There was a heat stroke incident in June on a Club ride, and the rider required hospital care (he is out of the hospital and recovering). The heat stroke occurred on a hot day in a remote location, but the good news is that the rider was not alone. Others helped with communications, administered first aid, and arranged for evacuation. Based on this experience, we want to formalize some measures that worked in that situation for rides that take place in remote locations.
The first principle is that riders have to take responsibility for their own safety - be aware of your limitations, food and water, clothing, the weather, and your equipment. In addition, the Rides Committee approved safety guidelines that apply to all remote rides, no matter the program or ride surface. The full set of guidelines can be viewed HERE.
We recommend you read the guidelines, but here is a summary:
- The participants should be divided into groups by pace, and riders having difficulty and can stop and wait for the next group;
- When a rider needs help, the group will assist in requesting such help, and remain with the rider until they reach a location where he or she is safe;
- If there is no mobile signal, the group should try houses with possible emergency contact options. Also request help from passing motorists when available;
- Adverse weather should cancel the ride;
- A shorter option should be available if possible.
Ride safety is paramount, and our work on this issue will continue to include other contingencies which might arise on remote rides.We would like to hear from you if you've had ride experiences related to safety on remote rides. You can use the "comment" feature below.
Ed Cheng is VP Rides.
You are always metabolizing a combination of fat and glucose even when you are sleeping. The more active you are the higher the proportion of glucose you are burning. Riding below your anaerobic threshold (AT), also called lactate threshold, about 50% of your energy is coming from glucose and 50% is coming from fat. Above your AT the major source is glucose although you are still burning fat. The harder you ride above AT the more glucose per minute you are burning.
Endurance training helps defer bonking and hitting the wall in two ways. By riding at a conversational pace over many rides your body will shift to metabolizing more fat and less glucose thereby sparing glucose. (This doesn’t mean you’ll lose weight. To do that you need to consume fewer total calories than you are burning.) Endurance training also increases your muscles’ capacity to store glycogen by 20 to 50%. If you’ve been doing endurance exercise for years both of these adaptations have taken place but if you’re a relatively new roadie you can improve your fuel mix and your storage capacity with endurance riding.
Sports drinks and gels are easier to consume than solid food; however, you can ride just as well on food from the local grocery. Real food is cheaper and tastier. The key is to read the labels so that what you are buying and consuming is composed primarily of carbs
While it’s impossible to predict animal encounters, you should be aware of risks while in their habitat, which these days can be almost anywhere. If you are riding in a forested area, of course, you are more likely to encounter a wandering animal, and you should be scanning the road ahead.(
The Club ran a virtual century during June. It was the Climb to the Clouds routes, one of the more challenging set of routes in the Club’s library. For the first two weeks in June we also ran a T-shirt challenge offering custom, commemorative T-shirts for the first 25 riders to complete the 100 mile route. The event was based on a Ride With GPS (RWGPS) feature which allowed members to register for the event, and it would then automatically record the ride on a leaderboard. It looked like an easy event to administer with the first 25 winners neatly recorded in one place. Not so!
There is no debate in the scientific community that people should eat lots of plants that have not had their fiber removed. A review commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) of 185 prospective studies and 58 clinical trials, covering 4600 adults, shows that for every 8-gram/day increase in dietary fiber, there was up to a 31 percent decrease in deaths from all causes, a 30 percent decrease in deaths from heart attacks, a 22 percent reduced risk of stroke, and a 16 percent reduced risk of diabetes, colorectal cancer or breast cancer (Lancet, Jan 10, 2019). See 
Copyright: Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD July 2021
Weight loss is not simple because our bodies adapt to “famines” by conserving energy. When food is scarce, be it a famine or a diet, the body conserves energy (metabolism slows, spontaneous movement lessens) and simultaneously appetite increases. Hence, eating less (dieting) takes persistent effort. The greater the energy deficit and the greater the weight loss, the greater the increase in appetite. Losing weight can becomes more and more challenging. Hence, most athletes (and people) end up unwilling or unable to sustain for a long time a diet with a calorie reduction of 25%. For a typical female athlete who maintains weight at about 2,400 calories, that’s an 1,800-calorie reducing diet. Based on my experience, athletes inevitably self-imposed a 1,200 – 1,500 calorie reducing plan. No wonder their diets fail! The stricter the diet, the hungrier the dieter, the bigger the backlash. The dieter devours way too much ice cream, too many cookies, chips…
