Jibbering

After continuing to experiment with making my own energy gels, I’ve now finally settled on what the quickest and easiest recipe and settled on the steps.

Ingredients

• 500g Maltodextrin
• 250ml of Water
• 120ml of Innocent Fruit Smoothie (Other pure fruit brands would work too)
• 50ml Pectin
• ~1 teaspoon citric acid
• 8g BCAA
• 1g Beta Alanine
• 2g L-Histidine
• 0.8g Caffeine if you want a caffeine gel

The method

Add 250ml of just boiled water to a measuring jug, and then mix in the Amino acids and caffeine etc. first, stirring well as these are the least soluble. Then mix in the 500g of malto. Do it cautiously with about 50-100g at a time to avoid clumps, but it should dissolve pretty easily in the hot water.

Transfer to a pan, add the Smoothie, then add the pectin and citric acid, the citric acid may not be needed if you’re using a more acidic smoothie (such as a berry based one) and heat it up to ensure it’s above 80C, either using a sugar thermometer, or just guess if it’s bubbling up, it’s more than hot enough

Allow to cool briefly, and then pour into suitable container whilst still nicely liquid. Allow to cool, and then refigerate. Cooling time does seem to impact the texture, if you cool it rapidly (e.g. cold water bath in fridge) it’s more liquid, no idea on why that might be, but it appears to be the case.

The Result

As always the ingredients are all bought from My Proteinand you can use my referal code MP107371 to get 5% off - you also earn me some points.

Pleasingly I’ve had lots of reports of success with the previous gel recipes, and they’ve continued to work extremely well for me, it’s good to hear how other people go with it, and news of any failures or alternative recipes especially welcome!

In the many cycle races I’ve done, my commonest result by far is last, even when I’m not actually last, but just right near the back, the results seem to appear with me last. I tell myself I don’t mind, there really is no difference between 11th and last in most of the races I do, and since becoming a 3rd cat, points mean little, so I just want prizes, and there’s generally only money for the top 5.

Actually what I really want is to be pleased with the race, the results really comes second. Of course if I went a season never getting a result, I’d not be happy. But I’m geeky enough that good numbers, no crashes, and a sense that I didn’t do anything stupid makes for a happy race.

Saturdays race was the Hillingdon winter series 3rd cat only race, and us Kingston Wheelers were out in force. After a very fast start led out when the entire bikefood team decided to take us out for the first 5 laps averaging 42.5km/h against the more normal 40km/h for Hillingdon. Everyone was pretty fresh though, and only a couple of people got caught out enough to be dropped, everyone else just enjoyed the speed. I did more than work than necessary, going back and forth through the group to see how Maryka and the other clubmates were doing and just generally drifting back through inattention and then deciding to move up again.

After the bikefood guys had tired themselves out, the average pace slowed to the more normal 40km/h, but it was the normal up and down of attack / chase / lull. We had many people regularly off the front, but the pack was always very alert, even with some blocking work nothing looked likely to escape. Inevitably when the 3 lap to go board came out, everyone slowed down and we had the slowest lap of the race, and it didn’t speed up much more during the next two. My normal poor position, and the slowness left me struggling to move up on the packed circuit. Coming up to the bell I was midpack and desperate to move up, remembering Andy’s request for a fast last lap, and if I was anywhere but the front I wouldn’t be able to help with that.

Just before the chicanes the pack slowed so much I was at my slowest speed all race, but as soon as the chicane apexed I was on the outside and had a clean run to the front, I accellerated hard but instead of finding myself at the front of the bunch, I found myself 10m off the front so I kept going hard through the S bend and was now solo away from a baying bunch. 30seconds into it I thought YES! I’ve 50m already I’m going to win here. A minute into it, hurting like crazy I thought NO! why did I start this stupid idea! 90 seconds into it I looked again behind me, and I still had 60 or 70m on the bunch YES! two more corners and just the matter of a 250m hill. At the last corner I look again, and still they’re not close. 50m up the hill, I stand to eke out the last power I have, and find out it’s none, I collapse, the hill chases any speed I have out of me and shortly after 44 riders sweep past and I inch over the line to last place.

So last place, but the stats tell an interesting story. Almost all the time I made up on the bunch was through the S bend, which I did in 42 seconds, rather than a typical 58seconds for the pack. Through the back straight and the two subsequent corners the bunch only gained back a few seconds on me, it was only once I could no longer deliver the power that I was caught. The 42 seconds cost me 580 watts though, so getting away was tough, and left me only managing to deliver 380watts for the remaining 80 seconds of my ill fated solo effort.

In the middle of a club run on sunday, I did 380 watts for almost 7 minutes up Box Hill, so in looking at the raw stats, I should’ve been able to keep it going for the win comfortably, but the previous hour of hard riding had simply taken too much out of me. So now I’m stuck wondering, if I did the same, but without having wasted so much energy in the race, would I have stayed away?

The picture below, taken at the final corner, not long before I blew up, shows another reason I failed.

I’m simply too un-aerodynamic to be doing anything solo, I waste so much energy fighting the air. It’s a reason to get a new bike, one suited to racing, and not cycling around the hills in great comfort, the RS is awesome, but I shouldn’t be racing crits on it.

The good turnout by many strong Wheelers has really got me looking forward to the road racing season, when I won’t be there mostly for training, wasting energy, and with more strong wheelers like Damien still to race it should be a fun year!

I took most of the year off running, concentrating on cycle racing, with barely a couple of runs a month (generally a 3mile all out race, and a hill session) but I was doing lots of hard cycling miles.

My previous PB for the half marathon was around 1:59 for a standalone half, and 1:43:49 for the half marathon split in a marathon. But I think the goal was a feasible one, as two weeks before the race I did 66:09 for the Cabbage Patch 10mile race.

That race was completely flat though, Barns Green is rolling, and the weather forecast for today, was torrential rain, 30mph winds with gusts up to 45mph. I almost bailed.

It was my running clubs Half Marathon championships, so I had lots of friendly faces, and started off running the first few miles with two of them, and watching the faster club guys come past (not sure why they’d all lined up 200 back, I crossed the start line around 80th or so, which was about right, not held up, not holding anyone else up)

The rain wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, mostly just drizzle, the winds however were strong, and it’s the first running race where I’ve seen real packs form - not just pacing packs, but actual draft packs, it made a big difference!

The rolling course made my splits tough to know just how even they were - 6:32, 6:39, 6:38, 6:17, 7:11, 6:23 for the first 6 miles, and coming through half way in 44:00 - This worried me, because of the weather I’d scaled back my expectations to getting as close as I could to 1:30, on a good day I was thinking 1:28 was the best I could do. (McMillan reckons a 66:09 10mile is equivalent to 1:27:51 Half, and I normally bias towards the short stuff and Barns Green is tougher than the completely flat Cabbage Patch)

I run on perceived exertion though, so I stuck with the pace I was running. At around 8miles two more guys from my club passed me but I kept them in sight and it was at this point that my running partner from the start of the race dropped behind.

The 10mile marker had been blown away by the wind I guess, as I saw the line on the ground but didn’t hit the watch. Mile 12 became a struggle, all up hill and into the wind, and I was disappointed to see the split come in at 7:26 - although the Garmin has it as a long split.

I knew from 12miles it was all down hill until 400m to go, and I still had 9 minutes to cover the last 1.1 miles. I tried to work to catch the team-mate I could still see ahead. It never happened, but 7:20 for the last 1.1 miles, and a sprint to beat some guy in yellow in the last 100m brought me home in 1:28:25.

Job done, very, very, very happy considering the conditions. I guess I should’ve done better in the Cabbage Patch. A positive split, 44:00 vs 44:25, but not too bad, and I think the course was tougher in the second half.

My Nutrition - went to plan, 100 calories in home made strawberry gels with ~400mg caffeine 20minutes before the start, Gel flask with water/gel mix of around 250calories taken over four seperate evenly spaced shots.

I would recommend Barns Green Half as a race to do, extremely well organised despite the torrential rain and conditions, an interesting and whilst hilly not that slow a course, the hills aren’t steep, so as long as you can descend without braking the undulations help break the monotony. Could do without the long hill at 11miles though.

Allan wanted me to blog about websites I find useful, and apparently five is too limiting for him. For me though, the only useful website I find really is the search engine, everything else comes out from that. Mostly I use Google, although it’s not exclusive, and it’s not impossible it will change again. So I’m going to have one site on my list Google.

Everything else is about the service they provide (mail, shopping whatever) or the community they provide (social networks, forums etc.) I’m actually much more of a luddite in terms of moving applications to the web, simply because in general they don’t work. The connections aren’t fast enough, the browsers are too slow or rather single threaded javascript where the UI and calculations share a thread makes it too slow. That’s before you even get to the random ideas of usability that wed developers seem to have.

The one application I cannot currently do without is SportTracks.

To check if your PowerTap is accurate, you can use a “Stomp Test“, applying a known torque to the hub, and seeing if it’s measured correctly. Unfortunately this isn’t possible with alternative head units such as the Garmin 705, 500 or 310xt or other ANT+ units from specialized etc.

On the wattage mailing list Brian Fitzpatrick pointed me at Quarqd a simple daemon that can read ANT+ sport data if you have an ANT+ USB stick such as come with the Garmin 405 or 310xt. Unfortunately it only runs on Mac’s or Linux, but a virtual linux install had it working on my windows XP.

The raw messages out of ANT+ aren’t very useful however. So I knocked up a little Adobe Air application which reads the messages, and assists with the testing.

You need to install quarqd and have it running, then you can start the AIR application, point it at the instance, set up your bike with the weight on the pedal, enter the bike details, and see how accurate your PowerTap is.

Not ideal, as getting quarqd up and running is relatively painful in itself unless you’re pretty geeky, but it’s better than reading raw XML messages.

Download Stomper application

And the result? Our PowerTap’s are pretty much accurate. As accurate as our weights anyway, maybe some accurately measured weights and some speedplay pedals to hang them off to check even more accurately, but I’m not that worried.