Skating and bonking

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 19:26:04 -0500, "Eddy Rapid"
wrote:


"John Forrest Tomlinson" wrote

Quaker's Chewy Dips Chocolate Fudge granola bars

What kind of fat do they have in them?

Oh all the coconut oil, hydrogenated, transfat stuff that you get any
regular candy bar like O-Henry's and such, and would surely kill you, sooner
or later, if you lived on a constant diet of the chocolate fudge bars... But
I don't.

It's easy to make light of trans fats, but it's unwise to eat them.
Natural fats are all well-and-good (I have ham for breakfast often and
lust for real chocolate) but that artificial stuff is bad news for
health and possiby for performace. At the very least, if you're going
to recommend someone eat more fat, suggest they eat the good kinds.

Of grocery store bars that don't freeze too hard, Entenmann's
Multigrain Cereal bars in the chocolate flavor get their fat from
chocolate and regular (not hydrogenated) vegetable oil and are a
better choice if you crave solids in a race.

JT

PS- There are many fatty and tasty candy bars available without
hydrogenated oils in them.

Though theoretically I agree that herringbone skate has a role in getting up
steep hills, and I used to do it a lot, now that I've refined my V1 offset
skate, I never find myself wanting to do herringbone skate any more.
Vordenberg mentioned it in an article during the last year or two, so I
tried it again once, but it didn't feel like it solved any problem.

Levi wrote
Why not master the "herringbone skate"?

I agree that it avoids needing to _learn_ the complexity of the asymmetric
coordination of all the V1 offset motions.

But once I've learned both, what's the key special advantage of making two
separate single-pole pushes versus one double-pole push in each full
stroke-cycle? Perhaps the unique niche of herringbone skate in the
speed-power-fatigue spectrum is so _narrow_ that it's not worth practicing
for me. Seems like I've found less than one good use for it in the past
year or two.

Non-skate herringbone -- on a really steep hill I still do that sometimes.
And two guys right in front of me on the Penguin climb started doing it, so
I copied them just to go with the flow and not get into a tangle.

Onno Oerlemans wrote
Anyway, when I switched to herringbone on very steep
hills, I found that I'd automatically revert back to my
regular skate within 10 seconds or so.

Me too on the Penguin climb. After a few strokes following those guys in
their herringbone, some part of me would impatiently switch to a few strokes
of V1 skate.

So maybe that's the true "missing granny gear" -- mixed alternation between
non-skate herringbone and V1 offset.

Or how about V1 for 10-15 seconds, then just stop and rest for 10 seconds,
then another round of V1 skate?

Ken

BT,

The trick is to pre-warm it in the oven before the race and re-shape
into sausage form before taking it out in the cold :-)

(sknyski) wrote in message news:
And, I just haven't gotten the hang of warming a powerbar under my
windbriefs, yanking it out, and sticking it in my mouth. Probably
never will.

bt

"John Forrest Tomlinson" wrote:

It's easy to make light of trans fats, but it's unwise to eat them.

I agree. My own regular diet is generally quite low in animal fats, and I
try to avoid trans fats in particular.

However, I do think that a reasonable diet is a it's a matter of degree.
These bars, and bacon, work well for me on long cold skis. As mentioned, I
don't eat enough of these for it to be a worry to me as a percentage of my
total diet.

Parham.

Yes. And if I'd kept skiing much maybe I could kept it, too. Have
gotten very little on-snow time in the last few years since the twins
were born. They turned 3 yesterday. I don't think I've skated at
all this season or last and only once or twice the year before that.

We have managed to get out several times this year and last pulling
the kids in the pulks we got mail order from Gearwest. All classic.
The last couple times even on no-wax skis, something we hadn't used
in many, many years. On the other hand it's skiing and it burns
plenty of calories. The kids are finally getting interested in going
out on their little LL Bean skis. My daughter always gets mad because
I won't let her use ski poles. :-) But she still enjoys it.

Jeff, how is your "lose 10 pounds" goal coming? My goals you might
remember were 1. lose 10 pounds, and 2. lose 10 more pounds, and I
was looking to challenge you to see who could lose their 10 first.
I darn near declared victory over you back in December when I just
touched the 10-pound mark but then the holidays came and then a few
more rounds of sinus infections that took me out of commission and
I gained a lot of it back! Now I'm getting regular exercise again
(mostly bike commuting) and am down about 5 from my starting point.

Am starting to see some light coming through the tunnel. It looks
like I can probably get back into a somewhat regular training routine
this year, and maybe even start getting back into racing again next
winter. After the 12-week layoff following my wrist surgery at the
end of next month that is...

-Mitch


On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Jeff Potter wrote:

Yeah gentle skiing is very rewarding. Pays off bigtime. I think that's what JD
was pushing us about: he said we can all drool and hammer. He wanted us to ski
SLOW and in control and nicely...a lot more often. Boy, it really helped me
break thru the uphills in marathons. If I'd kept skiing much I coulda kept that
feel going. Now I'm only just now getting it again, and losing it again. Don't
skate much. It's a BIG feel thing.

Mitch Collinsworth wrote:

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Ken Roberts wrote:

I've spent the last month or two working on skating _slow_ up hills. It's
something that can be practiced, and there are some special technique

At least in my experience, when I *finally* took the time to do this,
I found my technique greatly improved at race pace as well. I was
able to ski faster with less effort. Or ski even faster when really
pushing hard. Too bad it took so many years of banging my head against
the proverbial wall to finally figure this out.

--

Jeff Potter
****
*Out Your Backdoor * http://www.outyourbackdoor.com
publisher of outdoor/indoor do-it-yourself culture...
...offering "small world" views on bikes, bows, books, movies...
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wrote:

And, I just haven't gotten the hang of warming a powerbar under my
windbriefs, yanking it out, and sticking it in my mouth. Probably
never will.

Hmm... Haven't tried this either, but the obvious bits seem to be:

1. Wear a 2-piece ski suit or you'll have trouble getting
anything into or out of your windbriefs.

2. Put the powerbar in there while it's still warm. Don't
wait until after it's already frozen. (!)

3. Might want to leave the wrapper on until you're ready
to eat it.


:-)


Reminds me of the hot summer bike race years ago when powerbars had
first come out. I'd never even seen them before. It was going to be
a long hot day and some guy had the bright idea to bring powerbars
along for his race food. He even thought to unwrap them before-hand
so he wouldn't have to fight with the wrappers in the middle of the
race. Then he wrapped the bare powerbars around his handlebars so
they were easily accessible when he needed them.

Cut to 20 or 30 miles into the race after the sun had started baking
the course. The powerbars are now long dangly things hanging a foot
or two down from his handlebars! What a hoot. Remember the old
racer's adage to always test everything in training before trying it
out for the 1st time in a race! :-)

-Mitch

In article , "Eddy Rapid"
wrote:

"Onno Oerlemans" wrote
When
it's cold one must be burning more calories, and yet it's harder to take
them in. My gels were frozen solid, the Cliff bar hard as rock, the
granola
and cookies unchewable. I only stopped taking in lots of warm gatoraid
late
in the race.

For a cold, long ski, here's the "in-flight refueling system" that I use.
It's never failed me:

Carry a little rock climber's chalk pouch attached to a belt and hanging in
front, in my case being right-handed on my right thigh, so that you can
quickly dip into at will, particularly on the downhills. If you use a fanny
pack, or a water bottle holder, or a backpack, then use the belt for that to
thread the chalk pouch. If not , which would be surprising in itself, just
use a light little belt.

Now here comes the critical, and very specific, tip-- contents for the
pouch:

1) get Quaker's Chewy Dips Chocolate Fudge granola bars. These have the
highest calory/gram value, and fat , very important in cold weather, of any
bar. I have never had them freeze. Take them out of their wrapper and cut
them in three segments. For a 50k race you'll need about 4 bars (4 *
171calories = 684 costing 4 * 34 grams = 136 grams of weight with 8.4 grams
of fat per bar. Go compare this to your gels and power bars.)

2) get pre-cooked smoked bacon about 150 grams for a 50 k race, and cut
into easily chewable pieces.

Every half hour or so just dip your fingers into the refueling pouch and get
some of this cold weather endurance, anti-bonking food, that has slow
burning fat as well as pick-me-up glucides. You'll never bonk again. And you
won't loose time messing around with tearing off gels and power bars that
are frozen, etc. etc, which we keep hearing about in RSN.

All that gel and power bar stuff is designed for nambi-pambi summer
athletes. Winter athletes need Parham's, patents-applied-for, "in-flight
refueling system" :-)

Parham.

It's all about how much glycogen is stored in your liver and how you use it.
That's the theory behind carbo loading. I don't have the information at hand,
but if I recall correctly, it takes almost half an hour just for carbs to
be utilized after you eat them. Fat doesn't do you any good at all in the
2-4
hour time frame. It actually takes glycogen to burn fat and it takes glycogen
just to digest fat. You'll never run out of fat, why bother adding more
during a race?

And, I just haven't gotten the hang of warming a powerbar under my
windbriefs, yanking it out, and sticking it in my mouth. Probably
never will.

Hmm... Haven't tried this either, but the obvious bits seem to be:

1. Wear a 2-piece ski suit or you'll have trouble getting
anything into or out of your windbriefs.

2. Put the powerbar in there while it's still warm. Don't
wait until after it's already frozen. (!)

3. Might want to leave the wrapper on until you're ready
to eat it.

I haven't used energy bars while skiing for some time, but when I did,
I cut one of those half-size (sampler?) bars in half, leaving the
wrapper on, and stuck one half into each sock before race start, with
the wrapper opening pointing up, obviously.

When I saw a feed zone ahead (liquids only), I'd bend down and pull
one out and stick the smallish powerbar in my mouth and it was very
warm and easy to chew. Maybe took 5 seconds to get it out of the sock
and into my mouth.

Erik Brooks

In article ,
"Ken Roberts" wrote:

Though theoretically I agree that herringbone skate has a role in getting up
steep hills, and I used to do it a lot, now that I've refined my V1 offset
skate, I never find myself wanting to do herringbone skate any more.
Vordenberg mentioned it in an article during the last year or two, so I
tried it again once, but it didn't feel like it solved any problem.

Levi wrote
Why not master the "herringbone skate"?

I agree that it avoids needing to _learn_ the complexity of the asymmetric
coordination of all the V1 offset motions.

But once I've learned both, what's the key special advantage of making two
separate single-pole pushes versus one double-pole push in each full
stroke-cycle? Perhaps the unique niche of herringbone skate in the
speed-power-fatigue spectrum is so _narrow_ that it's not worth practicing
for me. Seems like I've found less than one good use for it in the past
year or two.

Non-skate herringbone -- on a really steep hill I still do that sometimes.
And two guys right in front of me on the Penguin climb started doing it, so
I copied them just to go with the flow and not get into a tangle.

Onno Oerlemans wrote
Anyway, when I switched to herringbone on very steep
hills, I found that I'd automatically revert back to my
regular skate within 10 seconds or so.

Me too on the Penguin climb. After a few strokes following those guys in
their herringbone, some part of me would impatiently switch to a few strokes
of V1 skate.

So maybe that's the true "missing granny gear" -- mixed alternation between
non-skate herringbone and V1 offset.

Or how about V1 for 10-15 seconds, then just stop and rest for 10 seconds,
then another round of V1 skate?


The big "advantage" of the herringbone skate is that it uses big muscles,
including the ones that rotate your torso that are not really employed
in any of the other techniques. So a) you're using "rested" muscles, b) you
have the power to get up most any hill and c) it's maybe 90% as fast as V1.
Depending on the situation, it's a great technique to pull out of your bag
of tricks.

I think if you do the math, you'll see that stopping is a big loser.

3. Might want to leave the wrapper on until you're ready
to eat it.

My friend hung one on a string unwrapped, and under his clothes against
his chest. Pulled it out at the 45K mark - covered with chest hair.
Now, how bad do you want to avoid a bonk at that point?

Rob Bradlee