Originally Posted by
rousseau
See, that's the thing. I was eating post-ride as if I'd just conquered Alpe d'Huez, as if my body would cease to function if I didn't ingest those 400 tasty calories within a half-hour of stepping off the bike. It was delicious and satisfying, but so very, very unnecessary.
I'm just learning this now. How are you supposed to allow your body to access your fat stores if you fill it with food all the time, especially if you're doing a lot of easier rides without too much heavy breathing, which by definition is the perfect time to get energy from fat instead of glycogen?
Unlike you, i do train pretty hard. I might be on the bike for only two hours but it could be two hours doing trainer intervals at 85% intensity which based on my power meter and assuming I have typical metabolic efficiency means I might burn 1000 cal in a 2 hour ride. Yep, I drink a recovery drink, in the morning it's a mocha made with skim milk. 125 cals. (I'm small) The ride is fasted, so I'm still getting a big calorie deficit from it. Who knows if I'm doing it right, everyone seems to remark upon how well I recover. Maybe it's what I'm doing, maybe it's just genetics. But if you're training, you're breaking down muscle and your body needs the stuff with which to rebuild it.
So the fact that you're not riding hard enough to warrant a recovery drink (I don't have one either after a recovery ride, say), does not make recovery drinks BS. It just means you were doing it wrong, using them inappropriately and compounding the error with a muffin.