Posts Tagged ‘water’

In an upcoming set of blog posts, I am going to talk about my nutrition strategy during training and racing. Possibly because it will help others but mostly because you’ll be able to say “that’s a terrible way to do it, here is why” and I’ll learn something new.

I’m not going to cover the wider issue of diet and eating healthy. I love to cover that stuff on my blog, but this series is just looking at sport-specific stuff.

To start with, I’m going to talk about hydration.

Timing

One thing I picked up from the physiology textbooks is to drink as much as possible two hours before a race. That gives your body time to get all the liquid it needs and wee the rest out before the start of the race.

Water

Obviously, water is the main source of hydration. I don’t use anything special water because tap water is great.

Pre-race

I fill all of my bidons the night before and chill them in the fridge overnight. I then drop a couple of ice cubes into them in the morning, just before I set off.

During a race

I drink a lot of Lucozade Sport. When I first started, I used Lucozade Energy. However, it’s fizzy, which isn’t as easy on the stomach. It does have the advantage of caffeine, but I get this from my energy gels.

I fuel by numbers on the bike, so I’ll often drink every 5km to make sure I don’t forget. On the run, I am more laid back: drink when I feel like it, usually water.

I don’t have to worry about it in the swim because of the amount of pool/lake/river water I drink.

Post-race

On race day I like to have a bottle of full-fat Coke to hand to get some sugar in me.

After training, I will often have a recovery shake instead. These are great for giving you lots of protein. I use the Tribe shake mix, which I combine with milk though you can also use water. They’re a bit gritty even after a good shake but otherwise taste pretty good. Flavour preference, in order: raspberry, cocoa, vanilla.

Bottles

I use the clear Nike Big mouth bottles. They’re okay. I had some problem with leaking in my bag but I’ve since realised it was probably me not fully sealing the top and since then Ali haven’t had any problems. They are clear so you can see at a glance how much is left in them.

I take two bottles mounted on the inside of the triangle in my bike (the usual places). When I’m running, I don’t take any bottles with me.

After Hugh & Anna’s wedding, I noticed the Shustoke Reservoir was a convenient distance from Coleshill for a Sunday morning run. THe route round has a little variety: there is a wooden section before taking in the banks for the remaining three sides.

Click the image for a larger panorama.

Following on from my photos of Leeds flooding I have been back out to take some new photos. I was hoping to stitch them together into one photo. However, I was unable to get them matched up, and the colour of the sky is also very different, so it did not look very good. Therefore I have just put them side by side.

My friend Samra recently bought herself an SRL, so we headed down to the river so I could show her how not to take photographs. I’m hardly a tutor, but it was quite nice to be able to share my tips.

The warm weather has got me thinking about hose pipe bans. I’m not sure whether they are instigated by the water companies themselves, or by a statutory instrument of government, but either way, it is at the hand of the water companies themselves, complaining about the lack of water. Sometimes this can be attributed to exceptionally dry weather, but often it can just be the case of the private sector cutting water reserves in an attempt to extract more profit.

Therefore, in my opinion, if a water company fails in this way, they should be fined. And fined heavily, because water is quite important.

But extending this, we could regularly fine them, and restrict the profits, for the greater good. Utility companies, and indeed many other natural monopolies that were previously nationalised and have since been sold off, often report large profits. This is just more money passing to the rich, from the poor. Which is bad.

However, we privatised them anyway, because we’re told that private companies run more efficiently.

But why do we let them make such high profits?

Consider if we bled them dry. We hardly let them make any profit because of the price caps and fines we imposed on them. Would this make them less efficient? I suspect not. I think, if anything, they would be forced to run themselves more efficiently in their desperate bid for survival. It would encourage the very efficiently we originally privatised them to bring.

The consequence however was that private investors were less likely to invest in infrastructure. But how much money actually ends up being invested in infrastructure now? Clearly a lot less than could be given the profit given out to the shareholders.

More importantly, if you have just skimmed most of the profit from a private company and taken anything they have left back in fines, you suddenly have a lot of spare money. Money that can then be used by the government to subsidise investment in infrastructure.

Whitby Abbey

The harbour

Streets

The sea

National speed limit on the breakwater

People

I say rivers, it’s just one river. In Goathland.

All the heavy rain last month caused the River Aire to just about reach its banks.

We hit the road early on Monday morning to take the road through the Alps to Venice. It was a long drive and continued the dramatic scenery as the road twisted and turned it’s way through the Alpine hills.

We eventually arrived at Venice late afternoon and parked up in the multistory at the edge of the city which was so big it was almost a small town in itself. We then jumped on the water bus to head down the Grand Canal to the other side of the city where our hotel was.

Venice is a crazy place – I mean who thought it would be a good idea to build a city in the middle of the sea? It’s so strange that you are walking around on all these huge squares and buildings, all of which are just floating on the water (they’re not actually floating, but still).

They did however have an annoying habit of mixing up languages – there were loads of t-shirts saying “I love Venezia” which is just annoying – Venezia is the Italian spelling of Venice, so it should either be “I love Venice” or “Lo amo Venezia”, mixing it up is just silly!

The night life was great in Venice also – the tiny winding streets were packed with people (and I’m sure could have felt packed with hardly anyone in them). It seemed to be the kind of place where you could live for a year and still not really know how the streets connect together.

We had pizza for dinner at a small restaurant then headed onto Piazza St Marco to watch the bands that were playing at the restaurants we couldn’t afford to eat at.

Our hotel was traditional Venesian place, which means authentic but otherwise rubbish, and filled with mosquitoes which decided to try and eat me alive.

The next day we decided to walk back across the city towards the car which was quite a distance with all the stuff but did allow us to see much more of Venice.

It was an odd mix of churches, tourist shops containing weird masquerade ball masks and actual shops to serve the people that actually live there.

A quick google around tells me that you can pick up a homeopathic remedy for anxiety for as little as £13.17 plus shipping.

But here is the thing. It’s just water.

Suddenly seems rather expensive for 15ml when Tesco are doing 2,000ml for a rather more reasonable £0.17.

It really makes you wonder however why the NHS are spending millions of pounds of our money on homeopathic remedies. And as such I’m starting a new campaign to promote greater understanding of homeopathic medicine because, much like religion, the thing that will do the most damage is if people actually learn what it’s about.

You can learn more about the bullshit the NHS is spending money on at the campaign’s website, It’s Only Water.