Weight loss for all of us is a minefield of fact, fiction, best sellers and diet plans. Working in a Hospital and GP practice I see the daily effects of excess weight and hear all sorts of wonderful ideas from patients about what caused it.  I imagine many of us took up cycling for the health benefits that come with it and maybe to lose a bit of weight as well. In the last blog we looked at diet for improving performance on the bike so for this one I thought I’d look at the basic science behind weight loss, and the difference between eating for performance and eating for weight loss

With the Prudential Ride 100 approaching, many club cyclists have been in training to complete 100 miles, a distance which is a lot further than most of us cycle on a weekly basis. With this come increased energy demands and fuelling considerations. Many of you would have seen Chris Froome on the climb up to Alpe D’huez suddenly run out of energy in the TdF and have to take an emergency energy gel from the team car, so getting it wrong can happen to best of cyclists. So, in this post I will look at the energy demands placed on a rider and how to successfully pace a ride to complete 100 miles

With the TdF reaching its midway point and the peloton making its way towards the Alps for a brutal last week of climbing, all the talk has been around Chris Froome and his amazing performance on the 1st mountain stage of Ax-3-Domaines last Saturday. It has raised the question of doping once again and pointed the finger of suspicion at Froome and Team Sky. So for this blog, I thought I would take a look at that performance using Dr Ross Tucker’s of Science in Sports excellent analysis, discuss the physiology involved in enabling it. To give the performance some context I will look at the same climb during the previous tours during the EPO era and explain why EPO gave certain riders an unfair advantage.