Follow-Up: The Cost of Rinsing

Introduction

Right here in the pages of albertnet, I was dressed down for a recent report, “A Study on Rinsing.” It was a very public admonishment, given by my brother Bryan in a comment attached to the post. Now, I can’t fault Bryan for reproaching me; after all, he’s my older brother, so this is his job. In like fashion, the psychology of birth-order dictates that as the youngest brother I need to upset the apple cart by steadfastly refuting Bryan’s every point, right here in this public forum. (I suppose if we were on Facebook I could save time by simply de-friending him and letting the gossip mill tease out every detail of our dispute. But I’m not.)

This post provides a copy of my brother’s comment for your convenience, followed by my counter-argument. It must be noted that Bryan’s statements were completely serious but also tongue-in-cheek. I intend to match him tongue for tongue and cheek for cheek, in a seriously cheeky tongue.

Bryan’s comment

Bryan wrote:

“Maybe it’s the Dutch in me, but I just couldn’t make myself spit out perfectly good food, especially when it’s expensive exercise drink. (I don't know why that isn't an issue with you... Maybe you really do have a different father. That would explain a lot of things, actually...) Shoot, I can barely even make myself eat my own expensive energy food I got as samples from the various rides I’ve done, even though they are mostly out of date by now. I find myself thinking, ‘This ride isn’t really long enough or hard enough to deserve one of my precious gels.’ By the time I realize that I really should be eating my precious, it’s usually too late. But I never learn.“As for spitting it out, it’s not going to happen. I may swish it around for a while just to get the most out of it, but I’m sure that any psychological benefit from spitting it out would be overwhelmed by guilt. There are people exercising in India and we Americans are spitting out energy drinks out on the street. Really.”

You’ve doubtless noticed what a fine writer Bryan is, and perhaps you’ve even asked yourself, “Why couldn’t he be the blogger in this family?! This guy is concise, funny, and moreover he’s right.” I am moved to challenge only the last bit, but I shall give it my best.

Perfectly good food

Needless to say, Bryan is off-base here: energy drink is not food. It has absolutely no nutritional value, other than sugar. The sugar is useful only to the extent it supports the quality of the exercise, so if tasting the sugar without ingesting it does the trick for awhile, there’s no point in ingesting it as if it were food. It’s not like with Popeye; even if he could gain his amazing burst of strength from chewing his spinach and then spitting it out, it would still be better for him to swallow it, because spinach is a good source of niacin and zinc, and a very good source of dietary fiber, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, Vitamin K, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, folate, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper and manganese. But energy drink? No value there at all.

Wait, you might say: energy drinks have electrolytes! Yes, they have two: sodium and potassium. Now, sodium isn’t exactly hard to get and I can’t imagine Bryan would argue I don’t get enough of it to sustain me during my workouts (which have averaged only an hour and a half over the last six years). And as for potassium, the energy drinks provide only a scant amount (Cytomax provides 3% of the U.S. RDA, Gatorade 2%, and so on). Especially since I’m only talking about a small proportion of the drink being spat out, this laughable amount of potassium is clearly of no importance. (Eight ounces of orange juice, meanwhile, provides 14% of the U.S. RDA for potassium and 161% of Vitamin C. I would never spit it out.)

Expensive

Now I shall address Bryan’s comment about the expense of that wasted energy drink. To paraphrase something our dad once said to Bryan: “What we need here is a math major.” (The actual quote was “physics major,” because at the time Bryan hadn’t yet switched to math.) The point of this comment, of course, is to diss Bryan for failing to apply his considerable math skills to this matter. I was only an English major, but I knew enough to glean the most important lessons from my other subjects; for example, I mastered the factor label method from Chemistry. Applying that method here, I have calculated the cost per mouthful of spat-out energy drink (the price of energy drink is based on my last purchase of it, and I measured the mass of a mouthful of liquid by spitting water into a measuring cup):

So, rinsing twice per ride ends up costing a dime. I have averaged 121 road rides per year for the last six years, so the cost of my rinsing is about twelve bucks a year. (Bryan has averaged thirty-nine road rides per year over the last six years, so his cost of rinsing would be less than four dollars a year.) Hardly worth getting so indignant over, if you ask me. (Needless to say, I don’t rinse when riding the trainer. That could get really disgusting.)

Different father

I imagine the point Bryan is making with this aside is that my profligate spending is completely out of line with our father’s legendary frugality. To satisfy the curiosity of my albertnet audience, I’ll give just a couple of examples of Dad’s thrift.

On family vacation trips, we always camped. This was mainly because camping is fun, but there was a budgetary component as well, as was evident when the campgrounds were full and we’d have to get a motel. Back and forth along the streets of some little town or city we’d drive, late into the night, looking for the best deal. Then Dad would get a single room, and we would sneak, one by one, into the room. I can remember as a really young kid being scared that I’d make too much noise, we’d be discovered, and the whole family would go to jail. I also remember sleeping on the thin, scratchy motel carpet with a flimsy motel towel over me as a blanket.

There was also the matter of the thermostat. Winters in my hometown of Boulder were very cold, but we were absolutely forbidden to touch the thermostat. This isn’t terribly unique, of course; Jerry Seinfeld even has a shtick about it, where as an adult he phones his parents and taunts them by announcing he’s just turned up the thermostat, over which has father had had absolute control throughout Jerry’s childhood. Where our dad was unique was in overriding the absolute minimum that our thermostat could be set at. It had a little mercury-bubble switch that wouldn’t go below 60 degrees because the little bubble would hit up against the edge of its curved glass tube. Unwilling to incur the cost of keeping the house that warm, our dad removed the unit from the wall, took it apart, revised the label in his neat handwriting, and reinstalled the thermostat at a new, odd-looking angle so it would go down to 50 degrees, which is where it stayed, 24-7-365.

I disagree with Bryan on two fronts: 1) his idea that my lack of thrift suggests I had a different father, when in fact our mother was also quite thrifty; and 2) the very suggestion that I’m not thrifty myself.

It was from Mom that I learned that grocery shopping requires cunning and vigilance if you don’t want to get ripped off. She knew, and I came to learn, that no store has good prices across the board—you have to figure out which stores had the good prices on which things. For example, the Berkeley Natural Grocery has good prices on dairy products, but really high prices on produce. Monterey Market has great prices on produce and dairy, but lousy prices on prepared foods like peanut butter. Safeway has good prices on prepared foods but only if the items are on sale. Mom taught me how the whole sale and coupon business makes grocery shopping a lot like day trading. By carefully observing her example, I have developed her uncanny intuition to predict when a given item will go on sale, at which time I stock up on my beloved staples.

It was also from my mom that I learned about food expiration dates. These are largely fictional and can generally be ignored; just give the food a good sniff. I also would never have guessed that food that has turned usually won’t hurt you. Is the milk sour and lumpy? Don’t drink it then (my mom has advised me) if the taste bothers you, but if you accidentally ingest it, fear not: you won’t actually get sick. Mold on the bread or cheese? Just cut it off and eat around it. Mom is a microbiologist; she knows her stuff, and her lessons have saved me a lot of money. I came back from vacation recently and an old jar of salsa had begun to ferment; it fizzed and buzzed on my tongue like Pop Rocks Action Candy. I shrugged this off and used up the jar. Back in college I routinely fished food out of the trash that my cowardly roommates had thrown out prematurely. And a few weeks back I came across some expensive smoked trout hiding in the fridge; it was pretty old and had a trace of stink to it. I couldn’t bear to throw it out, though, so I threw it into a big pan of gorgonzola gnocchi. Gorgonzola is a strong cheese. The meal was a hit; nobody noticed anything amiss.

My precious

Bryan’s reluctance to use up his precious gels (and other energy foods) indirectly makes a point about frugality: perhaps the greatest threat to fiscal efficiency is being jaded. Most citizens of the First World have their basic needs (food, shelter) met; what keeps many of them from amassing real wealth is a combination of 1) limited earning power and/or 2) wasting a lot of money on stuff they don’t need.

For me, going to a garage sale is like seeing a parade of a family’s ill-chosen purchases. After all, if this stuff were totally worn out and used up, it wouldn’t be for sale; clearly, it is on the block due to a terminal case of buyer’s remorse. Similarly, craigslist is like a clearing house for the objects of fickle consumerism. On the consumable front, everything we eat and drink ends up in the same place—the toilet—so if it was expensive, it better have given us all the performance and pleasure we sought from it.

A rich quasi-family-member once took my mom and me to a fancy French restaurant in Berkeley. Throughout the meal, all he did was complain about the various ways in which the restaurant came up short. The food tasted fine to me; I came away wondering if being an epicure might not be a very good idea. Could it be that too much of the good life might just strip the pleasure from wealth? In contrast, when I did a long ride with Bryan in Oregon recently, and we were slogging our way up Dead Indian Memorial Road, he continually marveled at how tasty his energy drink was. He was truly stoked, just to have it. I came away impressed at how, simply by doing without, Bryan has cultivated a fine appreciation for simple things like sugary drinks. On this point—that frugality fosters gratitude for simple pleasures—I must agree with my brother.

From the Archives – A Study on Rinsing

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Introduction

I use a lot of energy drink when cycling. By “use” I generally mean “drink,” but I’m also a true believer in the cutting-edge practice of “rinsing.” I learned about rinsing in February of 2008 from a knowledgeable EBVC teammate of mine who sent around an e-mail describing a study that concludes, “Carbohydrate mouth rinse has a positive effect on 1-hour time trial performance.”

This study was an attempt to understand why, as multiple other studies had shown, sports drinks seem to provide a performance benefit even for short (e.g., one-hour) workouts. You wouldn’t expect the drinks to help for so short an effort, since existing glycogen stores ought to last that long, and turning new carbs into glycogen isn’t an instant process anyway. The results of this study suggest that the benefit derives from something other than the carbs in the energy drink, which is why swishing energy drink around in your mouth and then spitting it out is as good as swallowing it: “The mechanism responsible for the improvement in high-intensity exercise performance with exogenous carbohydrate appears to involve an increase in central drive or motivation rather than having any metabolic cause.”

This report brought about a long and lively discussion among the guys on the bike club, and while I found at all very compelling, I wasn’t inclined to take the scientists’ word for it. Why should I, when I have all the opportunity in the world to test this phenomenon myself? Thus, I ran my own experiment and reported back to my bike club. This post documents those results for my information-hungry albertnet audience. Following the report is a further exploration of this strange topic.

A Small Study About Rinsing – March 7, 2008

Test Objective: To determine if rinsing the mouth with a sweet beverage increases an athlete’s short-term performance.

Test Procedure: There was unfortunately only one test subject available for the study. Thus, he represented both the rinsing group and the ingestion group.

On Wednesday, March 5, subject rode a specific test course, the Hill Climb Extravagaanza, and consumed one gel approximately thirty-five minutes into exercise. His power output, heart rate, and rate of vertical gain were recorded on the three climbs (South Park, Claremont, and Lomas Cantadas) and uploaded to a PC. (Click image to enlarge.)

On Friday, March 7, subject rode the same course, this time rinsing his mouth with energy drink every few minutes beginning ten minutes after completing his warm-up, and drinking without spitting after approximately thirty-five minutes of exercise. Again, his wattage, heart rate, and rate of vertical gain were recorded on the three climbs. The performance data were then compared using a special software application called the Bragulator.

Measures were taken to make sure subject was not influenced unevenly by music. Not only was he not wired with an MP3 player, but was instructed to ride with similar tunes in his head on both days. It is acknowledged that driving rhythms or the repetition of an inspirational phrase like “Blood of a slave ... heart of a king” on one day, but not another, could skew results.

Test Result: The Bragulator tabulated the following statistics for the two rides:

Across the board, performance was better when rinsing with energy drink early in the ride.

In addition to the stats shown above, subject was almost a minute faster on the first climb, South Park, on Ride 2. This further supports the validity of rinsing, as this was the climb during which subject had no sweetness on Ride 1, but did have sweetness—without calories!—during Ride 2.

Caveats:

Naturally, a larger set of subjects would increase the validity of the study, especially since the one test subject is known for either slacking off or getting medieval on his own heinie according to his whim.

It should also be pointed out that the power meter used in this study makes its calculations using barometric pressure, velocity, and the constant of the subject’s weight, and thus has an inferiority complex about the fancier strain-gauge-based power meters. (Meanwhile, the subject’s weight isn’t really a constant.)

Ride 2 took place on a sunnier day, though it is believed there was not enough sunshine on subject’s shoulders to make him high.

Most importantly, the open road cannot be locked down like a true laboratory environment, and the subject’s training diary includes information that may cast some doubt on the validity of the results:

“At the bottom of South Park, just past the gate, I saw that mountain bike dude again. I felt like the guy in ‘Better Off Dead’ when he sees his old nemesis, the paperboy, coming after him for the two dollars.

This was the same mountain bike dude who was responsible for me getting my fastest time on South Park for all of 2007. He looks like a thirty-something Nick Nolte, with a Steven-Seagal ponytail. Running shorts, t-shirt, and worst of all, a total piece of crap bike, I think one of those heinous Raleigh Techniums from the late eighties, the last mass-market bikes ever made in America and a good reason not to feel patriotic. I remember that ride well: it was on 9/11, and the guy hung on for several minutes while I went à bloc to drop him. He did finally blow, but it took all I had, and at the end of that ride my fricking frame broke!

So here he was again, and though I had him in my sights I was barely even gaining on him. How could this be? I have over a decade of racing experience, he has ... talent, I guess. I have an 18-pound bike, he has ... a 30-plus-pound mountain bike, and, I guess, talent. I have all these sophisticated training and nutrition methodologies and he has ... talent. What could I do? I took a big drink of Cytoplasm [Cytomax – Ed.], spat it derisively at the ground like a smoker flicking away a cigarette butt, and dug in. By the time I got to the base of the main climb I’d just barely made contact.

I greeted him and he replied in this big deep manly voice. That’s what he is, just a big strong manly man, a man’s man, and what am I? Lycra, cawbun fibuh [carbon fiber – Ed.], dogged determination, fancy-pants bike computer with heart rate monitor and PC upload, the physique of an Aborigine, and I was still barely able to drop him. At least he helped me find some motivation....”

Conclusion: Further study is needed. Anybody willing to serve as a subject in this study is encouraged to apply to feedback@albertnet.us. Subjects must be in good health, have fancy-pants bike computers, be willing to complete the Hill Climb Extravagaanza at dawn on a regular basis, and must bring their own gel and energy drink.

Further commentary: why rinse?

Once I decided rinsing was legit, I adopted it as standard practice for the first half hour of each ride. Why not just drink, you ask, even if it’s not the calories that are helping? Well, spitting out energy drink saves weight, of course! Why take that heavy beverage into my body, if it’s only the flavor that enhances my performance?

Besides, I am very careful about not fouling up my blood sugar level. It’s well established that during intense exercise you can have all the sugar you want without affecting your insulin and such—the sugar gets used right away. (This phenomenon continues for half an hour or so after the workout ends.) But if you have a bunch of sugar before the workout, you’ll have a nice sugar high followed by a serious slump. Not knowing how long I have to exercise before my body can use sugar easily, I’ve long been wary—even superstitious—about it, and avoid drinks and gels until about half an hour in. But I’ll start rinsing after just ten minutes. And so far, so good!

Further reading

More than a year after my small study, another EBVC teammate sent around a more recent report further documenting the benefit of rinsing. This study finds that “the cyclists who had rinsed with the carbohydrate drinks — and spit them out — finished significantly faster than the water group,” and that the rinsers’ “heart rates and power output were also higher.” Again, it is postulated that the phenomenon is a brain thing: “It seems that the brains of the riders getting the carbohydrate-containing drinks sensed that the riders were about to get more fuel (in the form of calories), which appears to have allowed their muscles to work harder even though they never swallowed the liquid.”

This brings the total athletes studied up to eighteen, including me. That’s still not a very large sample, but perhaps this is for the best. If everybody know about rinsing, imagine the number of energy-drink puddles you’d encounter all over the road, especially at a big race! dana albert blog