chefisaac

I have a lot of questions regarding nutrition and trianing and I wanted to know your opinions.

1) when eating on the ride, I know carbs are important to give fuel but I heard it was a short boost of energy which makes me lead to eating more protein like nuts, ect. I know protein burns longer and I just wanted to know if this is correct or not and why

2) Why do some people have a hard time digesting certain foods while riding versus others? Is the body under stress and just cant digest certain stuff?

3) To increase indurance (Voz max??) and not breath so damn heavy after a hill, I know I need intervals (I think) but is there a baseline test I can take to get a baseline to see if I am improving with those intervals? Does a sports doctor hook you up and test you?

thank you!

gregf83 

Carbs are converted quickly into useable energy which is what you want and need while cycling. Protein and fats won't be digested fast enough to be useful. Stick to carbs.

Yes the body is under stress. Most people can only digest around 250 Cals/hr while riding.

Just time yourself up a 3-5 min hill and monitor your performance over time.

PatW

1) Most people can not digest much while exercising. As mentioned above, carbohydrates are about the only thing your body can get energy from whilst cycling.
2) It is not so much the stress. Your heart can only pump so much blood. Your brain needs some or you pass out so it gets its share. If your muscles are going to meet the demand, they get a fair amount. If you are under heat stress, blood goes to the skin to vent heat and prevent you from cooking yourself. That means your digestive system gets almost nothing. So only quick energy sources can be processed.
3) Well, you can improve fitness by exercise and you can improve a fair bit. But all that means is as you get fitter, you will just climb faster. But people usually like to push themselves. So any decent climb will tend to tax you no matter how good of shape you get in. You will just go up it faster.

chasm54

You don't need to worry about VO2 max. Just ride lots, and challenge yourself, especially on hills. You'll soon see that you are climbing them faster, and that your heart rate is returning to normal more quickly at the end.
There's plenty of time for intervals later and anyway, riding in rolling country and pushing yourself on the climbs is a sort of interval training in itself.

As for nutrition, as Greg says, carbs are the thing during a ride. Personally I don't bother eating anything unless I am going to be out for well over two hours. Even if I'm going hard, my stored glycogen reserves are enough to keep me going for that long. For a ride of 2.5 hours or more, I'll start eating at the end of the first hour and eat about 30 grams of carbs every half hour thereafter. You can't absorb much more than this. Some decent sports drinks are formulated to deliver about this amount, but I find them too sweet and prefer food.

If you are riding frequently, what you eat after the ride becomes important, because it allows you to recover quicker and be ready to do the same again the next day. Get some protein - a whey protein drink is ideal, but milk is fine - inside you within about half an hour after the ride, and some carbs not too long after. The protein helps repair the muscles and the carbs replenish your glycogen stores.

late

Best way to get better at climbing hills is to keep climbing them.

Try Gu.

DataJunkie

1) Your body burns fat, protein, and carbs in various percentages at different effort levels. Carbs are the primary fuel and become more important as the effort level increases.
2) Everyone has a unique digestive system.
3) Climb hills. Strength training has helped me with my climbing but most folks here will toss me to the wolves for that statement.

chefisaac

data: what kind of strength training are you doing?

chasm54

LOL. I don't know about throwing you to the wolves, and if it has worked for you, fair enough; but leg strength is rarely the limiting factor in cycling, with the possible exception of track sprinters.

DataJunkie

Body weight exercises. I have no desire to bulk up. Just get stronger and increase tone a bit.

DataJunkie

It was more of a substitute for me that ended up improving my cycling. I had to change things up a bit when my second son was born to keep training. It has worked well so far.

late

find PerformanceU at Youtube.

Nick Tuminello is great.

Garfield Cat

The first thing on climbing hills is not climbing hills. Its building up your endurance just by riding. Some don't believe that building a base has much to do and want to jump in and go for interval training on hills. I believe that building a base is the better way and the more longer lasting for overall benefit, whether you do hills or not.

You hear that one needs to ride more hills and then you get better. This is a generalization but it begs the question, what kind of riding on hills and how to approach it. Hills, as opposed to flats, are challenging to the body and there is an initial reaction to it. That has to be overcome and I think its mostly psychological or emotional.

Some people face challenges head-on and others tend to shy away from their norm. Knowing yourself is important. From a practical standpoint, you take a big task and make it several smaller tasks until the goal is reached.

Once I asked a track coach how he trains a kid to do high hurdles. I use high hurdles because its challenging to sprint over several obstacles at high speed and risk falling or losing the race. He said its done in small steps. First the sprint, then gradually he takes two bricks to hold up a dowel rod and the runner sprints over these. They're only inches off the ground. Those inches then gradually increase as techniques are introduced to accommodate the higher hurdles.

chefisaac

garfield: when you say to build a base, what do you mean?

So to get better on hills, what do you purpose?

Garfield Cat

Let me give you my own example of a base.

In high school the cross country coach would get the runners in shape by specific types of workouts. At the beginning, the workouts would be running at an easy pace for long distances. Since we were young, we were able to adapt fairly quickly to the demands of the workout. As the weeks went by, what seemed difficult at the beginning was now easier. The coach was building a base to launch from.

The next thing he did was to introduce the race pace. The cross country race was 2 miles and a race pace would be 10 minutes for that distance. That would mean a 5 minute mile pace. He took us the the quarter mile cinder track and had us run quarter mile intervals at 75 seconds each. At first the intervals were killers until our bodies adapted to it. We eventually got better at it. We knew because after the workout we were not completely exhausted. Some of the runners were slower than others. The juniors and seniors were the one's we wanted to emulate.

But to answer your question as to what I would propose to you to get better on hills would be like me being your coach.

Carbonfiberboy 

Building a base is just riding more. Increase your weekly distance about 10%/week if you can keep up with that. Less is fine, too, but increase it. To me, having a good base is a few months in the 100-200 mile/week zone. But there's no reason not to include hills in the process. In fact it works better with hills. I like about 50'/mile average, if you have some way of tracking that. The reason that hills make you stronger is that there is no way you're going to be able to loaf like you can on the flat. Your HR is going to go up, and it's high HR work that really makes you stronger. By stronger, I don't mean like a bodybuilder. Stronger means riding faster and with more endurance.