Training and Nutrition

Not that we're competing (and, we really aren't) but Dana beat me "big time" in her total bike mileage for March, and this as she was recovering from knee surgery!  Of course, I will always find an excuse: mine is that I was vacationing for 2 weeks in Colorado, had no bike available, and experienced 3 snowstorms.  But, I have to admit that I was NOT recovering from surgery.

I had an interesting thing happen today that has gotten me looking into nutrition for our cross-country tour.  The weather was not conducive to biking on the Oregon Coast today so I went to the gym and spent about 40 minutes on a recumbant bike (primarily to work on my aerobic fitness) then another 45 minutes on strength training.  I also decided to step on the scale and learned I had lost 4-5 lbs in just a few days.  Now, I had planned to lose 5 lbs. over the next 4 months to make climbing a bit easier, but certainly hadn't planned to lose it in less than a week.  I am not a dieter and exercise is how I normally lose weight.  I started thinking about the past week and my eating habits and realized that most of the time I was exercising during what is normally lunchtime and that I had basically forgotten to eat most days - not good!  Coincidntally, Bicycling Magazine had some really good information on nutrition this month (May 2010, starting on page 44).  I consider myself pretty savy about nutrition and exercise but I really learned some things from these articles, along with a couple of good sounding recipes.  What I did not need to read, and that I already know, is that I need to eat frequently during the day, especially when I'm in training!  When we are on our tour we will probably burn over 2000 cal. each day just from our riding - learning how to keep "fueled" is essential!