Category Archives: MiscInfo

Sports drinks, hydration and a mythical enemy?

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Here is an interesting article (Ref BMJ 2012;345:e4737) from the British Medical Journal which discusses the need, or lack thereof, for sports drinks during exercise and endurance activities.

The long and the short if it, according to the article, is that the necessity for sports drinks has been overemphasised by the sports drinks industry. It appears, from the article, that there is not much really relevant research into the relationship between hydration, sports drinks, performance and general health. The conclusions one can actually draw from the research also hinge on the subjects within the tests – real endurance athletes and their sports versus “everyday-Joes” doing 15-30minutes of exercise in the gym.

I guess my take on it is drink some water for activities lasting less than an hour and drink some sort of drink containing some calories and electrolytes when you exercise for more than an hour. It seems to work for me – for rides longer than two hours I tend to consume 200-400kCal per hour depending on what and when I’ve eaten and what training I have planned for after the cycle. Then there are the race-like training sessions where I try and dial in my hydration and nutrition to match race day prep.

Anyway – read the article (and associated comments) and decide what you think. Let me know your thoughts on this. I’m going to try and find some other articles discussing this and if I find any that I think are useful I will post a follow-up.

BMJ 2012;345:e4737

Yikes, I amaze myself sometimes

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So, I was looking over my past events last night and noticed something that I had forgotten. I noticed that I had less than one month between my first ever triathlon and my first half-Ironman race. WOW. That was pretty gutsy for me. I look back now and am not sure I would recommend such behaviour. It does however, make me think about just what is possible when one puts their mind to something.Maybe that Ironman race next year isn’t so bad afterall.

I did a “sortof” triathlon in training yesterday. Did a 1600m swim set, a 15mile bike ride and a 2mile run. Transistions were pretty slow (ok, a trip to buy groceries between the swim and bike) however. The 15 mile loop may become a time-trial course of sorts for me over the coming months. It’s got some decent stretches for TT aero-bar position and has a short-sharp hill at about 10miles. I look forward to reducing the time to complete the loop 🙂

Tissot PRC200 watch hand alginment

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My Tissot PRC200’s “big” second hand has not been aligned to zero for a couple of months and has been annoying me. I figured it needed a trip to the shop to get fixed. One a whim I did a search for this and almost immediately found a fix for this problem! Another “win” for the Internet. The info is from a forum post from “leewmeister” and the useful info is quoted here incase the forum closes.

You can zero each of the hands on the chronograph dials individually. Here’s how:
1) Make sure the chronograph is stopped.
2) Reset the chronograph with the pusher at 4 o’clock. If any of the hands aren’t at their “zero” position they’ll need to be adjusted.
3) Pull out the winding crown to the first position (date setting position).
4) Push the plunger at the 2 o’clock position. This will advance one of the chrono hands a step at a time. Stop it when the hand is at zero.
5) Push the plunger at the 4 o’clock position. This will adjust another of the chrono dials.
6) Pull the crown out to the second position (time setting position) and use the 2 or 4 o’clock plunger to adjust the final chrono dial.
One of the 4 possible crown/plunger combinations doesn’t adjust anything. I don’t have a chrono with me at the moment so I’m not sure which crown/plunger combination is the non-functional one. Anyhow, I hope this helps.