioxidants. Endurance training creates significant stress on the body in the form of free radicals, which are damaging to cellular membranes, antioxidants are responsible for cleaning up these free radicals.

See the full article for ways to get antioxidant's in your regular diet as well as ideas on supplements ->>