September 2024

Fall is in the air and I’m sad to see summer go but ready for a productive push to the end of 2024. I have a round of business travel coming up and after about 6 weeks at home I’m excited to get back out on the road and meet with clients and partners. I’m driving to one conference with my bike so I’ll be hitting a few famous SoCal climbs as well.

The Leadville 100 trail race record was recently broken by David Roche, a runner and coach. He’s been sharing a ton of his training and experience on X and in his podcast. If you are interested in the science and practice behind peak running performance, it’s worth checking out. You can find him here on X and his podcast with his wife Megan (also an accomplished runner and MD/scientist) is here on Apple. Their coaching page is here.

More on creatine, this time older populations and strength gains. My mom is working on building lean muscle in her 80’s and loving it. Go lift! No matter what age you are, you can get started and make progress.

Now that Softrock100 is well behind me, I’ve settled on a goal for 2025 and it’s the Death Ride. I’m mapping out my training to be ready and one method I’ve been reading more about, and heard a but about in various forms for years, is heat acclimation training (also discussed by David Roche in the Leadville content I reference above). It’s one of the latest crazes in sport performance, and there is some good science behind it. Primarily it works on increasing blood volume. This paper describes a protocol which I plan to mostly mimic later this winter for a 6 week block.

I’m testing the Specialized Romin Evo Mirror saddle, good lord was it expensive but if it is saddle nirvana it will be worth it (ATM I’m 99% sure it is). My SMP has been good but since I last bought a saddle, the 3D printed tech has really gained a devout following, so it was time to try it out. I tend to be a slower adopter on all tech and I’m not super acquisitive, but when there’s a shift in the core technology I’ll take the time to try it out. After a few rides, I am loving it and really impressed.

I got a Blender Bottle on Amazon, loved it, realized they made a stainless steel version, so now I have two. These are the only blender bottles I’ve ever used that don’t leak. This has become as indispensable as my Vitamix and Instant Pot.

Lately I’ve been loving Surge as a pre-workout, which is mostly HBCD (highly branched cyclic dextrin) plus the usual cast of characters for a pre-workout (leucine, beta-alanine, citrulline, and electrolytes). Crucially for me, it’s caffeine free which I really appreciate given how much I love coffee, and I get plenty of caffeine that way. There are a handful of studies on HBCD that look promising as well, such as this one on RPE (it was less with HBCD supplementation).

This is a fascinating documentary on YouTube (and maybe streaming elsewhere, I’m not sure) about a lake under the ice in Antarctica and the project to study it. I really liked the comment of one of the scientists, she said “We get to have adventure but I don’t think I’d do the adventure without the purpose behind it.” For some reason I appreciate that perspective.

https://youtu.be/MYVYXQ0JaFo?si=QWNSFysF-XJpg4z4

Getting back to road riding but not taking any pics lately so I’ll have to share one from a ride back in the day up the west side of Old La Honda.