During the week I have been reading the blog entries from Chris Horner from his Giro d'Italia exploits with team Astana. On one particular day, he discussed his daily calorie intake of about 6500 which include pre race, post race and during race nutrition for the entire day. What struck me was the amount of coke he consumed during the stage, about 8 x 250ml mini cans of coke, WOW, must be something in that. So I decided to experiment today on my ride with coke as my main source of fuel.

So last night, I filled a bidon with full fat coke and left the lid off the bidon for a few hours to allow it to degas.

So this morning I headed out on my ride today to Kinglake with a long black coffee in the bowels and that was it. I took the following fuel along for the ride:

1 x Bidon 750ml with water and a Nuun Electrolyte Tablet
1 x Bidon 750ml with full fat coke - 85g CHO
1 x Fruit and Nut Bar 20g CHO
1 x Small Can Red Bull 250ml 28g CHO

And that was it. 4h+ of riding hills and started putting down the coke at the 1:30 point into the ride. Once I started on the coke, I really needed to keep it going the entire time. Had the can of red bull and the fruit and nut bar at the top of the climb which was about 2:00 into the ride. At the 3:30 mark the coke was nearing empty so pulled into a servo and purchased another can of coke and into the bidon it went. So all up, I had approx 150-160g of CHO for the entire ride and that was on an empty stomach and with reasonable intensity to boot. Body is getting good at fat burning. In years past, I would have gone out on a 4h ride with at least 320g CHO and had breakfast before hand and I would not have ridden as fast as I currently am.

I have to say, I had legs all day and the after burners appeared to be on today. Climbed at a good constant pace and even put some big ones in at times for a surge here and there. All up, coke for me was a winner, thanks Chris Horner (Astana) for the blog entry and the abuse you gave coke during stage 8 of the Giro. (8 x 250ml cans).

No noticeable shakes at all, mind clear and sharp all day, I wonder if it was a placebo effect given I knew coke was going in or does it really do that to you? Sugar is awesome! Oh, even better yet is the taste, it sure beats High5 hands down. Bottom line, I will be keeping the coke going on my rides in the future and stop using High5, don't see the need to go back to it for now.