^ sorry to interrupt your nerdy coffee fantasy, but if you knew anything about anything, you'd know that ovaltine dissolves into milk like so many tears into the rain

srsly though - you are like Charlie Kelly from "Always Sunny . . ." and this barista . . . is she your Waitress?

duh. milk chocolate is good for recovery.

OK, here's what you have to do for the full effect:

Epicatechin Administration:
Mice in the (-)-epicatechin groups (3 and 4) were given 1.0 mg·kg of body mass-1 twice a day
(morning and evening) for 15 consecutive days, whereas animals in the control groups (1 and 2)
received the vehicle (water). Both (-)-epicatechin (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, Missouri) and vehicle were
administered via oral gavage.

@Jeff: I can't get into coffee drinking habits of scientists. There are no suitable control subjects.

From: http://mousecancermodel.com/orgalgavage.aspx

How to do oral gavage?

Materials:
A oral gavage feeding needle

Methods:
Orogastric gavage is a common and convenient approach to deliver drugs to mice. It is an important technique to mimic human oral consumption of drugs.
Grab the skin over the shoulders firmly with the thumb and middle finger, stretch the head and neck with the index finger to make the esophagus straight.
Direct the ball-tip of the feeding needle along the roof of the mouth and toward the right side of the back of the pharynx, then gently pass down into the esophagus.
Advance slowly into the stomach. No resistance should be felt.
Administer drugs.

Thanks, but I'll pass on the "oral gavage" of chocolate.

@WDC: I was making a reference to movie: "A Christmas Story." They have an Ovaltine part.

^parents didn't let me watch it

^ I"m going to have to have a talk with them next time we're up in Millbrook.

"It says Fra-gILE... must be Italian"

Anyone tried this stuff from Allen Lim: www.secretdrinkmix.com

Come on Norm, you know who did!

I have samples. If you go to the deals section, I posted one such deal for the mix.

It's decent. Very light taste. Allen says it's all natural and that nutrition and hydration should be separate.

I will try it since I like the idea of slightly more potent electrolyte content and less sugar.

@ Normanzo: Caveman!

With the huge caveat that how, what, when someone eats in relation to their start time being very individual, I would say skip the full meal. Speaking from experience, there is nothing worse than trying to race with a Chipolte burrito in your stomach.

Traditional thinking says you need about 3 hours for digesting a meal. But proteins take longer. You'll easily have enough glycogen stored from last night's dinner for a solid 1 to 1.5 hours of a morning race, so I gotta believe even with a 11:40 am start you should be good if you skip the Hungry Man's Special at IHOP.

But back to YOU. What did you do the last time you were in the situation? How did it work out?

If it were me, I'd have some orange juice, take a couple of bites of blueberry muffin soon after i woke up. Down a Red Bull around 30 minutes to start, nibble of caffeinated chews around the same time.

But what about YOU? Don't deviate from your normal pre-hard/ pre-race eating plan at all. If you don't have one, err on the side of not eating enough and make sure you have a few extra gels ready to suck down on the bike. It's easier to get your muscles sugar in a hurry if you are depleted, than trying to race with a belly full of bacon, sausage, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, chicken fried steak, etc.

Josh,
For the most part, we're all tackling distances that we've done before. You've ridden 100k at least several times this year, and even have in a mega-century. It's no different.

For me, an 11:30am start, I'd probably eat my usual light breakfast at 7:45. Then probably have a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich at 9:45, and probably either a banana or some kind of bar at 10:45, and some gel-type stuffs minutes before the start. And I'd be drinking the whole time--OJ with breakfast and probably a liter of water between breakfast and the start. On a hot day, I'd skip the water in favor of something with electrolytes.

And now that we're post BK, how did your nutrition plan go?

Cramping sucks!! I tried hydrating, bananas, electrolytes...you name it. Someone (not here) mentioned that cutting dairy out helped them a lot. Anyone tried that? Or any other advice? I put in probably a dozen 60-70 mile rides in February and March (plus shorter hour efforts in the park, on the trainer, computrainers, etc..) to get my body ready for Battenkill...the distance isn't a problem for me but going really HARD for anything more than 30-40 miles seems to automatically trigger it everywhere - hammies, quads, calves.....suggestions?

David, I think you have to consider the source of your cramping before you can take effective counter-measures. The most common source of cramps in the the athlete has to be fatigue and electrolyte imbalance. You probably had a combination of both going on.

To combat those kinds of cramps, your probably going to have to pay close attention to your eating habits before, during and after your race. I'm a salty sweater, and I once had a nutritionist recommend that I significantly increase the amount of sodium I take in. There's really not enough salt in any sports drinks out there to make up for what we typically lose on a warm day. And once one of our electrolytes go out of balance, they can all start to freak out. Think of a prison-break/riot scene. Calcium channels need magnesium and Sodium-Potassium pumps will be throwing ions into and out of cells like the Hulk. All kinds of crazy shit starts to happen in your body. It's the body's defense mechanism. Fluid shifts occur, leaving you even more dehydrated as the body is struggling to keep the electrical bits of our body firing properly.

Unfortunately, they don't make a Garmin handlebar unit to tell us when we need to replenish our electrolytes, doing a venous blood gas on the fly is not going to happen, so a lot of this will boil down to trial and error. But in general, I can pretty much guarantee that you are not getting enough electrolyte replacements to keep up with your losses during a hot ride or race.

And you've answered your own question with regards to the fatigue aspect of your cramps. "going really HARD for anything more than 30-40 miles seems to automatically trigger it everywhere." There's no way around this one. You've got to train harder than the race you are entering to get your muscles truly ready.

As guys have mentioned, its really personal but specifically regarding to cramps I find a magnesium supplement sorts me out, I can almost always attribute cramp to times when I have forgotten to take one.

Josh,

I still haven't figured it out. The challenge I have is that the ferocious style of eating in a race is so different than anything I can practice.

Bottom line though; 3-4 hours ahead of an even you can eat whatever the hell you want. Less than that and you need to be a little more careful.

For events that take under an hour to complete you probably don't need much.

FWIW I didn't cramp as bad this year at bkill as in the past, but it was still pretty ugly in the final 20 km

Nutrition-wise, I think Endurolytes help me with cramps. I buy the loose powder and add some to my Perpetuem for long rides.

Also, we all know that cramps tend to appear on rides that are harder and longer than we're used to. One method of preparing for this is to go on training rides that are longer than the race distance, and stack your intervals for the end of the ride. Eric had me doing this in preparation for Battenkill. I would always attack all the hills and do as much tempo on the way home from rides around 80 miles. I was literally trying to induce cramps to simulate Battenkill conditions.

For those with a number of bike computers, the metric of kilojoules can be programmed to appear on the screen. I do this to remind myself to eat and drink. Doesn't always work. I'm for the overload triainng hypothesis that both Marc and Jeff referred to. I've got more details and will post to another thread.

@mugwumps I semi consciously pay attention to kilojoules but dont really know the science behind the numbers just on what feels right, is there a formula to how many calories you need to eat based on time and your weight or effort etc?

Oddly enough, the Kj to calorie conversion is roughly 1:1

So if you do 1000 kj of work, you burned 1k calories.

I wonder if when you train with a power meter the calorie reading is derived from power output and heart rate or just heart rate ie can you just look at calorie expenditure?

I don't use heart rate anymore, but my Garmin keeps on computing Kj. - I'm guessing its from the power.

Ashley, Jules hit it.

I try to keep it fairly simple. As I'm about a medium build, I figure that the rough guideline of one's body having 2000 calories of carbohydrate energy fits for me. So I want to be eating between at between 600-800 kj in a long race. and eat every 600-800 thereon. When I do long training rides I try to do the same to keep practicing the habit.

According to my bike computer, riding to PP for a race and then racing 44 miles takes me about 2000 kj of energy. I have noticed a fade at the end of races on the days wehn I didn't eat anything upon my arrival at the park. So now I make a point to get in 150-200 calories upon arrival and then have two bottles with about 150 calories each in them.

Ashley,
Forgot to add--Garmin has two metrics. One is calories, which they derive from an algorithm based on HR. the second is kilojoules, derived from power expenditure. THey are quite different--I've tested both out.

There interesting thing is that there are about 5 kj in a calorie, but at best your body is 20% efficient (unless your name is Cadel Evans)

Ergo, 1 kj = 1 calorie

This makes it very easy to figure out how much of a calorie deficit you produced on a ride (ie: I rode 3000 kj, ate 2000 calories on the ride, leaves 1000 to eat when I get home) which helps keep you from over or under-doing the food after a ride/race

Ashley, I'll jump in here too with my thoughts.

Although Calories (kilocalorie) and kilojoules are not technically equivalent (1 kilocalorie = 4.185 kj), roughly speaking the amount of kilojoules that show up on your computer, are equivalent to the calories you've burned. How is this possible?

This confused me a few years back, and so I asked my friend the PhD chemistry and what it boils down to (pun intended, a kilocalorie is a measure of heat energy that is equal to the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Centigrade at one atmospheric pressure) is that the body's digestive system is basically 25% efficient.

Meaning if you burn 400kj in an hour, and we were super-heroes/freaks of nature, we would only need 100 kilocalories (calories) to replenish our energy stores. But we're not. So if you burn 400kj, then you can safely eat 400 calories to replenish, or less to help you lose weight.

So if you want to get all super-nerdy about your food intake, there's another number you need to nail down. That is your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Loosely defined, your BMR is the amount of calories you would need to function if you were lying around all day. BMR is based on height, weight, age.

Then you can either use a formula like the Harris Benedict Equation to estimate your daily caloric needs.

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/

I stand corrected: 4x and 25% efficiency. Math works out (roughly) the same though.