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I follow the Bicycling Blogger. After reading his post about sports drinks, I started to reconsider my dietary habits on the bike. I think I'll still drink Gatorade for time trials since it's convenient for the length of the race and one bottle followed by lots of plain water shouldn't hurt my teeth too much. Slowly sipping the stuff for an hour or four, five days a week would do some damage like the Bicycling Blogger points out but one hour about ten times over the summer shouldn't.

I've been lucky that I can eat most things while riding. I love the boost the potassium in a banana gives and I also loved a pre-ride meal of two waffles and taking two more in my back pocket to munch along the way. I can drink pop while riding and even ate a whole Badass Jack's wrap at the mid-point of the 100 km Tour d'Alberta with no ill effects. Of course, I'm not an elite rider and am not up on the latest nutrition to get the most out of my body on every ride. With all this in mind, I'm looking for an energy gel.

I'm lining up a little experiment for myself. I've looked through Superstore and MEC for their energy foods. I have five products that I'll try on one or more rides in the next little while. I have a CLIF Shot, PowerBar Gel, NRG Energy Shot, CLIF Shot Bloks and Kickbutt Amped Energy Ballz.

I bought the CLIF and PowerBar gels with caffeine because the extra jolt was highly recommended. Both offer similar stats in the three Cs: calories, carbs and caffeine. I'm leaning towards the CLIF Shot because it claims to be 90% organic. Squeezing the package, it seems a bit thicker and it doesn't have all the sodium of the PowerBar gel. Sweating should work a lot of sodium out of my body so I got the CLIF Shot Bloks to supplement the CLIF Shot because they are 95% organic electrolyte chews. I've eaten CLIF bars and PowerBars before. I much prefer CLIF bars because they're much easier to chew and I enjoyed the flavours. This test is about gels so I won't be revisiting my selection of bars.

I already regret buying the NRG Energy Shot and the Kickbutt Amped Energy Ballz. NRG seems to be a concentrated Red Bull-esque concoction of chemicals. The label suggests it's more for playing WoW all night though it does caution it's not a substitute for sleep. It does say it's for endurance sports as well but I'm currently skeptical. I think Superstore might also have sold it to me after its expiration date. I tried one of the Ballz before a trailer ride with Julie and had a hard time choking it down. It's like a large, bad-tasting gumball. It's chewable caffeine and guarana. I didn't notice any boost during my ride but pulling the trailer isn't a tough, endurance ride. I have three more Ballz to try on a future ride.

I'm hoping for a long ride very soon where I can keep my energy levels up with this random assortment of chemicals. I'm already biased towards the CLIF products because I like their bars and the claim to be organic. At about $2 a shot and the high dosage level recommended for racing, the one that I can buy at Costco by the box might win out in the end.

This energy gel experiment is made slightly more interesting by my current crash diet competition. I'm down 9 kg since the beginning of January but I'm still in third place. I'm currently just 1 kg behind Jon who's in the lead. The final weigh-in was moved up one week due to schedule conflicts. Three weeks to go! Except, I'm still 6 kg from my ultimate goal so I'll be trying to continue losing after the others are done.

Sunday with the ERTC

Last Sunday I rode with the ERTC while I was up in Edmonton. It was their second weekend of riding for the year and my first big ride. Marg had visited on Wednesday and convinced me to go since she was going too. It turned out to be a nice, sunny day but a little windy. I had to work hard to hang in when I couldn't find shelter from the breeze and I'm currently trying to balance training for the cycling season with my crash dieting competition at work. It was great fun to be out with 15 other riders. I've always found ERTC rides to be friendly and enjoyable. I really miss being a part of that since I'm not living in Edmonton.

For the ride, my GPS recorded 74 km in 2:36 for an average of almost 28.5 km/h. We had 325 m of climbing which doesn't seem like much when I do 180 m in my half hour commute home. I averaged 159 bpm and maxed out at 183 bpm during the ride. I find that my heart rate goes up to 150 bpm quickly during easy riding and I can maintain nearly 170 bpm for a long time.

At work, the weight-loss competition is going well. Victor somehow lost six pounds in two days to take the lead back. Jon has plateaued but remains in second while I'm right behind him in third. I've lost nearly 20 lbs from my starting weight. Dale is in fourth due to some weight loss at his cabinet-makers course and Greg weighed himself this week for the first time we've known of since January. Jon's plateau is making it look bad for him to reach his side bets without some extreme crash dieting. We're already on the verge of unhealthy diet plans so I'm not sure what more he can do. My goal is to keep eating well and training for cycling after the competition is over so I can finally return to 165 lbs and I'll try to maintain that. My commute times this year seem to be faster than my normal times from last year.