Why maintaining hydration is so important

This weekends racing in Sabie at the MTN marathon and ultra marathon produced some extreme conditions that really test hydration strategies in endurance events. The high temperatures combined with over 60% humidity are a recipe for dehydration. Many participants of the marathon event took 8hrs to finish and the ultra riders were out for anything between 5 and 9 hours. In these conditions unless you have a bullet proof hydration plan you are going to get caught out.

For a two hour ride you could get away with just a bottle of water, for a 4 hr ride maybe a couple of bottles of energy drink, but for an 8 hour epic ride in heat conditions like this you are looking at 8+ bottles of some quality endurance drink. With water pouring out of your body at more than a litre an hour you have to make sure that you are at least replacing the lost salts and then also try to get in enough fluid and some carbs to keep your energy up. Because once you get on the wrong side of the dehydration curve and your appetite and thirst is suppressed and nausea sets in then you are on the brink of shut down, no matter how fit or strong you are. This interesting article Dehydration insport: why it is vital an athlete maintains hydration levels duringexercise gives an informative and well explained background to dehydration.

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Tubeless 1-2-3

Fitting a tubeless tyre system on a mountain bike is really quite simple. The easiest way is if you have a tubeless rim with a tubeless tyre, then you just need to insert the valve into the rim and fit the tyre. Add tubeless sealant for puncture protection and use an air compressor or a high volume pump to seat the tyre onto the rim. If you have a standard rim and want to convert it to tubeless then you need a tubeless conversion kit. This kit has 3 components, the rim strip to seal the rim, the valve that fits into the rim and tubeless sealant to get that air tight seal. Using this kit you can use almost any combination of rim and tyre allowing for many options depending on your need for durability or weight saving. Either way you will get the best performance out of your tyres and get the best possible puncture resistance.

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Mountain Bike Race and Events Calendar

If you are looking for MTB races or events to participate in then you are in luck we have added a 2012 MTB Calendar to our website. This is a list of all official MTB races in South Africa and is very comprehensive covering the whole year and the whole country. We have used the Google calendar function so you should be able to share it easily. The calendar gives you the date, venue and short description of the events.

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Heart Rate and Power Training Aids

If you want to take your training to another level then you should consider getting some sort of training aid like a heart rate monitor or power meter to assist you. Heart rate monitors have  been the standard for a long time now with the manufacturer Polar really leading the way. They have done a great job in trying to make the monitors more accessible and understandable for the average person. Heart rate is definitely your starting point to getting a better understanding of how you should train and how you can measure your effort and progress.

 

Power meters are a much newer training aid and have been used successfully by most of the pros to reach their specific training goals. But for the average person it is still expensive and debatable as to whether you will be able to get and make use of the full value that a power meter offers. Joe Friel author of Mountain Bikers Training Bible recently posted a great explanation of why a power meter is valuable for training and how it compares to a heart rate monitor. Basically it comes down to input(heart rate) and output (power), measuring one or the other will only give you half the picture, but measuring both gives you the complete picture. Check out his "Why you need a power meter" post for the full story.

 

But overall its best to start with heart rate and if you are just going for one of them then stick with the heart rate, it is more flexible to use on and off the bike, costs less and will definitely improve your performance.

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