Awesome Pru Ride London helped along by beetactive, curranz and others

Had a great Ride London today, perfect weather for an almost 6AM start (yawn…).

Not much sleep but that was because the excitement was just too much (and the start time 🙂 )

I was pretty much gone by Kingston (on the RETURN, I hasten to add) but other than Leith and dodgy gears the ride was great and thoroughly enjoyable.

I was surprised by the number of crashes. I must have seen the after-effects of 4. And going in one of the earlier waves that was surprising.

This rather significantly distanced ‘race’ has me spending much of the time in Z3/Z4 and yet I felt great for most of the route.

I put this down to a couple of things (some of which may elevate the HR and hence put me incorrectly I the wrong HR zone, although the power was averaging high Z3 as well most of the time), these are:

– tried baking powder. ie sodium bicarbonate (rather than lots of cake). Supposeldy it reduces the acidity of the blood hence delaying lactic acid (acidosis). Cheap as chips to buy. Seemed to do something positive.

– beetactive (from CherryActive) I tried for the first time. It’s essentially the same as Beet-It but cheaper and in a handier sachet. This seemed to have the same positive performance effects for me as does beet-it.

– curranz loading for a week prior to the event. Again I’ve never tried this loading strategy before either (thanks Fleur). This may have helped with the removal of the lactic acid burn but should also see the effects tomorrow with lack of DOMS. TBH I can’t believe my legs won’t hurt tomorrow! We’ll see.

So lots of nutritional first and there were a few other equipment first as well that I might cover another time. A ‘C’ race so a good time to try these things out.