Silver Sage Sports and Fitness Lab is proud to sponsor pro mountain biker Tate Meintjes.  He grew up with the Reno Development Cycling Team and is now studying mechanical engineering at UNR.  He rides for the Bear Pro Team powered by Trek. Check out this blog post by Tate about his first experience racing the Carson Epic in the pro field. 

For those of you that haven’t heard about the Carson City Epic. Let’s just say it lives up to its name: epic. The Carson City Epic is part of a four-race series known as the Epic Rides series and boasts some of the best experiences you can have during a weekend. The organizers have done an amazing job making the event fun, inclusive, and spectator friendly. The main event in the Carson City Epic is the backcountry race. People have the option of choosing to do races that are fifteen, thirty-five, or fifty miles long and are taken through amazing trails with great views in the highlands of Lake Tahoe. The backcountry races are the only competition that the amateur racers get to take part in but racing professionally, I had the chance to race a Fat Tire Criterium (or crit)  on Friday and the Capital 50 backcountry race on Sunday.

The Fat Tire Crit is the biggest attraction for spectators as they had the ability to watch the Pros race through downtown Carson City. The Fat Tire Crit is raced on mountain bikes and the only difference allowed during the crit from the backcountry race is tire choice. So, a bunch of professional mountain bikers, myself included, mounted slicks on their mountain bikes and got ready to race some road.

The crit started with two gunshots that echoed off the government buildings in downtown Carson City. I expected the race to be like short track with everyone going as hard as they could for that twenty-five minutes of racing, but I was wrong, and I am happy about that. The race started pretty slow and not many people were pushing at the front, so it was a good time to move up and try my hand racing with the fastest mountain bikers in the nation. It was one of the most fun experiences I have had on the bike. There were two Olympians, many national champions, and many other racers like me who were young and just joining the professional field.

The criterium zoomed through downtown and the course was lined with spectators going crazy as the field of sixty-five riders cut the corners to get every inch of advantage possible. The racing was fast, and I was able to stay at the front for most of the race. Then the marker came out telling us there were three laps to go. Everyone went full ballistic missile and it was taking everything I had not to get dropped. After every criterium I’ve ever done I’ve come to the finish and thought to myself, “I really shouldn’t have done that much work up front so early on.”  But it was an amazing experience zooming through the streets of Carson City with the crowd roaring the entire time. Once the crit finished it was time to prepare for the real race of the weekend. The Capital 50 backcountry.

Once again, the organizers put together an amazing event. The course went from downtown Carson, over Ash to Kings Connector, up to Spooner Lake, over to Marlette Lake and the Flume Trail, up the Tahoe Rim Trail to Marlette Peak, and then back down to Carson City. The course contained some of the best single-track on earth, breathtaking views, and over 6500 feet of climbing.

This was my first ever serious marathon mountain bike race, and so I didn’t have the best idea of how to race it. However, I put my head down and did what made sense for my style of riding. With such a long race you need to find recovery anytime you can, eat a lot, and drink more then you think you need. I started the race focused on having the best race I could while staying hydrated and eating plenty.

There was a neutral roll out of downtown at 8:30AM, and it was hailing on us. It did not look good for the rest of the day, but luckily the weather cleared out right as we hit the dirt. As soon as we hit the first climb, I had to let the leaders ride away. I followed a chase group of about six guys, and we all worked together until Spooner Lake.  I tested them all a few times on the climb up by launching a small acceleration here and there but it didn’t work, and it tired me out. I had to drop off again. Trying to keep my spirits up I rode by myself for a bit and recovered from the climb until two riders caught up with me. I paced them on the Flume trail which meant there was very little time to look at the views. They were making me work to keep up on the flat but I knew there was a lot of climbing still to be done. Luckily, I stayed with the two guys and followed one of them up the climb to Marlette Peak.

On that climb, I knew that I had made a good decision to save some energy. My small group was starting to catch riders. After reaching the high point of the race, I was hurting but felt as though I could push. I sprinted out of every corner on the downhill and caught two of the people I was riding with earlier. We worked together on a flat road section, but once the single track came up on us it was time to race again. It was chaos. One guy flatted, another guy and I shoulder checked the same tree, and we were going hard. On the last real climb, I pushed, and got a little gap to keep on the downhill, but the race wasn’t done. There were three more riders just ahead of me that I recognized from the beginning of the race. They pushed, I pushed, I closed a little bit of the gap, but it wasn’t enough and they finished just thirty seconds ahead. At the end of the race I was tired, my muscles were cramping, and I had a huge smile on my face.

I would recommend the Epic Rides series to anyone. It has competitions and fun rides that fit everyone and the atmosphere around the venue is genuine and enjoyable. As I said, this was my first marathon mountain bike race, but thanks to the great organizers of Epic Rides, it won’t be my last!

Tate finished 31st out of a field of 52 in the crit and 32nd out of 51 in the backcountry race.  Congratulations Tate!

 

By Dr. Andrew Pasternak, Silver Sage Sports & Fitness Lab

On May 30, 2017, I had the pleasure of attending the Fourth Annual Congress of the Ultra Sports Science Foundation in Denver, Colorado. The Ultra Sports Science Foundation was founded by three incredible docs: t theDr. Marty Hoffman, previous research director for the Western States 100, Dr. Volker Scheer medical director for the Al Andalus Ultimate Trail race as well as the assistant sports medical director at the University of Paderborn, Germany and Dr. Patrick Basset, an anesthesiologist, mountain rescue doctor and medical director for the International Paris Marathon, UTMB and stages of the the Tour de France.

This is my third time at the conference  (I unfortunately missed last year in Chamonix, France – still kicking myself!). This one-day conference is packed with incredible information from physicians and researchers throughout the world. I was fortunate enough to present a couple of case reports:  one on a local runner and another with Carol Lindsey from the Castle Peak 100K (so the DPMR premier race has now been presented to an international scientific meeting!).

Over the next few months I’d like to share some of the highlights of the lectures and what I’ve learned at the meeting.  We’ll start with the first two presentations today.

After a brief talk on the participation trends endurance sports (more people doing more events), the first two talks focused on nutrition. The first, by Kristin Stuempfle, PhD was entitled “Sodium Good or Evil in prolonged exercise.” Dr. Stuempfle is a PhD from Gettysburg College in Penn and has a number of publications with Dr. Hoffman including studies from WS100. She had four main questions:

• Does sodium prevent dehydration?
• Does sodium prevent nausea?
• Does sodium prevent muscle cramps?
• Does sodium prevent exercise-associated hyponatremia?

To make a long story short: Current research does not show that sodium supplementation prevented any of these issues, so there is no need to take salt caps.  She also presented a few anecdotal cases of runners who got into medical problems after pushing too much salt (over 7000mg). While these were just case reports, the idea that too much salt can cause problems is concerning.

Her bottom line is simple: If you’re thirsty: drink.  If you’re craving salt: eat something salty. As an aside, the one concern I’ve always had with salt tabs is that you don’t taste the salt. There is a thought (not completely scientifically proven) that sensation of tasting salt is as important as the salt itself.  In full disclosure, the folks at Easy Street aid station saw me try some salt tabs when I got cramps during the Broken Arrow. I’m not convinced they did anything!

The second talk was from Trent Stellingwerff, PhD from the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, who is also a very active endurance athlete. His talk was entitled “Fueling for Optimal Ultra Performance:  from high carb to keto-adaptation.” Dr. Stellingwerff reviewed much of the data dating back to the 1925 Boston Marathon on the importance of carbohydrate intake with endurance exercise. In the 1970s and 80s, a number of studies from Dr. Edward Coyle show that carbohydrate ingestion did increase the amount of time that it took to fatigue.

Over the past few years there’s been much more of an emphasis on trying to burn fat more effectively during exercise. The rationale is that if athletes are able to burn more fat, they may not need as much carbohydrate intake during the race and may not have as many GI issues, a common reason people don’t complete races.

A few important points I learned:  to truly become ketogenic, most people had to ingest less than 50 g of carbohydrate per day for at least three weeks.  Also the data on ketogenic diets improving performance are very mixed, in part, because the definition of “performance improvement” varies so much between studies. Finally, Dr. Stellingwerff did point out our bodies are more efficient producing energy from carbohydrates than from fat oxidation.

Finally, he pointed to the diets of some elite athletes:  Kenyan marathoners get anywhere from 67-77% of their calories from carbohydrate. The famed Greek ultrarunner Yiannis Kouros, during a five-day race from Sydney to Melbourne, was able to ingest 11,000 calories a day and 95% of those calories were from carbohydrates including baklava, creamy custard and honey cookies.

His bottom line was that ultimately every person is different and we all need to experiment. Some of these differences are probably dependent on your muscle fiber type. Parts of this are also likely based on your ability to digest carbohydrates during exercise which is incredibly variable from person-to-person.  Finally, for people doing races where they are going to be exercising at higher intensities, carbohydrates are still likely the go to.

One of the exciting things is that because participation in ultra endurance events has been a fairly recent phenomenon, the research is also new and is constantly changing.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more updates!