Flutterby™! : Bike choices 2007-08-05 20:02:13.225105+00

Bike choices

2007-08-05 20:02:13.225105+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

On the Tandem@Hobbes list there's been a discussion that's devolved into "bar end shifters versus brifters", and the ride yesterday has me thinking, yet again, about styles of riding. I did a quick wrap-up of our experiences yesterday, probably not enough yet, but this morning Charlene and I got to talking about nutrition for long distance rides. A sponsor for the Marin Century was Clif, we'd had lots of discussions during the planning phase about the logistics of not using the Hammer products. Clif has a better marketing budget, but they don't seem to understand the needs of serious exercise the way the Hammer folks do (and what's with caffeine in everything?).

Anyway, that, and the other mixes of foods, got Charlene looking around for various other caloric sources and information on food and nutrition and long-distance riding, but her poking around lead to A Rider's Guide to Building the Long Distance Bicycle eBook, that looks like it might be worth the $10 if you're into building a reliable maintainable lightweight bike (rather than something like my road bike, which is a high performance bike, but I've gotta get it up on the stand and re-tune everything every few rides, if anything breaks my backup plan is "call for a ride", and there's no good way to put racks on it).

That's because Clif's market isn't endurance athletes! They sell far more Clif Bars and Clif Shots than the entire World's population of endurance athletes could possibly eat. Of course, I live in Boulder, and I'm sure its similar in Marin - it seems EVERYONE is training for marathons, double-centuries and triathlons.

That said, Clif Bars are tastier than most others and don't freeze solid - which is a major issue for backpackers.

The caffeine seems to appeal to the weekend warriors. An anecdote: Week before last, my weekend group ride was heading up to Jamestown. That's about 12 miles on the flat prairies and then another 7 or so with about 3000 feet of elevation gain. It was hot and I was about 5 miles up the climb when I got smoked by the woman who I usually hang back with. She also rides her commuter bike and usually runs out of energy before I do. Once we all made it back, I asked her what happened and she said she just ate a double-caffeine Clif Shot.

I'm still liking "zone bars", more like food, less like energy bar. But they get mushy in the heat.

Meuon: As I learn more, I'm moving back to dried fruit and home-made concoctions.

Eric: Yeah, running a rest stop for the century riders was an education. There are a lot of people out there for whom 100 miles is a barely attainable goal, where my first (and only, so far) century was more like a long club ride.

The double century riders do caffeine too, we keep Red Bull for them, but we keep it at the last two stops, it's for that "30 miles to go" kick in the pants, not the "almost half-way" stage. And I belive that caffeine is a UCI banned drug...

Correction: Apparently caffeine was dropped as a controlled substance in competition around 2004.