Coffee while riding?

rockitj said:

Anyone else drinking coffee while riding? I leave the house at 4:30 AM for the ride in to work. I make a pot of coffee when I get up and drink a mug and then pour the rest into my water bottle. Just one more reason my wife thinks I'm nuts...😄

Not me. I think, coffee is best served when its hot where you can sip it and enjoy, not while riding on the bike.

tanggoman said:

Not me. I think, coffee is best served when its hot where you can sip it and enjoy, not while riding on the bike.

I don't drink coffee...EVER..just never liked the stuff.

Definitely not while riding.

Sometimes on a long ride though I might stop and have a coffee somewhere to help me stay awake (usually if I'm travelling a fair distance with a deadline of some kind - if it's just a fun ride I'll just go to sleep).

Although, during races etc I like caffeinated gels/bars.

Oooh yea!, while riding to work is the way to do it... Sneaking trough the morning traffic with one hand on the handlebar and the other holding my McDonaldsTM hot coffee cup. Ive already mastered the art of jumping on and off the sidewalk without burning my hand with hot coffee.

And the best thing is that drivers must think Im crazier than the average cyclist 🙂

cheers!

seen some "real cyclists" drink coffee during a long race. they have someone on the side of the road pass it to them in a water bottle, hot! just like coffee. personally i prefer iced coffee or tea, delicious, refreshing and the caffiene and sugar gives you a lift.

But its much easier to drink the coffee before the ride.

i agree with your wife, man.

Darjevon said:

i agree with your wife, man.

Better read this, looks like I'm not nutz!!!

http://tinyurl.com/6vxqx

i use caffeine during races and long rides, coffee, tea, colas, gels, chocolate, coffee candy..etc..

YES! I make some strong coffee, add a load of sugar and put a few cubes of ice into my water bottle before adding the coffee. Just one bottle and it sure makes the morning commute easier.

hand in hand i reckon...

after 20 k cappucino... another 40k cafe (espresso)... every 40 after that another cafe... depending on ride... if its recovery... then every cafe you see... pull up a chair!!...

🙂

gnz said:

Oooh yea!, while riding to work is the way to do it... Sneaking trough the morning traffic with one hand on the handlebar and the other holding my McDonaldsTM hot coffee cup. Ive already mastered the art of jumping on and off the sidewalk without burning my hand with hot coffee.

And the best thing is that drivers must think Im crazier than the average cyclist 🙂

cheers!

I saw a guy coming from the opposite driection doing that about a week ago. He was riding one handed and was sipping on a large Starbucks cup with the other hand. Seems a bit dangerous to me. Especially in traffic.

I love coffee myself and probably drink way too much of the stuff (steaming mug sitting next to me as I type this). I don't drink it while I'm on the bike though. As another poster said though, on a long casual ride I'll occasionally stop and have a cup.

Caffeine is a performance enhancing drug. It can help you pedal a bike faster and longer. And up to a point it's perfectly legal in racing. Ever seen a guy who just won a race walk up to get his trophy and you notice his hand shaking as he reaches for the trophy? Probably the NoDoz he took before the race.

The problem with caffeine is that, like any drug, it has side effects. It makes you urinate, so a lot of it at before a long race will cause problems with [censored] stops and dehydradration. It can mess up your stomach as anybody who has experiemented with caffeine pills knows. It can make you jittery. It you get drug-tested, nowdays there is a limit on how much caffeine you can have in your blood. A couple of cups of coffee is fine. Two or three caffeine pills is probably not. Heavy caffeine use increases your chance of prostate cancer later in life, so, take it easy with this stuff. If it's a two hour or less training ride, maybe just do it on water.

The US cycling team under coach Eddie B in the 1984 Olympics was outed for blood-boosting (which at the time was legal) you might recall. But it's lesser known fact that they also abused caffeine which at the time had no limit that was drug tested for. The cyclists used caffeine suppositories to get the drug into their bodies which bypassed the problems caffeine causes the stomach. You think Alexi Grewal and Connie Carpenter all these years later are a little embarrassed that people know they had these things up their butts when they won their Olympic Medals?

Anyway, for the locals hanging out on this forum, if you stomach is already used to caffeine, having a cup or two before a ride is not a bad idea at all. You'll feel stronger longer but you may have to stop more to urinate. If you drink too much or are not used to it you may get a sour stomach which can be delt with a couple of antiacid tablets. I like to take a generic Pepcid before a long ride as a preventitive measure and I throw a couple Tums in my ziploc with the snacks in the jersey pocket. In the old days of the Tour De France it was common to have a special bottle of extra strong coffee with honey handed to them for the last hour of the race. Some riders called it the "atom bottle". When I raced long races I kept a third bottle hung on the bottom of the down tube with a 100 milligrams of caffeine in it for the last hour - which is a pretty conservative amount. It definitely made a difference.

For those of you that don't like coffee you might try Mountain Dew or Red Bull. I haven't tried Red Bull on a bike ride, but the little cans look handy for slipping into a jersey pocket. Be mindfull of your stomach. Riding the last 90 minutes with a wrecked stomach is no fun.

meehs said:

I saw a guy coming from the opposite driection doing that about a week ago. He was riding one handed and was sipping on a large Starbucks cup with the other hand. Seems a bit dangerous to me. Especially in traffic.

Yea I know it can get to be something stupid to do... but anyways, I consider myself a cautious rider and I always follow traffic rules while on the street. When I do the coffee stunt I am extra cautious by going only trough the streets I know are packed with traffic (thus having slow speeds), I never go that fast that I wont be able to stop quickly by applying only one brake and when sipping coffee I make sure that the "coast is clear" both ahead and behind me 🙂