Michael and I have just had great fun doing our first DC Strategies workshop in Somerset West. Michael talked about training up to the day plus team strategies on the day, depending whether you're racing for a place or out to enjoy the view! I dealt with the nutrition and talked about carb loading vs. fat loading, water loading, the pre-race meal, the hour before, liquid and solid foods during the race and speeding up recovery after.

You will be very pleased to know that we are repeating the workshop at Cycle lab, Northgate Mall on Mon 2nd Nov. I don't want to give too much away because it would be lovely to share with you in person, however, one area of discussion was around ergogenic aids (performance-enhancing supplements).

I think there are a lot of supplements that can support the body and help it to function better and therefore improve performance. However, I wouldn't call them ergogenic - ie. make a very measurable difference to performance. There are two supplements that I would truly call ergogenic and one of them is caffeine. 

Caffeine stimulates fat mobilisation which would increase the amount of fuel coming from fat and spare carbohydrate stores a bit. It is not going to be too effective if you are a big coffee drinker because your receptor sites will be down ergulated. However, if you are caffeine-clean, you can potentially gain a lot. Up to 500mg caffeine (3-4 cups of very strong coffee or equivalent in pills) within an hour of the race would be the dose, although everyone is individual and may require a lot less. Be careful though because caffeine is diuretic and potentially a gut stimulant, so can cause you to need a Number 1 and/or Number 2! Its one to practice in training. 

I would be very interested to hear experiences from anyone who has used caffeine as an ergogenic aid - a good one to discuss.

I mentioned two performance-enhancing supplements - well, you'll need to come on the 2nd to learn about the other one!