Tour de Tucson

This was my first time at the Tour de Tucson in Arizona. Making the trip with Rick Dyer from Bike Mine, we met up with Jason McCormack who is Rick's outside sales guy for the territory. Wednesday Nov. 15th was spent meeting with local bicycle retailers who were all busy getting prepared for the onslaught of 9,000 cyclists from all over the country who would start to descend on the city for an amazing bike rally(race really) on Thursday. Mack, the owner of Sabino Cycles took in our products to sell at their booth while Rick and I did taste testing and education for the consumer at our booth.

Everything went very well. Certainly almost no one from that area had heard about our products before, but now with 1 shop in Tucson carrying Eload(TM) and EMEND(TM) and the constant curiosity of the consumer over our "heat" formula, we are well on our way to fulfilling the needs of the hot and thirsty in Arizona! I did have a couple Canadians come by my booth, they just had to say "hi" and tell me how much they loved our products. They were a bit let down when I had to fess up that I was not from Canada, but from Texas instead.

There were at least couple of famous cyclists came out to play that I know for sure. Jason ran into Floyd Landis while grabbing us some take out lunch from the little Mexican restaurant called El Minuto right across the street from the convention center. At the expo itself I was able to look around just long enough to spot Gord Frasier, formerly of Heath Net. No time for autographs though, gotta teach!

I did get to see a little bit of the Arizone State University campus, as that seemed to be the place to be if you are visiting Tucson. Jason took us by a couple places including an Irish pub and another bar where I was happy to take part in the 2nd annual one handed pool tournament. Attendees included Rick, Jason, Jason's good friend Pat who was kind enough to put us up for a couple days at his house, and Pat's brother Phil, and of course, myself. It was a late night and a very early next morning. Thank goodness for Eload(TM) which is also the best hangover treatment known to man!

Protein In Sports Drinks; Good, Bad or Indifferent?

By Dr. Stephen Cheung, Ph.D.PezCycling News
October 23, 2006
Back in the good old days of sports drink design, life was relatively simple and the main things to manipulate were carbohydrates and electrolytes. In recent years, a new kid on the sports drink block arrived in the form of proteins. We look at two new studies that re-examine the use of proteins in sport drinks.

The Gatorade days
Life was simple in the old days for pro cyclists. Most riders simply had water in their bottles and maybe some de-fizzed Coke near the end of races. Of course, the stars would supplement such simple fare by getting their domestiques to raid local taverns for vino every so often.
Everything changed, of course, with the introduction of Gatorade in the 70's, the first sports drink specifically designed for athletic competition and featuring a mix of carbohydrates and electrolytes (i.e., salts). Basically, the theory went that you're losing a lot of salt in sweat and burning up carbohydrates as a major and finite fuel source, so those were the important things to replace in a sports drink.

Since that time, scientific studies have helped to develop an overall consensus of six to eight percent carbohydrate being the optimal concentration, along with a moderate amount of electrolytes, mainly sodium.

The case for protein
Within the last five years or so, however, the established formula for the majority of sports drinks changed, with some research advancing the benefits of adding protein into sports drinks. The study that made the really big splash was one by Saunders et al. (2), which compared a commercially available carbohydrate-protein sports drink (reading between the lines, it was Accelerade) with the same carbohydrate content worth of Gatorade (such that the Accelerade had greater total calories).

Having two drinks with different total calories may seem like a weakness in the design, as it might be advantageous simply to have more calories regardless of source. However, as mentioned above, scientific consensus suggest that the ceiling for carbohydrate absorption is already reached at the six to eight percent concentration, so simply adding more carbohydrates is not going to get more into your system and may even slow things down in the digestive tract. In contrast, think of protein as a back-door way to cram more calories into your system.
With a 75 percent and 85 percent VO2max ride to exhaustion protocol (where subjects are asked to ride at a set workload for as long as possible), Saunders et al. (2) found huge increases in exercise time (29 percent and 45 percent increases at 75 and 85 percent VO2max, respectively).

This, to put it bluntly, is huge in a field where 10 percent improvement is considered astronomical. However, the study was not able to ascertain exactly whether this huge benefit came about due to the extra calories or to something specific to the addition of proteins. Regardless, it certainly had many companies jumping on the bandwagon of adding and touting proteins in their sports drinks.

Re-testing protein
The scientific process works nicely in continually testing and re-testing theories, no matter how well-established. In the August 2006 issue of the same Med Sci Sports Exerc journal, van Essen and Gibala (3) tested a similar two types of drinks (six percent carbohydrates and six percent carbohydrates + two percent whey protein) and also a placebo.

One nice touch was that the drink powder was all produced by the same source to be as identical in aesthetics (taste, colour, etc.) as possible, rather than two different commercial sports drinks. Subjects were also required to drink at a much higher and realistic rate (250 mL every 15 min, near the maximal absorption rate for fluid by the digestive tract) than in the Saunders et al. study (~125 mL every 15 min for a 70 kg rider).

A further modification to the study design by van Essen and Gibala was the use of an 80 km "time trial" protocol (where subjects are asked to complete the ride as fast as possible with no pacing/timing cues) rather than the "ride to exhaustion" protocol of Saunders et al. (2).
This was done on the grounds that a time trial is much more applied and realistic, and I certainly concur. Indeed, there has been a general trend towards moving away from the "ride to exhaustion" style of testing, due to its high variability from motivational factors and also simply across people. Indeed, one of my own very first published papers back in 1995 (kinda sad to say, but also one of my most famous even to this day!) detailed exactly this huge variability (1) and concluded that it was largely useless if it was the only parameter determining "success".

Other notes on the protocol:
Subjects were trained but not super-elite cyclists, 24 yr. old on average with a VO2max of 63 mL/kg/min.
Test of 80 km was chosen to be long enough that glycogen stores would be significantly depleted and the ingested calories would really come into play.

Basic facts
So with these modifications, what did van Essen and Gibala find? Both carbohydrates (135 min +/- 9 min) and carbohydrates + protein (135 min +/- 9 min) had faster completion times than placebo (144 min +/- 10 min), but there were no differences between the two carbohydrate drinks.

Comparison shopping
So two studies using pretty similar composition carbohydrate and carbohydrate-protein drinks have come up with dramatically different findings. How to pick and choose between them? Here are some of my thoughts:

Overall, I have to give the nod to the van Essen and Gibala study for being more well-controlled and realistic.

The rate of fluid ingestion may be one of the major reasons for the difference between the two studies. Remember that the Saunders et al. study had a relatively low (500 mL/h) drinking rate for a 70 kg individual, resulting in about 37 g/h of carbohydrate replacement. This is much lower than the 60 g/h recommended to maximize carbohydrate replacement in the body. Therefore, it may be the case that the extra protein only plays an important role when there's less-than-optimal carbohydrate replacement.

So what does this mean for you and me? The best sports drink is the one that you'll drink the most of! Experiment with different sports drinks and see what tastes bests and sits best in your stomach, and then use it!

One final note
The final interesting observation from the van Essen and Gibala study? The 80 km was done as 4x20 km laps on a stationary trainer. In both the carbohydrate and carbohydrate + protein conditions, the first 20 km was done at a faster average pace than the placebo, even though glycogen stores wouldn't have really become depleted yet. This phenomenon of early benefit from carbohydrate ingestion supports similar incidental findings in other studies.

One proposal is that pacing is done by a "smart sensor" in the brain somewhere that integrates input from throughout the body, and that the presence of carbohydrates triggers sensors in the mouth, relaying "positive" information to the brain and enabling it to select a higher pace. So sports drinks can be useful even in short and hard interval rides rather than only for long rides!

References
McLellan TM, Cheung SS, and Jacobs I. Variability of time to exhaustion during submaximal exercise. Can J Appl Physiol 20: 39-51, 1995.
Saunders MJ, Kane MD, and Todd MK. Effects of a carbohydrate-protein beverage on cycling endurance and muscle damage. Med Sci Sports Exerc 36: 1233-1238, 2004.
van Essen M and Gibala MJ. Failure of protein to improve time trial performance when added to a sports drink. Med Sci Sports Exerc 38: 1476-1483, 2006.

Stephen Cheung is an associate professor of Kinesiology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and his athletic ability is beyond assistance from any ergogenic aid known to humans! Stephen's company, Podium Performance, also provides elite sport science and training support to provincial and national-level athletes in a number of sports. He can be reached for comments or coaching inquiries at stephen@pezcyclingnews.com.

Bike World Grand Opening

Last weekend I spent Saturday at Bike World's www.bikeworld.com Grand Opening shindig. They are not only an extremely customer service web retailer, but the first Trek concept store in Texas.

There was food, music by On www.ontheband.net, The Mo-Dels www.mo-delsband.com and The Golden Hill Ramblers www.myspace.com/goldenhillramblers, and entertainment by Bob Roll www.BobRoll.com, complete with guest Tom Danielson www.TomDanielson.com from the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team.

Bob and Tom had a panel discussion as well as a book signing. I think Bob was first going to try out eLoad(TM) as a hangover recovery per BK's recipe, then on some rides. Tom was giving out some of his special blend coffee. Thanks Tom!

BTW, BK's recipe can be found at http://bitch-kittie.blogspot.com/2006/10/dr-mccooldown.html

All in all it was a swell time. I was happy to meet Bob and Tom as well as be on hand to answer questions about our products, hydration, carbohydrates and diabetes from Bike World's customers.

A big "Thanks!" goes out to Greg Combs from Bike World for having me. I also wanted to thank Steve Bazany from the San Antonio Police Department for his support (the guys from the S.A.P.D. Bicycle Patrol as well as the SWAT team really love their eLoad(TM)!) Happy hunting guys!