First Sportive & Giving Up Sugar

WilcoYHF

Hi Folks,

Its been a while since I did a training blog but I found it useful the last time and now that I have set myself a couple of challenges, I thought it might help me stick to them if I bore the whole world (or that of boards.ie!) with my progress.

So let me go back to the start; I've been pretty unsettled recently, moving from Dublin (a couple of weeks after I joined St Tiernans CC) to Birmingham. While I had every intention of joining a club over there the weather and an unshakable bout of manflu led me to procrastinate! I did fill in the application form tho! Just as I was about to go down to the club with application form and joining fee, my boss asked me to move again, this time to London. Needless to say it didn't take much persuasion to leave Birmingham. So now I'm waiting for approval of my relocation and then I'll have to find a place so I reckon it'll be at least a month before I'm in a position to join a club in London. With this in mind I was in need of a challenge to help me focus on training.

It's always been a goal of mine to do the Etape du Tour but I haven't even done a single sportive, a perfect challenge! I found a decent training guide on RCUK. and have begun to follow this by setting up a training plan and doing a threshold heart rate test. I hope to post some of the details of the training plan and other stats in the coming days. My goal is to do a sportive in August.

Another motivation, apart from the joy of cycling, was that in October of last year I reached a weight of 85kg (I'm 5'10) and wasn't happy that I was getting heavier as I neared my 30th birthday (in March gone), obviously it's all downhill from there! (Am I hitting my mid life crisis!?!?) The first thing I decided to do was to eat less and train more. I set myself a target of 2000 calories per day and bought a turbo trainer. I didn't go on any diet just made sure not to go over 2000 calories and do an hour on the turbo trainer most days. It didn't take long to see some results, I'm now 75kg, and still on the right track towards a target of 70kg.

I saw a documentary recently called Cereal Killers about a guy from Co. Down who didn't want to go down the same road as his father who, while extremely fit as a young guy and a non-drinker, had a heart attack. So he decided to turn government food advice upside down. Having done some research he concluded that we have been fed propaganda since the fifties and that sugar, not fat, is the real killer. He went on a diet, similar to the paleo diet, where he ate nothing but meat, fish, nuts, fruit and dairy basically the only things stoneage man could his hands on (I think dairy may be an exception). The main thing was to stay away from sugar and processed foods. (I don't mean to preach here and I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but I defy anyone not to be taken by this documentary.)

This diet can be hard to follow particularly as I work away from home quite often but I gave it a go as best as I can and I think its going ok but the biggest impression the documentary made on me was that sugar is the real killer. It has been on my mind for the past month as my own father has type 2 diabetes and I reckon I have had a lot more sugar in the first 30 years of my life as he has had in his (God Damn you Stinger and Refresher bars!!). I talked to him about it and he recently had to go from tablets to insulin injections which obviously meant he was getting worse. So I asked why he doesn't just give up sugar to which replied "because I like it". It wasn't what he said but the way he said it, there was real resignation in his tone as if, at 64 it was too late, and it made me realise that sugar is a drug that he is addicted to. Obviously I've heard of sugar being referred to as a drug but here I saw it for real.

I wouldn't say I'm addicted to sugar but I do like something sweet with a cup of tea in the evening and coke on a hot day (has to be out of glass bottle tho!!) So, in the hope that I don't end up with diabetes, I am going to try to give sugar up for one month as of today.

The main aim of this blog is to record my training progress towards a sportive in August but I also want to use it to briefly record my progress in giving up sugar. It might be interesting to see how it relates to the energy I have while training. I wonder if any cyclist has given up sugar?

Anyway I'll be back on tomorrow with the outcome of the first day.

DISCLAIMER: I am not regarding alcohol as sugar! Major flaw I know but I'm human.

smacl

WilcoYHF wrote: »

DISCLAIMER: I am not regarding alcohol as sugar! Major flaw I know but I'm human.

I wouldn't worry about it, bronze age local lads still liked their pint too, so just call the diet PaleoPaddy and you're good to go

WilcoYHF

So the first week is over! I didn't get any cycling done last weekend as I was home for the giro, which was ruined for me on the first night when Dan Martin crashed out. I was holding out any hope for Nicholas Roche as he always has one bad day in a stage race and surprise surprise he didn't disappoint. A bit harsh I know as a lot of people crashed but he still would have had one shocker of a day. Anyway I need to get another bike for when I'm at home as I miss going for a cycle in the Wicklow Mountains.

I was working in West Sussex this week, staying in a god awful Premier Inn so got out for a few cycles, the weather was great down there. I forgot my garmin so used the mapmyride app on my phone. It was set to miles which meant I did a lot more than I intended. I'm quite happy with the figures given that I didn't get out at the weekend.


The stats are:

Distance: 89.47 km
Time: 3:50 hrs
Elevation Gained: 744 m
Avg Speed: 23.4 km/hr
Weight: 75.1 kg

As for the evil sugar!! I didn't have anything with added sugar which wasn't too hard at the beginning, except when the girlfriend brought be in to a nice cafe with loads of nice cakes before the giro finish in Dublin. Following my dinner tonight tho I really wanted a cup of tea and biscuit or something sweet but I resisted. Staying in a Premier Inn it was difficult to have healthy food (or edible food!!) so I'm sure there was ketchup in the burger with added sugar. I also had some chips, I am planning on staying of potatoes, rice and pasta as they essentially turn in to sugars. I'm not sure how that will work while trying to train for a long distance cycling event.

I'm going to hit the road for about 4 hours tomorrow which should start off a good weeks training as the following weeks training will be a write off as its my stags!!

dastardly00

Just wondering how you are getting on with the combination of training and avoiding sugar?

One thing I find very hard is avoiding sugar if I'm on a long spin or taking part in a sportive. For example, I calculated that I consumed about 250g of sugar during and after a 140km sportive yesterday! :eek:

ford2600

dastardly00 wrote: »

Just wondering how you are getting on with the combination of training and avoiding sugar?

One thing I find very hard is avoiding sugar if I'm on a long spin or taking part in a sportive. For example, I calculated that I consumed about 250g of sugar during and after a 140km sportive yesterday! :eek:

That's a nice shake of sugar for a sportive.

You consumed it because your body called for energy and it's obviously used to getting sugar.

If you wish to reduce it (not saying you should as I don't know anything about you) train your body to burn body fat.

If you weigh say 80 kgs at a very lean 10% bodyfat you have 8kgs of fat on your body.

If say only 4kgs of this is available for energy that over 30,000 calories.

At a guess you might have needed 4,000 calories to get around yesterday. As you can see you have a huge energy store on board even if very lean.

Adapt your body to access it if you want to use less sugar.

For example these might help
* fasted cycling first thing in morning. Sounded stupid to me at first to; start with an easy 10-20km for confidence and slowly build
* If you don't want to kill yourself like me and consume huge fat, eat low GI/GL foods in general and before during long cycles
* Limit sugar in your diet. While it is brilliant fuel to drive you up a long tough climb on the limit it will inhibit your bodies accessing of fat stores.

Hope this helps some bit

If this in any way inhibits your grand tour daily previews, get the sugar back in asap!

They are a Forum highlight

WilcoYHF

So, as predicted the last week (week 3) was pretty much a write off due to a heavy one last wknd! Week 2 was a good week, can't remember much of it now but do remember an 80k cycle I did on the saturday. I very rarely get out for a cycle of that distance but when I've struggled to make it back. I started with 20km out of Birmingham 4 laps of a 10k loop and 20km back fully expecting that this would again be a struggle. However, to my surprise, I felt quite fresh 10km from the finish so I'm definitely seeing the benefit of the hours in the saddle. Keeping in mind that this was two weeks into a no-sugar diet, which was perhaps more of a surprise. I can't say that not consuming sugar has been a benefit, I hope it has, but it definitely hasn't had a negative effect.

Week 2 stats:

Distance: 224.68 km
Time: 9:47 hrs
Elevation Gained: 2,206 m
Avg Speed: 23 km/hr
Weight: 74.7 kg

I only got back in the saddle yesterday (Saturday) so I'll add that to next weeks update, but what was a major shock was that I did about 50km in the morning without eating, on your advice Ford, and it was not difficult. I did get the feeling about 25km out that I was gonna hit the wall soon but it was 25km back and I made it back no bother. I really didn't think I could do that.

Next week I'll be back in Dublin but won't have my bike which is annoying but I'll probably do a few spin classes. If anyone knows of a decent place to rent a bike in Dublin let me know.

WilcoYHF

dastardly00 wrote: »

Just wondering how you are getting on with the combination of training and avoiding sugar?

One thing I find very hard is avoiding sugar if I'm on a long spin or taking part in a sportive. For example, I calculated that I consumed about 250g of sugar during and after a 140km sportive yesterday! :eek:

Hi Dastardly,

Its actually going well, I thought it would be a struggle, as mentioned in the last post doing 50km without even eating was a real shock. I think as Ford says you need to train your body to use fat as an energy source and one way to do that is to starve it of sugar.

Are you gonna give it a go?