Earlier this month I wrote about how everyone was too quick to judge Floyd as guilty, especially considering past problems with drug testing and the likelihood that there are corrupt people involved (as with almost anything…) I got a lot of flack from people that just wanted to jump on the bandwagon, but I’m not alone!

If you look at the Floyd Landis Petition, you’ll see that 2,963 people have signed it. So I’m not the only one that thinks something is fishy! Even Phil Liggett is on my side!

After a couple small attempts at this, I think I figured it out for the third time!

If you remember, the whole point of this is to find something to give me more calories in a mountain bike race without adding solid food. We’re talking about a 2.5-3 hour race, maybe a 6 hour. I think there will be a lot more testing though, if I try to figure out the proper nutrition method for a 24 hour solo attempt…

So really, I just needed to add a couple hundred calories to my 2 bottles of Gatorade. And that is what I did on day 3 testing. I took 2 bottles of Gatorade/maltodextrin mix out for a 2 hour ride. And it went great! (Well, from a nutrition standpoint it did, I was a bit sluggish because I was fighting off a cold…)

In the end, the main finding is that I can combine Gatorade and maltodextrin powder and use it successfully while riding.

Ride number two with maltodextrin… a bit different than the first time. I did about 2 and a half hours on the road, still very hilly of course. This time I loaded the maltodextrin into my bottles, hoping to add an extra 200 or so calories.

The ride seemed to go well. I got worn out, but considering I haven’t been riding much, I don’t think the maltodextrin was giving me problems! On this ride I had a bottle of Gatorade and a bottle of water, both of which contained some maltodextrin powder. I’ll tell ya this – that was the last time I mix maltodextrin powder with plain water!

As far as the Gatorade and maltodextrin powder mix, it was fine.

If you’ve been reading a while, you know that I’ve been planning out a nutrition strategy for training and racing. Last week was the first day I tested the addition of maltodextrin powder to my normal fluid intake.

I did a little less than two hours on my mountain bike over hilly terrain, but no serious efforts. I used a bottle of Gatorade/maltodextrin powder and a bottle of water. Everything went fine. Granted I didn’t use that much maltodextrin, but I was doing the unthinkable – mixing simple and complex carbs! Uh oh!

My next ride I will be using quite a bit more maltodextrin, so keep reading to see what happens!

There are lots of sports nutrition sites out there, so some will obviously be biased. So which ones should be good?

Here are some that should be worth checking out:

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