Food = Good

I just had a biking epiphany. I went for my Sunday morning ride, and went up Town Mountain and then on up Elk Mountain from the Parkway, and then wound through Woodfin a little to the river and home. It's not all that long - about 26 miles - and I definitely didn't go particularly fast, but there is a fair bit of climbing. (ok, that's an understatement - unless one trains on Mt. Ventoux, I think one would find this route is capable of kicking one's ass without the exercise of a little discretion. And I speak from experience, because coming up Elk Mountain from the other direction this summer I started out a little too optimistically and found myself cracked within sight of the crest, while registering a heart rate over 190. Not good times, my friends, not good times.) Anway, I digress (as usual).

So today I decided I was going to take a more regimented approach to getting some nutrition in on the bike, because on a couple of longer rides lately I've found myself feeling veeeery flat until I'd suck down a gu, and then I'd miraculously revive until 45 minutes later when I've be feeling veeery flat. . . you get the idea. And while having no energy sucks, the more alarming part is that when I start losing energy I also get pretty spacey. As in, "oh is that a giant pothole in the road that I'm riding right towards? I dunno, maybe I should consider taking evasive action. Or not...." And that is really not a good frame of mind while on a bike.

So today I sucked down a gu, or ate some gu chomps, every half hour. This maybe was overkill, but I bounced in the door from my ride feeling great, slurped down some chocolate milk (recovery drink of champions), started up some wax for my next round of candles, ran up to the shower, wrote this entry - all a far cry from a couple of Sundays ago when I rode to Marshall and back on two gu's and got home barely able to curl up in a fetal position on the couch. So my conclusion - maybe there is something to this food thing. Food = good.