RacingGreen Blog »
Viewing Posts matching 'drink'
A spoon full of [organic] sugar... helps the legs go round?
0 Comments- Add comment Written on 18-Aug-2011 by WillACBut there is now a growing market of energy foods made natural ingredients only, and often organic or fair trade produce. They can be just as effective in energy terms as the top, mainstream brands but are produced with much smaller environmental impact. Some of the very credible environmentally friendly energy bars available in stores include Mule Bar, Pulsin, Torq, and we at RacingGreen undertook a trial of how these foods faired in comparison to the mainstream brands like MaxiFuel and Science in Sport which you can read about on our “Tips for Athletes” page of our website.
And actually, if you fancy a change from all that mass produced food, its much more easy than you think to produce your own balanced energy intake, with tailor-made flavours to suit your taste! Why not spend half an hour to bake your own cycling fuel, sourcing your own ingredients? This case prove much more cost-effective on the whole too. Here are a few recipes that will hit the spot with a mixture of quick and slow burning carbohydrates and tasty fibres - one is more wacky that the other!
- Used by RacingGreen member and ironman: the Ultra Cake
- Or for more accessible snack for the back of your cycling jersey, Jamie Oliver's fruit flapjacks, with dried apricots or raisins.
- Drinks-wise, you can even make your own high energy rehydration concoction. Here’s one recipe: heavily diluted orange juice plus two teaspoons of sugar (or ribena or squash and sod the sugar) and a sachet of dioralyte per pint.
Send to a friend Chocolate milk: the drink of Tour de France Champions?
0 Comments- Add comment Written on 26-Jul-2011 by WillACI’d just spent a glorious sunny day cycling through the Surrey Hills. But I was utterly spent. The plan was to get on a train back into London, making the return journey of the train I caught out that morning to avoid spending time and energy cycling on the dirty city roads. So I went direct to the station, only to suddenly realise I was more than likely going to suffer the next day if I didn’t take on some food or drink to help my muscles recover. And I needed it within that critical 20 minute period.
Alas, the newsagent at Dorking station is no sports drink specialist... and then I remembered... something about milk? Was it chocolate milk? Yes! Problem solved.
I went back home and googled it just for peace of mind and future reference. It turns out that previous academic studies have shown that milk, and chocolate milk in particular, provides a perfect combination of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals to aid recovery from exercise. Leaving you ready for more of the same. As an example, here’s a quote from an Australian medical website:
This result supports other studies that show that chocolate milk is a good way to recover ... Karp and colleagues (2006) showed that endurance cyclists could ride for longer periods on chocolate milk when compared with other recovery beverages. Thomas and others (2009) showed that chocolate milk was significantly better at improving time to exhaustion in elite cyclists than other recovery beverages one of which was a carbohydrate and protein mixture.
There is a huge amount of investment made into cutting edge scientific, processed solutions for recovery drinks, yet these solutions seem to make only marginal gains over what mother nature has evolved to provide already: milk. What’s more, if its organic milk, then you’re onto an environmental winner and can sleep even more soundly at night. And milk is a hell of a lot cheaper too!
I feel good today, so it seems to have done the trick. I couldn’t help but imagine Cadel Evans drinking a tall glass of Australia’s favourite, Milo, after that day climbing the Alps before the final stage time trial... who knows, hey?
- Server: web1.webjam.com
- Total queries:
- Serialization time: 875ms
- Execution time: 1094ms
- XSLT time: $$$XSLT$$$ms