Embrocation for the Vegan

It's cyclocross time and with the cool weather finally upon us in the Northeast, it's time for some embrocation to keep those legs feeling good in the cold and wet of cyclocross.



First up, Qoleum. This stuff goes out of its way to say it's vegan. That's pretty sweet. Qoleum comes in three flavors: low, medium, and hot. I'm enough of an embrocation fiend to have all three, but medium and hot would probably do you right.

Here's the sales pitch:
"Made from 100% natural vegan base for pre-sports levels of warming applications. Contains capsicum, menthol, eucalyptus and vitamin E.
100% organic, made with the finest ingredients in Belgium"

Vegan, organic, and Belgian, what more could you ask for?

Cyclocrossworld.com stocks it.

When I started racing 'cross more seriously, I bought myself some Sportsbalm embrocation. Three years later, I still have the same two tubes of Sportsbalm (The Dutch site). I like Sportsbalm. It lasts a while (both on your legs and in the tube). The medium is just right for cooler and damp days, while the XXX will get you through most cold and/or crappy rainy days. It lacks the feel good organic ingredients and explicit vegan tag, but it works well and the ingredients are vegan friendly.

Medium ingredients: Mineral Oil, Petrolatum, Tea Tree Oil, Wintergreen, Cayenne, Paprika Oil, Nutmeg Oil.

Hot ingredients: Mineral Oil, Petrolatum, Cajeput Oil, Wintergreen, Cayenne, Paprika Oil, Nutmeg Oil.

So, not organic, but it's vegan and Dutch. That's two out of three.

Cyclocrossworld.com stocks it

New Vegan FAQ Site

From the ass kicking Dino and the fine folks at the Vegan Freak Forums...

Vegan FAQ

Organic Athlete Guide to Sports Nutrition

OA has their nutrition guide available online. Check it out!

Organic Athlete Guide to Sports Nutrition

More on Omega 3s

Apparently, Monique Ryan and I think alike (from today's VeloNews):


The Feedzone with Monique Ryan

Also, I forgot to mention Udo's Choice Oil Blend DHA supplement.

Udo's Choice

I haven't used the stuff but it seems pretty popular among the vegans.

Your Pal, Omega 3 Fatty Acids

Last year, I got all hot on Omega 3 fatty acids. I have to say that after 13 years of vegetarianism I hadn't given them much thought. I started adding in a little ground flax seed into my morning oatmeal, and it seemed like my recovery started getting a little better.

There's a good bit of evidence to suggest that Omega 3 fatty acids will aid in recovery. This piece in Today's Dietician does a nice job of summarizing various micronutrients and their potential role in recovery:

Speeding Recovery - Nutrition and Supplementation for Exercise

I've started using Nutru's Omega-Zen-3 DHA supplement daily alongside flax seed to get a boost of Omega Fatty acids. Maybe it's because my diet is generally better and I'm fitter, but my recovery day to day has become pretty amazing, and I think attending to my Omega 3 intake is a part of that.

Here's my recipe for a recovery smoothie featuring my friend flax seed:
8 oz soy mile (I'm fond of vanilla)
1 frozen banana
1/2 C frozen blueberries
1/4-1/2 C frozen strawberries or raspberries
2 Tbs ground flax seed meal


Throw this all in a blender and blend until smooth.


There's all sorts of other ways to use flax seed. You could blend flax seed oil into salad dressing (never heat flax seed oil!). You can bake with flax seed meal. Heck, sometimes I'll even sprinkle it on stuff.

If you buy whole flax seeds, use a coffee grinder to grind the seeds. Your body can't process the hard-shelled seed as is. Store ground seeds in the freezer.

Eating and Traveling

Long overdue, here's my take on eating vegan on the road...

In the Northeast, it's almost stage racin' time. The Fitchburg Longsjo Classic begins in two weeks, The Owasco Stage race is the second week in July, and the big'un The Tour de 'Toona is the last week/weekend in July.

For most of us, stage racin' means two things: traveling a lot and eating a lot.

If you are a bike racer, you spend a lot of time traveling. You also spend a lot of time eating. Oftentimes, one finds oneself traveling to far flung locations where vegan options aren't as plentiful or familiar as those closer to home.

So, what do you do when you are racing 3+ days in a row and are 8+ hours away from home and there's no tofu to be found anywhere?

It sounds like a crisis to me.

Generally, when I'm gearing up for a long race weekend, I pack all the race food I'll need and key staples for recovery and eating.

On the bike:
clif bars
some sort of gel (clif shot lately)
some sort of drink (right now, it's either Heed or Powerbar Endurance)

Recovery:
Aseptically packaged chocolate soy milk (Trader Joe's has reasonably priced 4 pack singles)
Bananas (often purchased once I arrive)
Bagels (again, usually available nearby)
peanut butter (I always try to keep a jar in my race food bag)

General eatin':
This is sort of the key part. Sometimes, it's a little tough to find delicious and nutritious vegan food in, say, Western PA (though, it is entirely possible). I can't do multiple days of pizza without cheese or spaghetti and marinara sauce.

Generally, find a vegan protein option is the toughest part of traveling. Here, vegan protein powders (soy, hemp, pea, rice) are all handy but not the most delicious. A little protein powder and OJ will do you right.

I like to bring my familiar breakfast foods. Usually this is a boxed cereal or instant oatmeal and soymilk. Neither require anything more to prepare than what is available in a cheapish hotel room. I like to mix in ground flax seed in my oatmeal, so I'll bring a bit of that too.

If you get free continental breakfast, hit the bagels, instant oatmeal, cereal, and fruit as much as you can. Just remember to bring soymilk!

For other meals, I like to have a back up plan if eating out is either too expensive or not exactly accommodating for vegans. Some folks bring hot pots. I like to bring a rice cooker. With a small rice cooker ($15 from K mart), you can cook stuff in the hotel room, living room floor, or wherever with very little fuss. A rice cooker will allow you to prepare rice, beans, and steam vegetables.

What should you put in your rice cooker? Dried lentils cook fast. They are a good option. I've been eating a lot of yellow split peas too. Also delicious and fast cooking. Brown rice? That's good too. Maybe some veggies to steam? Sure. Pack some of you favorite spices, and you are good to go for hotel room vegan deliciousness.

I find something like lentils and brown rice so much more satisfying post-race than the same pasta I often end up eating. It's also so cheap: a 16 oz bag of lentils is $.75, a 5 lb bag of brown rice is $3.49. That much lentils and rice will get you through several days.

So... my race food bag looks a little something like this:
a bunch of clif bars
a bunch of gels
a bunch of drink mix
aseptically packaged chocolate soymilk singles
either singles or cartons (depending if I have a fridge) of regular soy milk
soy protein powder
packets of instant oatmeal
whatever cereal I'm eating at the moment in a zip loc
a baggy of flax seed
a rice cooker
brown rice
lentils, or split peas, or some other fast cooking bean, alternately canned beans would be a good choice, though more expensive and heavier.
assorted spices (usually cumin, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, maybe some nutritional yeast)

Anything else (veggies, fruit, fresh bread) I'll try to find upon arrival.

Nutrition Articles from Adam Myerson

I've been meaning to post these for a while, but I think I assumed anyone interested had already read them. I don't think that's the case.

Rules of the Road for the Meat-Free Cyclist

The Vegetarian Athlete, Part II: Micronutrients

The Vegetarian Athlete, Part III: Eating on the Road

I'm hoping to write an addendum to "Eating on the Road" soon that adds my own tips and experiences with this (sometimes) difficult part of bike racing.

Nutrition Tips from Brendan Brazier

From "In A Vegetarian Kitchen"


The High Performance Vegan Athlete: It is Possible!

This is some good stuff. Brendan answers one of my most common issues: I'm always hungry.

Energy and Intent

"Energy and Intent" is one of my favorite articles by Adam Myerson.

I think at one time or another we all tend toward trying to live up to our ideals in such a way that might not be sustainable. What Adam reminds us is that our ethical choices are about intent rather than purity.

Keeping A Food Log

One of the things that has made the biggest difference in helping me to be mindful of what I eat is keeping a food log. This is pretty much standard practice if you see a nutritionist or dietician. Initially, I started keeping a food log a few years back to get a handle on my caloric intake when I was trying to lose weight. These days, I log somewhat frequently to make sure I'm eating enough to keep up with training, and that I'm getting enough nutrients.

What you can learn from logging you food, assuming you are honest and fairly accurate, is a whole lot.

Logging your food allows you to get a sense of portions, caloric density in various foods, the diversity in your diet, and the general nutritional soundness of your diet.

I find it particularly useful for tracking trends in nutrient deficiencies in my diet and correcting them. For example, I tended to be a little light on zinc and vitamin E over the course of several weeks, so I was able to alter my diet to include more foods rich in zinc and vitamin E.

Also, during peak training periods, the log helps me to understand just how much I'm eating versus how much I need to eat. Sometimes I find it too easy to not eat enough when I'm already fatigued from hard blocks of training and the log reminds me, yes, I need about 5,000 calories (!) on those hard days.

I like fitday.com a lot. It's free. It allows you to add custom foods. It's pretty user friendly.

Fitday also allows you to keep track of your exercise... one caveat... it grossly overestimates calories burned during exercise. This is true for most online exercise calculators. I train with a PowerTap and use the Kj expended as my guide to calories burned (because of our body's efficiency 1 Kj equals roughly 1 Cal) .

Some folks don't log their exercise in fitday for this reason. I still like to keep it all together so I can get a sense of calories in and calories out. I end up tweaking the average speed of my rides when I enter them to get a more accurate caloric expenditure number. It looks like I'm doing a lot of 12-13 MPH rides, but I'm not. I'm just a whole lot more efficient than the calculator assumes I am.

My log lives here. I've been bad about keeping it updated, but I'm working on it:

Mark's food log

It may be tempting if you think you need to lose weight to use the food log as a means of restricting calories but don't do that. If the whole point of training and eating well is to make yourself faster, why risk your health and fitness by overly restricting (over 500 calories a day) your caloric intake?

Vegan Freak Radio Health Show

This is a great, and pretty damn impressively executed, podcast about vegan health from the folks at Vegan Freak Radio. I'd never listened to it before, but it's a weekly podcast and last week's episode was on vegan health and nutrition.

The Vegan Health Show

I like it because it throws down the gauntlet to junk food veganism and reminds us that just because you don't eat animal products, it doesn't mean you're healthy.

It gets bonus points for citing Stuart Hall.

Eat Your Veggies. Ride Your Bike. Be Awesome.

This blog is intended to be a resource for veggie cyclists. The more time I spent writing about vegan food and nutrition in my personal blog, the more questions I got asked about what to eat and how to prepare it. I also found myself talking about veganism and vegan issues to other bike racers more than I'd ever talked about veganism in my previous life as an animal rights activist.

I've sort of felt like the veggie stuff has outgrown my blog and this is my attempt to make room for it.

In many ways, this is a project that doesn't need to exist. Now, more than ever, there are so many resources for vegetarian and vegan athletes that I feel a little funny about throwing in my .02. Still further, there's really nothing unique or special about being vegetarian or vegan and racing your bike.

Seriously, choosing not to eat meat or animal products doesn't pose any particular difficulties or disadvantages to a cyclist over any other dietary choice. In this way, I feel sort of funny about saying there is something special or unique about being veggie and being a cyclist by creating a project aimed at veggie cyclists.

Still, I've heard stories from juniors whose coaches have told them they can't be vegan if they want to race. I get questions from long time vegans about grocery shopping and meal planning. Recently, I've seen multiple threads on cycling message boards by people looking for information on vegetarianism and cycling. Clearly, there's a desire for more resources and information.

So, the plan is this: I'm going to try less to focus on original content and more on collecting cool resources I've found. What I can offer is suggestions from spending half my life as a vegetarian, the past eight years as a vegan, and the past four as a cyclist. I'm not a doctor, a coach, or a nutritionist.

I'm not interesting in converting people or propaghandizing. I don't think veganism is necessarily morally or nutritionally superior to other diet choices. It's just different.

Mostly, I know about cooking good food, and I want to share that. There'll be lot of good food, shopping tips, meal planning, and general awesomeness.