I am a little late with my blog post this week. It’s a recovery week for me and I have been catching up with a lot of projects around the house. Last week was a really big week for me; I spent almost 16 hours working out. As you can see below, I did some experimentation with home-made nutrition and also discovered an old abandoned cabin on my long run through Chatfield State Park.
On my long rides in Pennsylvania, I always enjoyed exploring new routes and finding old barns. I found dozens over the years, including some with old tobacco advertisements painted on the side. On my rides in Colorado so far, I haven’t found any older barns to photograph. I was therefore really happy to discover the old abandoned cabin in the photograph during my long run. I was running on a new trail for me, came around a corner and there it was. Hopefully, there are more to be discovered, as I do more running over the summer.
The simple, low cost ingredients for my home-made sports nutrition drink
Nutrition is a critical part of long course triathlon racing and with all the training I do, it can also get quite expensive. For example, I have been using an Infinit custom blend as nutrition for the past few years. A one-hour bottle of this blend costs about $2.40. That means I am spending almost $10 in nutrition on every four hour training ride. Over the course of a year, that expense adds up.
After reading about home-made nutrition on this Slowtwitch Forum thread, I decided to give it a go for myself. I discovered that the key is to get the correct ratio of glucose to fructose and to add sodium using sodium citrate to keep osmolality in balance. It turns out that simple white sugar gives the correct ratio of glucose and fructose, so this formed the basis of my drink. I used Gatorade to provide some flavor.
My final home-made mix ended up costing me $0.44 for a one-hour bottle. This bottle also contained more carbohydrates than my Infinit drink, so it is great value. So how did it work out for me? In summary, it worked great. I felt energized on my rides while using it and experienced zero issues in terms of GI distress. The drink is extremely sweet tasting, but this is something I can handle. The biggest downside so far, is that it makes by bottles extremely sticky, if the mix spills on them.
I do plan to stick with this experiment for a while to see how it goes. At the very least, I am saving quite a bit of money.
This Might Be A Distraction For A Couple Of Weeks….
As mentioned above, last week was a big training week. The details are below.
Monday : Pull Buoy Swim (2,000 yards)
Tuesday : Pull Buoy Swim (2,000 yards) and 2.75 Hour Aerobic Ride (42 miles / 2,000 feet elevation gain)
Wednesday : Pull Buoy Swim (2,000 yards) and 1 Hour Run with 30 Minutes Tempo Interval (6.7 miles)
Thursday : Pull Buoy Swim (2,000 yards) and 1 Hour 15 Minute Trainer Ride – Big Gear Work.
Friday : Pull Buoy Swim (2,000 yards) and 40 Minute Aerobic Run (4.6 miles)
Saturday : 5 Hour Ride (94 miles / 3,600 feet elevation gain) 90 Minute Aerobic Run (10 miles)
Sunday : 1.75 Hour Aerobic Trail Run (11 miles)
Total workout time for the week was 15 hours and 40 minutes with 10,000 yards of swimming, 22.3 miles of running and 153 miles on the bike.
After two big weeks of training, I am doing five days of lighter training for recovery. I am experimenting with training blocks consisting of 16 days of high volume/intensity with 5 days of recovery. My hope is that this will better suit my aging body !!
