Recovery Drinks

You know you’ve had a tough ride, when you are walking gingerly down the stairs reaching for the handrail, that’s how I felt about the 50 mile race on Sunday. This weekend I had two races, a 10 mile race on Saturday afternoon and a 50 mile race on Sunday morning. Usually, I don’t take recovery drinks. I’m not keen on liquid food and generally prefer eating solid food. However, since I had two races in two days, I thought it would be good to try using recovery drinks and see if there was any difference.

Generally, I thought it was good, and since the test have started using recovery drinks more regularly. Sometimes on long rides I will have one recovery drink whilst actually cycling, I actually like the change from sickly sweet energy drinks.

The recovery drinks had a mixture of

• Protein (usually, soy, whey and milk)
• Carbohydrates
• Amino Acids
• Glutamine

It is said the best recovery drinks have a combination of glucose carbohydrates like maltodextrin for replenishing glycogen stores and a whey (or soy) protein for aiding muscle recovery.

The two I have been testing include:

Powerbar Recovery Drink

I chose the chocolate flavour, it has milk, soy and whey powder for a mixture of proteins. Tastes fine. Personally, I’m not so keen on milk powder, but, seemed to do a good job. Powerbar Recovery drink at Evans Cycles.

Science in Sport Recovery Drink.

I was impressed with this recovery drink. It is a mixture of complex carbohydrates, soy protein, and electrolytes. There’s a long list of ingredients which makes you feel it must be doing a lot of good things. Tasted a bit like the soy protein powders I used to take – which is fine.

Science in Sport Recovery Drinks at Wiggle

The benefit of taking recovery drinks are:

• After a race or long ride, you don’t feel like eating, but, the first hour after a ride is said to be the most important time for taking on food and water.
• The alternative is often eating cakes on sale at races. These drinks are better for you in that they are not just simple sugars. I find when you’re looking for snacks you often end up eating just simple sugars which are not very good for you.
• Electrolytes help replenish lost salts.
• Usually, after a race, I’m driving home. A recovery drink is easy to sip on the way home. It is better than waiting an hour or longer before starting to eat.
• Easily digestible on the stomach.

On Saturday I took a Zip Vit recovery drink because I had a free sample. It tasted OK, nothing to get excited about, but, at least it was palatable. I also tried a Science in Sport recovery drink. I didn’t particularly like taste, but, that might just be me.

Although, I don’t like drinking food, it felt good to take a recovery drink on both Saturday and Sunday. There is a psychological benefit as well. I was pretty tired after the 50 mile Time trial and it was good to take a recovery drink which helped.

The 10 mile Time trial was disappointing – 21.59. The 50 mile time trial I was quite pleased with. My time was 1.56.31 on a very windy day (the kind of day you were doing 53 kmph one way and 33 Kmph in the other direction. I think I finished about 3rd out of 80. I was pleased because in my early 50 this year I fell apart at half way and struggled round in 2.04.50. So it was nice to get that ride out of the system. I really enjoy riding 50 mile time trials – but you do have to be really fit, otherwise they can be torture!.

Related

• Recovery and Energy Drinks at Evans Cycles
  Recovery Drinks at Wiggle
• Recovery rides
• Energy drinks
• Why bother with recovery drinks
• Recovery Drinks
• Recovering from long ride