RoadSkater.Net - Comments for "fitness"

Honey Crunch Recipe

In reply to The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Marathon Training:

If you ever formalize that method, please do list it here. I think lots of us would like more recipes for sportsworthy food, or, maybe, just sweet food!

the honey crunch sounds great!

In reply to The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Marathon Training:

Thanks for joining and repying to my venture into the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, conleeuw! That honeycomb recipe sounds like fun. I hope to try it out sometime.

My self-diagnosed need for the SCD crashed headlong into my ultra-marathon skate training about 18 months ago, and although I believe wholeheartedly that the SCD created a suitable rehab environment for my traumatized digestive system, I was not able to eat near enough carbs for safe 30+ mile roadskates. Bananas, dates and honey might just get you through 30-60 minutes sport-training, but for our 3 to 7 hour roadskate training it's drastically inadequate and frankly, a hospital trip in the making. I studied typical carb requirements per 40 mins of hard training and even carried chunks of cantelope, raisins and dates in pre-measured ziploks. And despite eating a proportionately higher fat diet than ever before, I lost a lot of weight: much of it muscle :-(. Since then I have been able to go back to normal (pretty unhealthy) eating, only needing the SCD about every 6 months or so for a week or two.

The weightloss, on the other hand, certainly helped me scramble up hills faster than ever, but after about an hour I'd be close to passing out and my heart rate would be maxed out because I was gasping for carbohydrate replenishment. I found dates to be the highest carb allowable on the SCD that I could eat mid-training-skate, but I couldn't assimilate them fast enough to avoid bonking. Fruit juice was out of the question too, because although providing plentiful carbs, the fruit sugars practically morphed into volcanic lava within about 5 minutes!

A lot of fat the day before a race or long skate? Yes! All the time. I made 'cookies' and 'bread' from almond flour, cheese, heaps of butter and peanut butter. However, after my body realized it had been tricked and there were virtually no carbs in these creations, it didn't want the faux cookies any more!

Luckily my condition wasn't so bad that I couldn't handle the odd bottle of gatorade or packet of powergel. This saved me passing out on the side of the road, causing an accident or inconveniencing my skate buddies via a hospital trip, and a day or two back on the SCD minimized any collywobbles I may have had from the refined sugar.

As with the South Beach Diet, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet backs up its promises. However, I don't advise anybody try 2+ hours speed or fitness skating on so few carbs.

What sport or training do you do?

Recipes you can try....

In reply to The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Marathon Training:

recipes you can try.... make some crunchy take along stuff...

honey nougat, you can choose which nuts you incorporate. I have made it bom full of nuts and seeds.

http://www.scdrecipe.com/recipes-candy/honey-nougat/

and something like the toffee?

http://www.scdrecipe.com/recipes-candy/julias-incredible-caramel-toffee/

I make a kind of honey crunch...I don't have a specific recipe, fly by the seat of my pants when making it... honey, heat, and boil till the soft ball state (you know, take some out and dump it in cold water, it should make a soft ball, not too soft mind.

Add some bicarb of soda... it fizzes up like mad.. pour onto a greased baking tray, let it cool. It becomes a crunchy honey comb kind of sweet thing, easy to take along.

That's about it for my tricks.

I was wondering, how much fat do you use, especially the day before you have to perform? Would consuming more fat not help?

I find that eating dates

In reply to The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Marathon Training:

I find that eating dates works well to get the blood sugar up in a hurry.

Dates are quite high in the GI (glycemic index) of the things SC Dieters can/may eat. GI is the scale which measures how rapidly your blood sugar will go up after consuming a product.

Pure Capilano honey 25 grams = GI 58
Dates sundried (55 gram) = GI 45
Banana, over ripe (i.e black spots on skin, 120 gram) = GI 48

As you can see, dates are (pound for pound) more effective in getting blood sugar up than a banana, though, eating a banana along the way is a good idea. Perhaps incorporating a date or two will have its benefits. Obviously honey is even better, but personally I cannot get pure honey down the hatch when sporting, and diluting it in a drink will reduce the effect as you wont get as much honey in at a time, so dates do it for me...

That's my trick!!

I toured Lifetime Fitness

In reply to I thought I was in shape until I found "Total Conditioning" at Lifetime Fitness in Cary:

I toured Lifetime Fitness with Dave a couple months ago, and it truly is an amazing facility. If it didn't take me 40 minutes to drive across town to get there, I probably would have joined it instead of O2 Fitness, which is right near my house. For those not in the RTP, NC area, Lifetime Fitness *is* a national chain, and they're opening up new locations all the time, so there may be one near you too.

http://www.lifetimefitness.com/

- SM -

dtg in peak shape

In reply to I thought I was in shape until I found "Total Conditioning" at Lifetime Fitness in Cary:

All I can say is WOW. The facility/staff/support all sound incredible, and is absolutely worth checking out. Thank you so much for sharing that....truly. Getting in better shape is a common goal for sure. Those workouts sound very intense and as I sit in my lowly office chair pondering such a workout I can feel my heartrate increase just from reading your experience. Thank goodness you're working out hard enough for the both of us. ;-)

Survive Winter, Skate and Thrive in Daylife Saving Time

In reply to First time skating on the road! So long driveways and parking lots!:

Hey! I forgot to reply until I saw these other two replies. I was head-down in work when your article hit, but I loved it. You get it exactly what we are about here. We're here to be found, to be Googled, to be there for those who are afraid or who have forgotten, and to hope to encourage and remind them that ordinary people got past the fear of purchase (eBay helps, especially with rec skates there are awesome deals), and past the first day of OMG these things are really fast and my neighborhood is hillier and busier than I ever realized! "Jane! Stop this crazy thing!" as George Jetson might say.

So yes, post early, post often. Your piece was fun for all of us who have our own stories of great crashes, buttburger, roadrash, skinburn (indoors), downhills to railroad tracks (A2A), big black Explorers that have to pass then brake in front of us at a barely-two-lane bridge, a cyclist joyously passing us and turning around to watch us fly on in a downhill train of six, not realizing we will have to pass them again somehow with that car coming along beside any moment, meaning no harm of course, but forcing a shotgunning of our orderly pack as the less experienced are seriously shocked out of their wits for a few seconds...OK, all of us variously shocked almost out of our wits...but nobody hurt and all feeling very much alive!

Congratulations on your first voyage onto the roads. We'll have to get together soon at Country Park or at Bur-Mil for some easy skating. It's about all I can handle now. Like eebee, I'm extra voluminous in winter, no matter what I say when the Daylight Savings Time goes away. It just kills it for me when the days are getting shorter and then on top of that, there's the insult of shifting the sunset an hour earlier. I fear that early birds rule the calendar, and I can only hope they are the same ones to get caught going for the cheese first in the trap, too (figuratively of course...I wish them no long-term harm, ha). Yes, braking is skill one, after the skill of wearing helmet and wrist guards. I have heard beginners say, "I'm not fast enough for all of that gear." Of course I just laugh remembering how often and clumsily I fell when I was learning...for years, really, as I kept trying to learn.

I will say that I used to go over on Saturday mornings to the Skateland USA "West" as the call it, in Greensboro (there's a "north" one too). They had a "C" team session that was mostly kids and a few newbie adults trying to keep up. I enjoyed it a lot but I liked crashing indoors less than out doors, preferring to "grip'n'roll" on the asphalt better than "glide'n'burn" on the indoor surface. But it did keep me more fit that doing nothing. I'm just not much for indoor exercise except for basketball, perhaps, and as an adult, it seems to me that basketball is mostly for getting creamed by people who "coulda been a contender." Maybe there are some friendly not so competitive basketball games somewhere, but I haven't come across that in a long while (having not looked). Then there's the thing about paying to go indoors to do things that are free outside. Yeah I know it's fair and they have expenses to cover, but I look at it from the enjoyment per dollar side and it doesn't compute.

So I try to get out when I can in winter, but it's hard to do with cold mornings and short afternoons, even with a flexible schedule. Once the days sunsets get noticeably later, it's much easier to get out, and Country Park is a good spot. Unfortunately it is nestled in a shallow valley (which is why the water makes a lake there, ha) on the eastern side of a sun-blocking ridge, so the sun sets a bit sooner there even if the sky stays bright. Down around the bottom of the 180 (degrees, that is...a left down left back in the woods a bit) seems the spot I notice it getting dark in winter, cool in summer.

Regardless of my ramblings, well done to become a roadskater! I'm sure you felt the thrill of freedom and the fear of commitment too! It's always great hearing how people fall in love! If you didn't fall and get hurt, I call that a great success. You don't think so now, but by the end of the summer you might be skating 30 or 40 miles or more on a Saturday.

Love skating and it will love you back! And without noticing you'll be out there for an hour, then two, then three, or more.

There's nothing like a blistering hot day of hills with some skaterade or cokes or shaved ice treats at the park (even with that crazy headache!), sweating out the sorrow, rejoicing in well-earned pain, a salty tongue bathed by sugarwater, a breezy downhill, friends feeling good about themselves too, and landing in the shade looking up at the green trees backlit by blue sky, knowing for once you did a good thing that wasn't so easy and hurt nobody...or maybe even helped by raising or donating some money. And of course, after the quick carbs...some barbecue or a blackened salmon sandwich or a steak burrito with fresh jalapeños or a garlic and onion pizza or roasted chicken with basil, lemon and pepper...need I explain further...and rockabye sweet baby james.

Glad You're Skating

In reply to The New York Times Weighs in on Workout Music:

Hey Kensun...

Glad to hear you're skating. Find any new spots? Has anyone found a flat track or new trail with rights and lefts?

I'm still not listening to music while skating but I have been using a Sensa MP3 player to listen to some podcasts of music (NPR music items mostly) or talk (geeky tech stuff related to the web stuff I do). It's been a cool thing to have the techy stuff going in the background as I do other things. Of course I can't really DO tech stuff while reading tech stuff and listening to tech stuff, or if I do, at least, I miss a lot of the audio or video material in the moments focusing on typing, ha!

There have been some seasons where I taped almost all of the 162 Atlanta Braves games instead of watching them live. Once I thought or checked that the game was over (without finding out the score...a tricky prospect), I'd play the game on tape in the back while I worked into the night. I never really focused on the games that way, but caught major things that happened and kept up with the changing membership and health of the team and National League that way.

I have over 50 hours of the tech stuff, and probably as much music stuff, including some live concert podcasts from the NPR site, to wade through. I used some freeware command line software to split really long mp3 files into 5 minute segments so I can mark favorites and jump from one to another better. I was having a problem with hitting the wrong button and jumping to the next hour instead of fast forwarding, then losing my place and having to search back...a mess! Maybe I'll write about some of the tools I used...someday! Lately I've learned a lot about tools for video and audio while working on or goofing away from my main projects. Hopefully someday (again) the site will show some of that and give us ways of creating and sharing some stuff with some tools I can recommend to help out with that and with just enjoying other people's content. OK, time to go. Wish we could make that Super Bowl party at skatey-mark's but we need to do some work while the game's on. At least we bought the party food so we can binge on that!

Name those tunes!

In reply to The New York Times Weighs in on Workout Music:

Hey Kensun! Just curious...what are some of the tunes you like to listen to?

Music a must

In reply to The New York Times Weighs in on Workout Music:

When I work out I always have my tunes playing. I keep the volume low enough to hear what is going on around me. One reason I feel the need for music is I am skating alone. When I skate with others I tend to turn the music off. I have just recently upgraded my phone to one with an MP3 player so there is one less device I need to carry. Since it is Bluetooth, I am considering going with a wireless headset since wires can become a pain. I think you are correct I tend to use music to help set a my pace and certain songs most certainly do motivate me.

Ken

Memories . . .

In reply to First time skating on the road! So long driveways and parking lots!:

I can remember my first "taste" of the road, and it sounds like you were pretty brave. Another roadskater was born . . . welcome!!!

Ask a more experienced skater to show you the "ropes", like dealing with crummy road surfaces, train tracks, sand, etc., and as many different stopping techiques as you can learn for those surprise moments. My personal favorite was loose cobblestones during the Tour de Brooklyn, a story for another time, but you get the idea. There's nothing like a blind downhill in front of you with a stop sign at the bottom of it! It's often helped me to follow when uncertain so that I could see what to do at that particular moment.

Stay in your gear and enjoy skaterdom . . . Claire

It's more than okay to post here!

In reply to First time skating on the road! So long driveways and parking lots!:

That's perfect, Aziblue! Post away. In fact, as a somewhat 'trained' person, I'm reading it and thinking of stuff that happens to me now! The bit about the car not laughing at you gave me a chuckle.

What do I do in the winter when it's freezing?

I get out of shape.

Case in point: today my son wanted to find out how fast he could run a mile. So we went to the track and he wanted me to run with him. Here I am, 14 lbs heavier than normal, asthmatic lungs in 46 deg F temps, healing hamstring and all, thinking "How disastrous could it possibly be?". It was nothing but demoralizing! Thank God it was too cold for anybody else to be out there. My hamstring complained, my lungs choked and shut down, and my heart rate stayed around 177 for the full TEN MINUTES AND SIXTEEN SECONDS!! I can't believe I just posted that. After sitting on my butt eating potato chips for almost four months straight, I added a full two minutes to my mile 'run' time.

Many outdoor skaters go 'indoor' to rink speed teams and chase around in circles for a killer cardio workout. Living in GA, I get 50, 60, even 70 degree days over the winter, so I try to skate outside then. If you can stand the gym, then go for it! Spinning is excellent cross-training for inline skating.

Great job to you for getting out there on the roads! I hope they were quiet neighborhood roads! Good job on the braking, too. I remember the sheet for the first month of my first training schedule. It said "Tuesday: 4-6 miles". It seemed very daunting. At this point I was still wobbling around the local high school parking lot. The good thing about skating (and probably cycling too), is that with regular practice, 3+ times a week, your mileage will increase to impressive levels in a short time, e.g. "Oh I just skated ten miles last night...".

Hopefully others will post with what they've been doing to stay in shape, because I'm hardly the shining example here (wheeze).

Rubber Band Culprits

In reply to The New York Times Weighs in on Workout Music:

As I recall my WM-20 (or 10 maybe, but I think it had blue logo paint and looked like the photos of the 20 to me...I must have followed your advice on this item) died the death of loose drive belts after much much much many many many long long long hours of great play. Sweet tech it was. Solid, sleek and gorgeous (I could have said sexy for another s). Great sound! I guess I taped with Noise Reduction on and played back without. Isn't that the way to punch the highs? I'm certain I have not tossed it out as it is too personal and meaningful to want to see it go. It was there when no human could stand me, and I heard the brains of others to let me know, no, not alone, before REM did the song. Thinking of the high end clarity I recall these snips blended inaccurately: there is no political solution for poets priests and politicians packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes caught between the scylla and charybdis. Makes me say fudge ripple. ("Huh?")

This is the Walkman I had (have actually)

In reply to The New York Times Weighs in on Workout Music:

http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-10

Despite being a fairly early model, the WM-10 was the smallest of all the cassette-playing Walkman models. Its tiny size is amazing even now, and represents a considerable achievement in the context of what was possible in the early 80’s. The WM-10 was smaller even than the cassette it played and had to be slid open to make the cassette compartment large enough to take the tape.

Mine is right here on my desk. (There's a lot of stuff right here on my desk!) Too bad it doesn't work any more but I don't have the heart to get rid of it, and maybe I'll get it going again one of the days.

Agreeing with you about keeping open ears to be a better park citizen while skating. Simply being able to return a greeting or exchange pleasant banalities goes a long way toward building good relations.

Workout music only good in a gym IMO

In reply to The New York Times Weighs in on Workout Music:

A gym filled with fitter-than-thou people might be a good place to listen to music on earplugs whilst working out - plenty crowded yet not a danger to cyclists, skaters, or cars. Anywhere other than that, even in your basement, might not be a good idea simply from a point of view of safety.

I think inline speed skaters and cyclists know only too well the dangers of joggers and walkers out in public with their headphones dulling their sense. Yes I said sense. Too bad the Reckie Rowlerblayderz have become synonymous with short shorts, ripped tops and headphones. But hey, looking cute is the only thing that counts.

Ever get a song stuck in your head? Every day, of course. If you need music to work out but you're on a road or in a park or somewhere outdoors, just turn your music off in your car in the middle of the song you want stuck in your head and it will be blaring out in your mind for the whole hour. Don't wait til the song has almost ended, because then you'll just end up with the next track on your mind, even though you didn't actually hear it. My song-stuck-in-brain of choice also happens to be by Green Day (how plain!), is 9 minutes long and called Jesus of Suburbia. It is basically energetic, defiant punk, with enough swear words to be therapeutic. Any of the faster tracks from the American Idiot album works for me unless I'm doing hill climbing, in which case I'll stick to the Killers.

Tim your post reminds me also of something I heard a long time ago but am too lazy to research right now: Restaurants playing fast music near closing time or when it's crowded, so that the diners will eat their food faster. I observed myself doing that after I heard about it, and I was falling into that trap. Now I just rebel if a restaurant plays fast music, and resolve to stay there longer.

The Good and the Bad of Music and Exercise plus Sony WM-20

In reply to The New York Times Weighs in on Workout Music:

I love music too, although of late I have not been playing or listening as much as at some other times. My HD-28 guitar getting stolen really put a damper on my enthusiasm. Call it a broken heart or call it silly, but there it is. But the other day I did play a sub-$1000 Martin that got my attention.

[I still have my original Yamaha FG-100 from 1977 or so, and it has a great punchy tone, but is not as much fun to play (the neck is a bit fat like mine, the scale a bit short, maybe). Still, I've had some great times playing guitar outside the hotels at skate events, and other places too (like in the old days when Country Park had a grassy bank and people used to gather there on sunny days...before the Canadian geese invaded and ate all that grass).]

I agree that being drenched in music and sweat together is wonderful, but in the last decade I have only rarely exercised with music, because I've been skating most of that time. I don't think music is a great choice for the faster speeds and easy wheeled momentum of skating and cycling, particularly on the road with cars whose drivers may be listening to music and talking on their phone without a headset.

It's just my opinion but I feel more need to hear what's around me, so while I have had the cel earphone in my ear to skate sometimes, it's not a constant level of music blocking out all other noises. Sometimes it's not even a conversation but two people skating togther on the phone with the occasional comment.

When running, I listened to the trusty gold metal Sony Walkman cassette (the one that slid together to become the size of a cassette box when not listening, so you could put it in the cassette case with your music...genius unit, if a bit weak in the design for the long run, what with wow and flutter and all that rot). Before that, even, I also had a GE FM radio that was super tiny but with great sound (which I got by collecting orange juice frozen concentrate proofs of purchase...stupid college fun. Ha. Now you know.

[This was not the Sony, but I like the first part of this article...

https://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/frary/sony_wm_ex7_review.htm

I think I had the WM-20, pictured here and on this page...

http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/walkman/sony/graphics/wm-20.jpg

http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/walkman/sony/

Ok. Enough of that.]

I've had enough worry about my future hearing given all the loud tube amp distorted volume in my days that a few years ago that I've dialed back the volume in much of life. Though I still love the tube amps, the right tiny one sounds as good or better than a huge one at a tolerable volume level for the neighbors, and you can mic it when you need to. After I saw Pete Townshend get old before he died and paid to see it and hear only the wrong channel of the stereo live mix in Raleigh, I backed off the knob a bit, and am less likely to listen loudly on earbuds, leaving it for open air when I do, methinks.

So, yes, I digress. Music and skating would be great if there were nobody else around, but I think it helps with goodwill as well to be visibly able to hear. I know at the park when we try to warn people of our presence, about the only ones who jump in fear are the ones who didn't hear us because they were groovin' to their tunes.

My Findings Whilst Training on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet

In reply to The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Marathon Training:

Hi Allison, welcome to Roadskater.net, and thanks for asking! In my original post I was hoping to get some suggestions from people who had been up against this same dilemma for whatever reason, be it Celiac's or IBS or UC or Crohn's, etc., because I couldn't find anything out about it elsewhere online, regarding extreme athletic events in particular.

First off...I'm not a doctor, so be sure to go to yours to keep everything in check, and my findings are based purely on my own reactions to the SC diet.

Second, when I finally got an official diagnosis from my doctor, I told him about the SC diet and he said "Well that sounds like a healthy way to eat, anyway!". By the time I got the diagnosis, my symptoms and UC troubles were on the way out.

I found that training for an event, and actually doing the event, whilst on the SC diet, were two very different things. That is, during training it was easier for me to plan on not bonking because

a) Most of my training workouts only lasted an hour, and were at the end of the day after I'd had the chance to food-load (can't really call it carbo-loading, as you say, because all the carbs you're allowed on the SCD are so compatible with the human body, they're used up pretty quickly and don't hang around long!).

b) After a training skate I could rush home and eat a plate of chicken and broccoli or carrots or something that might remotely stick to my ribs before I got too woozy or calorie-deprived.

However, I did a dummy-run training skate that was to be 35 + miles, and 3+ hours long, in 90 degree heat, and ended up with not near enough energy and bonked something rotten. Instead of gatorade I was using Welch's grape juice + electrolyte water ("Elete" water), plus some salt. This not only was not enough calories, but it upset my system just as much as Gatorade, and was too sweet for me to even want to drink!! Luckily my training partner was at hand and I chugged a bunch of his Gatorade, deciding to pay the consequences later, rather than end up in the ER from hyponatremia, or hypokalemia, or something like that. My philosophy became "It's better to eat something now that'll upset your system later than to eat nothing and end up in an ambulance or coma!".

What I ended up having to carry with me in my Camelbak for carbs during an event, were bananas, dates, chopped up cantaloupe, and honey. However, what I found was that this was disastrously inadequate. On the 87 mile event I had been training for (and my training did reduce in quantity after I started the SCD about 6 weeks before the event), I tried to carbo-load the day before, and that morning, but there are only so many bananas and dates a person can eat! I lasted about 69 miles, and pretty much just curled up in a ball on a grassy bank on the side of the road, convinced I was done. My training partner said the magic words "Would a raspberry Gu work?", and I perked up, grabbed it from him and practically inhaled it. It did the trick and I got up and skated the remaining 18 miles in relative sanity. To heck with the refined sugar!

I'd like to add that I became a baking fool and lived off almond-flour nut breads, cheese breads and banana breads (more bananas! Arrgh!) during that time and found I could no longer stand the sight of them by the time the event rolled around, so my choices for calories were severely limited. There are some things in the SCD book that I never got around to doing, however, such as the home made yogurts and cheeses. Maybe those would've given me more options, baking and event-calorie wise.

Shortly after this event in October 2006, my symptoms calmed down and never came back full force, so the UC has been manageable. I have not needed to stick to the SCD at all. So I never had a reason to fine-tune my training/event calories in relation to the SCD. I think there are probably lots more things I could have tried, but just never got around to it, or didn't have the time to prepare them.

I lost a ton of weight whilst on the diet, and some of it was probably muscle. However, this probably offset the power-to-weight ratio, because I wasn't really 'slower' as long as I had ample calories. Here's how a typical hunger pang went:

Oh! I'm hungry
Well, what can I eat?
Uhh, that's right, NOTHING!
Oh well I'll just ignore it until the next pang comes along

I wish I had more hopeful results to give you, and with hindsight I think it would have been better to ditch the training and the event I had already signed up for, until I had the UC under control. But I didn't know it was ever going to be under control at the time, and honestly, I don't think I COULD have given up the physical activity, even if it would've been the smart thing to do. I guess the good news is that I did get better, in the meantime at least.

I hope some of this is helpful to you! Definitely keep a close eye on everything with your Doctor, though. And let me know what you discover with your training.

Racing Food: Honey, Lemon, Lime, Lite Salt, Coca-Cola Syrup?

In reply to The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Marathon Training:

Hi Allison, and welcome. Thanks for contributing such a thoughtful, specific question.

You can find most of what's written here about the SCD with this search:

http://roadskater.net/index.php?q=search/node/%22specific+carbohydrate+diet%22

None of us are experts, of course, but we are learning as we go and sharing our individual, unscientific experience. But that's what is great about it to me, as we can all share what we think, feel, or "know." Consult your doctor and healer before doing anything anywhere ever in all space and time forevermore and all that.

Please share with us your experiences with running, cycling, swimming, triathloning, diet, charity exercise and (almost) everything else. We'd love to follow your story and I know others out there would too...ones we haven't met but who will find us via GooYahMSNAsk.

Whatever we are going through is what someone else is silently going through as well, and while we all should see experts when we need them, we can encourage and inform each other here.

One thing eebee says often is that we need to find the solutions that work for us, not others. Maybe I say that too? I don't know.

[I say play your songs or the ones you like and wait to see who listens because if you play stuff you don't like, you get an audience that likes only what you don't, and the ones that might like what you do won't hang around because you're too busy playing stuff you don't. This goes for dating as an analogy, too.]

More importantly, I hope we can get some people to try exercise and diet alternatives that work for them. And getting off the couch for one lap is still getting off the couch.

Honey, Lemon, Lime, Coca-Cola Syrup?

In response to your comment about honey, we've been using honey for some time when training, sometimes carrying a last-minute-purchased "honey bear" dispenser in our waterpacks out on the Silver Comet Trail and elsewhere. Lately I purchased a Hammer Gel dispenser and liked that, and also bought an empty "travel" shampoo bottle at WallofChina-Mart which is working well.

I never thought to use lemon with the honey, but have put a teaspoon or two of Morton's Lite Salt (potassium, sodium) in my goo and skaterade (to cut the sweetness and replace electrolytes).

Yum, I wonder if lime might be good with the honey? Hmm, what if I added vanilla flavoring. I think I'm getting closer to the Coke recipe here, ha. One of our pals, skart, I think, was looking into buying Coca-Cola syrup for some concoction. Has there been an internet posting of how to make a Coca-Cola? Seems like with all the other how-to info out there, we could get that! Coca-Cola is a secret weapon, along with glitter of course. I just love how the lemon smell comes out when you unscrew the cap on a Coke on a hot day. Maybe it's a lime smell, I don't know!

And upon further research, of course there's much about the Coca-Cola recipe on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula

Interesting tidbits from that article:

To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a coca leaf extract....Because the cocaine predecessors are naturally present in coca leaves, some argue that today's Coca-Cola uses "spent", or treated, coca leaves, those that have been through a cocaine extraction process, to flavor the beverage.
The current original "classic" formula was changed in the United States at an unknown point to replace cane sugar with corn syrup, although Coca-Cola is currently sweetened with regular sugar in the rest of the world.
The closest formula to the original that can be purchased is the 1935 kosher formula which is still produced though it may be difficult to find outside of Passover, where it is sold in 2-Litre bottles with a yellow cap marked with a circle around the letter U followed by a P, indicating that the Orthodox Union certifies the soda as Kosher for Passover.
While the current American Coke formula is kosher, during Passover most observant Jews do not consume corn products or their derivatives....

The recipes seem a bit difficult, especially the third one, including...

Extract the cocaine from 1.1 grams of coca leaf (Truxillo growth of coca preferred) with toluol;dry the cocaine extract.

That's one recipe I won't be trying at home. There's a sidekick to this topic that's interesting, on OpenCola:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola

This also leads to a thorough and thoroughly humorous and interesting different recipe page...

http://www.colawp.com/colas/400/cola467_recipe.html

OK back to my vanilla soy milk breakfast lunch for today. Thanks for visiting and we hope you'll be back to share the struggle!

Skateylove, Blake

Specific Carbohydrate Diet, Olympic-Distance Triathlons, Bonking

In reply to The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Marathon Training:

Dear Eebee,

I ran across your post on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and Marathons from a year ago this afternoon and I wanted to get in touch with you. I have recently developed painful symptoms and my sister who has Crohn's disease is on SCD and she suggested the diet. I started a week before my last Olympic length triathlon of the season which was this past Saturday and had some eye-opening issues with bonking. One thing that I did do is buy one of the GU dispensers and filled it with honey cut with lemon and a couple drops of water to make it flow a little easier. It worked great but I didn't have enough for my run too.

Are you still on the diet? I would be grateful to hear any advice you'd like to share. Especially with eating to train and how you approach carbo-loading (if at all).

Thanks,

Allison

Hot Weather in the South this Week

In reply to Three Hours of Sleep, Some Junior Hamburgers, Yahoo! Mail Crash, Let's Go Skate!:

Well it is going to be hot (90s+) in the South the remainder of this week, which means if you can't get out to skate early a.m. when the ozone/smog levels are down, you might be better off doing a nightskate!

Blake was trying to help me feel better about myself as I was struggling up some horrible hills last night and had to stop many times to get my heart-rate back down and avoid passing-out (whadda wimp!). He was saying "It's hot out here today! You're not getting much oxygen to your muscles! Don't worry about it - you're doing better than you think". But all I could say was "I suck! I'm so out of shape! I have put on weight and can't get up this stinking hill!". My wheeze-zone levels were high.

The temps were in the 90s. This morning I can see Blake had a point and it was just too hot & muggy.

More on the Tour de Lions

In reply to Tour de Lions, Grays Chapel, NC 2007 Report:

The scenery was awesome, since I still have my map and live close I am thinking about heading down there once in a while on the weekends and skate a route. Only one stretch of pavement was rough on the 20 and that was better than what i am used to in Asheboro. So I was in heaven on the smooth roads.

The cyclists were great they warned us when passing almost all said hey. One even stopped to talk to us as we were eating after the race and told us we were doing 26 mph down this one hill. That was scary. We didn't even finish last in the 20 so that was a good thing, as we didn't want to be the ones to pull up the rear, so to speak.

My R4's are so comfortable, they are a higher boot than my last ones but they fit like a glove. I would highly recommend them for anyone looking for a comfortable boot, who is not looking for a low cut speed boot. Melinda skated so effortlessly in her R4's I couldn't wait to get mine.

I would love to attend more events if i could find out where and when. I would like to do Country park, let me know when you meet.

Melinda was truly selfless to skate with and she was a delight to talk to. She shared some great advise and I will be ready for my next event.

Melinda Gets Kudos as Skate Guide

In reply to Tour de Lions, Grays Chapel, NC 2007 Report:

Andrew, thanks, but I get no credit. I was wrapped up in getting myself ready for the road and getting the camera checked and set to go, then taking photos of the cyclists while they were still in sight!

Then, going down the first hill we rolled away without meaning to create a gap, but with lots of bikes around we thought we shouldn't do any braking if not absolutely necessary. We waited at the first turn so we could make sure you were doing ok, then we were looking forward to a long and somewhat hilly 30+ so we tried to catch some bikes to keep from being the caboose on the 30 route.

I think it was simply great of Melinda to have spent the day sharing the skate with you, and it's really impressive that you came out for 10 but ended up doing 20 with her company and advice.

Please do tell us more about the R4 skate boots when you have time, either on this thread or as a new create/blog entry or a create/forum posting...whatever...and come skate with us at Country Park sometime!

How was the pavement and scenery on the 20 route? Do you know if it was all within Randolph County? Did the cyclists talk to you much? Thanks again for joining RSN2 and for coming out to the Tour de Lions. I'm glad someone heard about the event because of the web site. That is very exciting. We need to post more events!

Tour de Lions

In reply to Tour de Lions, Grays Chapel, NC 2007 Report:

Just wanted to say thanks to Blake and Eebee for helping to make my first marathon skate so much fun. And a special thanks to Melinda who was a pleasure to skate with and helped a newbie to feel at home on the long course. Also Melinda I got my R4's today, great boots, I love them, they are every bit as comfortable as you said they were.

Fun Tour de Lions 2007 Bike Ride Inline Skate Skride

In reply to Tour de Lions, Grays Chapel, NC 2007 Report:

What a great report, eebee. Yes it was a wonderful day, if just a bit windy at times.

I noticed that the Chatham County roads did not seem as good as those of Randolph County, or even those of Alamance County, which were somewhere between the two in smoothness. Some places in Randolph were silkysweet. We need to remember this when attending or planning events!

The funny part was that in every town we saw some sign with Fred's last name, Lineberry, on it. I don't know (and don't care) if they're related to him; I just know this is a sweet homegrown charity ride in an area near Greensboro that is not trying (yet) to look like the ring of devastation outside the ring of highway around Atlanta.

I'll share more thoughts on the awesome Tour de Lions in Gray's Chapel if I have them and photos of lots of stuff but I'm working on other things that take precedence right now. More on that too, soon. Thanks to the church for providing facilities and to so many volunteers providing rest stops and a great lunch!

Skateylove, Blake

Glad for the opportunity of the Up2speed rides!

In reply to Don't Fear the Sweeper: The Fine Art of No-Drop Rides and Skates:

What a great way to get in some intermediate roadskate training in the Spring, sandwiched between cyclists. It's hard to find such long uphills in a park or other closed course, or trail. I am very thankful to the cyclists for letting us join in.

It's tricky and I agree wholeheartedly with Blake's comment about motorists being less tolerant of skaters on the road in front of them than cyclists, but I wish we had become the sweeps on Saturday also. And for the first time in several decades I found myself wishing I had a bike to ride so I could have kept those four or five company who abandoned the ride when the sweep got about half a mile ahead of them.

In this country people are so darned sedentary, or sit-entary, since we have to sit wherever we go. Exercise is mostly socially approved if it takes place on a machine that doesn't go anywhere inside a gym, and we journey to these gyms by sitting in our vehicles. So whenever anybody wants to go outside to get in shape, it makes me want to shout from the rooftops, or help them by accompanying them so they don't give up. Sweeping kindness was extended to me when I was a beginner skater, by various members of either the Atlanta Peachtree Roadrollers, or the Atlanta Chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training skaters. These speed-skate veterans donned their old rec skates for the occasion (newbie 'group training session', or 'Monday night beginner skate', as I had seen advertized on their website). On their rec skates were the most ratty, worn-out and miniscule wheels ever. This made it much harder for them to be 'fast': i.e. the newbies didn't lose heart and nobody ever, to my knowledge, was abandoned. They switched back to their speedskates of course for their own intense and vigorous training sessions.

When I first started taking part in downtown group roadskates, I yearned to be as fit and fast as the others, and even to look half as competent and stable as they did. Knowing that at that point I was far from it, led me to feelings of inadequacy and fear of not fitting in. Without the sweeps and patient souls encouraging me for many months, I may very well have given up, deciding 'well this isn't for me...who did I think I was, coming out here all flabby...and look at them, all fit...' :-)

Please Support SkateStrong, Mark and MS Research

In reply to Free(*) Skating Workshop in Raleigh, NC -- March 24, 2007:

SkateyMark this is awesome. I apologize for not being more helpful in the background on this when you asked for some help, and want everyone to know that you are the one who got this together without even much encouragement! It sounds really great and I'm very happy to hear you are hoping to VIBE this year for the Tour to Tanglewood to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society research and treatment.

This will be a great warm-up for the Eddy Matzger Road Show inline skating workshop in Greensboro NC Apr 6-8 (we need some sign-ups to make this happen!), and a great way to know how much or how little we've done to prepare for 2007 roadskating as spring arrives!

Thanks again for all you do in public and in the background to help people who can't enjoy skating the way we do. And thanks for so much encouragement to me along the way too.

Excellent Idea

In reply to Free(*) Skating Workshop in Raleigh, NC -- March 24, 2007:

Teaching skating proficiency, roping in new skate-addicts, getting cash for those suffering with MS and then possibly some more...it's wonderful! Way to go.

Greensboro Eddy Matzger Roadshow Inline Speed Workshop

In reply to Eddy Matzger Roadshow Inline Speed Workshop Greensboro NC April 6-8 2007:

The April date will be a great kickoff for the '07 outdoor season. My shorttrack ice season will have just ended a couple weeks earlier. I will do what I can to make it back to NC.

Jeff Barbour

Eddy in NC!!!

In reply to Eddy Matzger Roadshow Inline Speed Workshop Greensboro NC April 6-8 2007:

Hmm . . . this date may actually work for this Jersey-girl . . . looking forward to more details!!! Claire

Maybe skatefarmer will tell us the straight stuff

In reply to Eddy Matzger Roadshow Inline Speed Workshop Greensboro NC April 6-8 2007:

I think skatefarm.com is not ready yet and skatecentral.com doesn't show 2007 yet either. I just got the official notice today, but when I took Eduardo to the aeropuerto de Greensboro last Friday it was one of the topics we covered.

Much of the talk was about his visit to the Federal Magistrate regarding incidents on the Blue Ridge Parkway and his friendly discussions with the local Sheriff regarding our beloved sport of roadskating. I may have more on this later, but if you know Eddy, you know his approach is not as confrontational as others might wish or as you may have heard it described. I think he believes an informal approach in the beginning is best to demonstrate the safety and viability of our participation where bicycles are allowed.

Sometimes reporters unintentionally add their own spin to comments, as I am aware from coverage of comments I made about doing A2A on "the day we said we would" in 2006.

In any case, I'm hoping our new member, skatefarmer, will find time to post from around the world now and then.

Skateylove,

Blake