Okay, I’ve heard, and read, so much stuff about the amount of salt, and such, that endurance athletes need to function properly.  It’s pretty much accepted that we need to eat as much salt as we can stomach, especially in extraordinary heat.

I’ve never been much into eating salt.  I thought it wasn’t very good for you and I never developed a taste for it.  Plus I never had much of a taste for salty foods.  I don’t eat many chips, fries or other processed foods that are really salty.

I’ve tried to use more salt the last couple years since I’ve been having cramping issue, virtually my whole life, and I have more interest in controlling it now.

Yesterday I took a  S!Cap, one, before I rode.  It was close to 100 degrees out and super muggy. I was riding pretty easy again.  S!Caps have sodium, potassium, chloride, bicarbonate, phosphate.

About 20 minutes after I started riding, I could taste salt on my lips.  Like a lot of it.  I rode an hour and a half and then came back to my house to meet up with a bunch more guys.  I drank two large bottles on the first ride, then refilled my bottles and took one more S!Cap.

One the 2nd ride, it was really weird.  It was nearly 100 degrees still, but we were riding into real dark clouds.  It was nearly the first time in my life I was actually riding into a storm.  There were 7 of us and pretty much everyone was in agreement that we wanted to get wet.  And we did.  It soon started raining.

Then it really rained.  It was so strange riding in a downpour, not getting any cooling effect. That changed after about 5 miles.  The wind switched up and the rain got a lot cooler.  It was nearly cold, the rain, but the water spraying off the road was super warm, nearly hot.

We rode like this for about 30 minutes.  Pretty soon it stopped and then it started hearing up again.  Talk about muggy.

This is when I noticed, again, the taste of my sweat.  My lips definitely tasted of salt.  Then, even though I was wearing a bandana, the sweat in my eyes was burning them like crazy.  I had to spray my eyes out with my bottle.

My question is, why do you sweat more salt when you ingest more salt?  My sweat never tastes like salt unless I take a salt supplement.  When I do take a salt supplement, soon after, I start sweating and it always tastes like salt.

Here’s another example.  I’m not usually one of those guys that get crusty shorts, salt shorts, during long hot races.  But lots of guys do.  It seems more common in early season.

Back when the Tour of Texas was going on, we had been racing already for a few days by the time we got to San Antonio.  Normally, a lot of the riders would go down to the Riverwalk in San Antonio and eat Mexican food.  Of course, many riders would have a margarita.  Plus eat a ton of salty chips, waiting for their meals.

The day after this, the salt shorts were crazy.  Nearly everyone would have those white streaks on their black shorts.

This wasn’t the case the previous days, so I have to assume that everyone had ingested way more salt than normal and was sweating it out.  If this is the case, then why do we need to take salt supplements if we sweat it out as soon as we exercise.

So here are two examples of ingesting more salt to instantly just sweat it out.  If you sweat it right out, then why take it to start with?  Or maybe sweat is always supposed to taste salty and I’ve just never had the proper amount for an endurance athlete?  I have a hard time believing that.

One other question is, or observation, is that the salt gets into your system super quickly.   I can taste the salt on my lips really quickly after taking a supplement.  It is amazing that a small pill can be swallowed, goes to your stomach and then somehow get to your cooling system quick enough to taste the salt on my lips.   Pretty amazing.

Okay, I’ve tried to read up on this and haven’t really found any answers.  Any information that any of you have on this would be appreciated.   I’m not much into the salt taste and stinging in my eyes.

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I spent a long time in my chamois.  I did ride 4 hours, but I was in them a lot longer than that.  I try to avoid that usually, at all costs.

Vincent and I rode off-road for a couple hours, then met Trudi in Golden for sandwiches.  We rode back over North Table Mtn., then I decided that my Q factor on my MTB shoes was way too wide.  I set the shoes up for cyclo-cross and if I move them closer in then the heels hit the chain stays on my cross bike.  But I have a centimeter or so extra on MTB bike.

I brought a new pair of Shimano MTB shoes with me, so I mounted new cleats and moved them in as far as they go.  It was amazing, at least it is so far.  I’ve been having some trouble with my right knee and I went out for another hour-plus, to test of the shoes.  My knee didn’t hurt at all. I’m not sure this is permanently going to fix my knee issue, but it gives me hope.

I did 6000 feet of climbing in 45 miles.  And most of that was pretty steep, granny gear stuff.  I’m sort of surprised I don’t feel worse riding here.  The altitude hasn’t seemed to bother me that much.  I think that is because it was so frickin’ hot back in Kansas that the heat was much more painful than the lack of air.  Plus I’ve been staying below 7000 feet for the most part.

Heat and altitude are very similar when you are untrained for them.  At least the symptoms of not being acclimated are.  I tend to pant from my upper diaphragm and can’t produce much power.  I don’t get used to altitude that easily.  It takes me about a month to be able to race at my best at altitude.  I finished 12th at the first Mountain Bike World Champhionships in Vail, but I’d been racing at altitude for nearly a month that time.  This is where I come up with the number.  I’m way better after a couple weeks, but the next two weeks is important too.  I’d like to find a low altitude race to do sometime in the 2nd two weeks to attend.  It is hard pushing the pedals hard when there is little air.

I’m heading up to Steamboat Springs later this morning for the Tour de Steamboat.  I have to drop Trudi off, to head to the airport, first.  It’s not too late to register for the drawing of the Kent Eriksen bicycle.  I think they pick the lucky winner tomorrow after the ride.  Here is a link to the drawing.

VIncent is trying to get a new cartridge for his Lefty shock fork.  His is leaking oil.  It is less than 2 months old.  That seems wrong.  You need a special tool to pull the cartridge out, so hopefully they have that tool at the shop in Golden that seem to have the replacement part.

Vincent, and my team mate Brian Jensen, are racing the Breck 100 tomorrow.  There are 3 choices of distances.  They are both doing the 68 mile distance.  The winner’s time was over 6 hours last year.  That is pretty slow.  Must be a pretty hard course.  I wonder who long it took to do the full 100?

I haven’t ridden my road bike since I got here on Tuesday.  It is funny how you really need to record your training in hours and not look at the miles.  Like yesterday, 45 miles, but over 4 hours.  That would normally be over 80 miles.   I have nearly 8000 miles for the year, but it took 460 hours.  MTB riding really kills the distance.  VIncent gave me a heart rate strap to use with my Garmin.  I wore it yesterday.  I plan to wear it tomorrow too.  I got interesting in this by reading about the Chris Froome’s leaked data for the 2013 Tour, video below with his numbers. His max heart rate was 160 when he was attacking on the Ventoux.  That is amazingly low. Especially considering the crazy wattage he was producing.  If you ride with a powermeter, the numbers on the video below will really depress you and, for sure, astonish you.

Okay, the day is getting away.