Pedalling Ale

Few drinks slake a hot summer’s day thirst like a cold beer.  Lager, bitter, wheat beer, Ale, Pilsner or stout, we all have our favourites.  But it’s winter in Melbourne and the love of a cold beer goes on.

A couple of weeks ago I went down the local football ground to watch the second half of the game.  As I wandered along the outer wing I spied a small slab of Victoria Bitter strapped to a bike rack, complete with a Kransky in a roll resting on top.  The bike was angled on the slight rise so the next beer would just roll out gravity assisted.  A couple of geniuses if you ask me.  Fortunately for Matt & Matt pictured below it was about 10 degrees and the beer would stay cool for the remainder of the afternoon without any ice.  Like many great inventions Matt stumbled across the idea after going to his local bottle shop and wondered how he was going to get his mini slab home.  Eureka, the bike rack and a couple of octopus straps saved the day.

Fast forward 2 days later and I’m at my favourite bottle shop picking up some supplies and there is the Bicycle Beer by Temple Brewing Company displayed in the window with a bike.  But wait there’s more.  Buy a six pack and you go in the draw to win one of 5 custom bikes and other prizes.  What are you waiting for?

Next on this virtual tour is the Mountain Goat Brewery in Richmond.  This is a beer barn of the most cultured kind, where management actually encourage their patrons to bring their bikes inside and park them against the wall.  And should you have too many, you can always leave your bike there and retrieve it later.  Now that’s cycling friendly.

Cycling and beer.  It’s almost as though one was invented for the other

•           The bike to ride to the pub or the bottle shop to get to the beer and then home again
•           Riding the bike to work off the beer
•           Riding the bike back to retrieve the car the morning after a few beers
•           Having a post ride beer
•           Beer, that wonderful instiller of confidence, so when you get on your bike and think you’re 15 again and start popping monos and bunny-hops to show off, when you’re really just being a drunken fool who after falling off is going to have an arthritic elbow for the rest of his life. 
•          The popularity of riding to the pub in the inner suburbs of Melbourne has given rise to the pub bike.  It’s the bike you don’t mind leaving parked outside the pub for a night in the event you’d rather stagger home or catch a taxi. 

Needless to say the riders in the recent Tour de France were hardly getting on the beer even if they had just won a stage.  Similar themes of abstinence from alcohol are common theme amongst professional sportspeople as they strive to get the best out of themselves.  Just to put some perspective into this article, it’s worth considering the impact more than a few beers will have on your recovery after a hard ride or training session.  The latest scientific evidence suggests that doing so may compromise muscle development due to the impairment of protein synthesis. Sounds like science and it is. The study demonstrated that amongst the sample of 8, the uptake of protein by the muscles was impacted by 24 – 37% when the athletes consumed 12 standard drinks.  The take away from the article was that if your are going to have a few drinks, think about training in the morning or early afternoon to allow your body time to recover before a few drinks or to focus on post recovery nutrition first and wait at least an hour before having your first alcoholic drink.  Not meaning to put too much of a dampener on the beer appreciation here are a few more facts to keep in mind.

• Alcohol dehydrates the body.  Every 200ml of beer consumed requires the body to lose 320ml of fluid. 
• Alcohol prevents muscle recovery
• Alcohol can affect your sleep patterns
• Alcohol depletes your energy because your body diverts its attention to processing the alcohol ahead of other food sources beneficial for recovery
• Alcohol affects memory
• Alcohol can affect nutrition as excess energy is stored as fat aka “empty calories”
• Alcohol can affect reaction time.  So if you’re thinking of riding home after you’ve had a few, think ahead and walk or catch a taxi. 

If you have had a few too many beers and you find yourself feeling lousy on the bike it’s probably because the symptoms of that hangover are affecting your aerobic capacity by as much as 11%.

Enjoy your cycling, your food and a few beers in the right order and at the right time.  Your body will thankyou for it.  If you have seen any other bike and beer combinations of note worth sharing add them to the comments.

Here are a couple of links to the sites quoted in this blog

www.insidetracker.com/blog/post/40093461434/how-does-alcohol-affect-your-athletic-performance

http://performancenutrition.eu/in-the-news/how-alcohol-affects-exercise-recovery/#.U9jegtkayc0