Thoughts on Supersapiens glucose monitoring?

A light bike doesn't replace good fitness.

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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

Shrike wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 12:10 pm

For now, for me anyway, it's one to watch and hope for. I hope they crack it and make is accessible through partners. If not, hopefully someone else comes along and pulls it off too - no reason why Garmin or Wahoo can't move into this game. Garmin are doing a billion in profit so they can certainly buy SuperSapiens or accelerate development, catch and overtake them - pushing them out of the market - if they think it's worth pursuing.
The problem is, you need to prick your finger and take blood samples several times each month to calibrate sweat based glucose sensors, and even then it is not perfectly accurate. So you actually need to buy two devices to make this work based on the current technology. There's no way amateur Joe Schmoe cyclist is going to do this.

If you want "guesswork," you can just eat a gel every 45-60 minutes for every 2 hours you are riding. Or just stop and eat some cookies or pastries at the local cafe. For the perspective of a recreational cyclist, this is a much more enjoyable and "normal" routine than pricking your finger every week to tell you when you need to gel, and then strapping on another piece of equipment.

I am hopeful that in 2-3 years, we will have "one" sensor that will combine HR and lactic acid measurements. And if somehow the sensors can get good enough to accurately measure glucose levels without requiring calibrating finger pricks, that could be added as well.
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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

TobinHatesYou wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 7:38 pm
Stop sabotaging your workouts by trying to cut it close on nutrition. Okay I get it, you’re trying to lose weight, so skip the jelly donut afterward and let the surplus from before/during your ride kickstart your recovery.

How will you know? It’s the same sensation as bonking...if your gut/liver feels like it’s being squeezed, then you can reach for that donut.
Controversial opinion incoming :)

I don't think you can ever "sabotage" your workout by starving yourself. Sure, you will bonk and be hungry and miserable. But let's think about what actually happens when you workout in a literal "starvation" state. I'm simplifying a whole lot and not taking into account metabolic changes, so cut me some slack - but generally, your body will shed both fat and muscle, but you will 100% lose weight. The rate of weight loss will decline as your body's energy requirement also declines with lower body mass. In other words, you will adapt...and your body will transform.

I'm 100% not recommending the above - it's awful, painful and mentally/emotional exhausting. You will be very unhealthy during this process.

BUT, to refer to our Kenyan friends. Before they "make it" as a sponsored elite member of the national team, most of them eat only one meal a day! This isn't some feastly banquet (it's mostly rice and vegetables), or part of some cutting edge dietary strategy - it's simply because they have no money to eat more. Yet they train hard, multiple times a day, everyday. When they're not running, they also have a full time job doing backbreaking work as a farmer, or some other menial manual labor job . Their meals are often what they grow on the farm themselves, and if they don't farm enough, they don't eat..,simple as that. There are no food kitchens or banks in Iten. They eat meat maybe once every few weeks, if at all. But they adapt to this. Look at their bodies. Most people would look at a Kenyan runner and consider them to be at or near starvation, but they are at absolute peak efficiency for endurance sports, really the pinnacle, and nothing comes close. Unsurprisingly, they don't know what glucose is, probably never even seen a gel before in their lives, and would probably vomit if they tried one.
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TobinHatesYou
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by TobinHatesYou

He's. failing. workouts.

Lina
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by Lina

iheartbianchi wrote:
Tue Jun 01, 2021 6:51 am
TobinHatesYou wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 7:38 pm
Stop sabotaging your workouts by trying to cut it close on nutrition. Okay I get it, you’re trying to lose weight, so skip the jelly donut afterward and let the surplus from before/during your ride kickstart your recovery.

How will you know? It’s the same sensation as bonking...if your gut/liver feels like it’s being squeezed, then you can reach for that donut.
Controversial opinion incoming :)

I don't think you can ever "sabotage" your workout by starving yourself. Sure, you will bonk and be hungry and miserable. But let's think about what actually happens when you workout in a literal "starvation" state. I'm simplifying a whole lot and not taking into account metabolic changes, so cut me some slack - but generally, your body will shed both fat and muscle, but you will 100% lose weight. The rate of weight loss will decline as your body's energy requirement also declines with lower body mass. In other words, you will adapt...and your body will transform.

I'm 100% not recommending the above - it's awful, painful and mentally/emotional exhausting. You will be very unhealthy during this process.

BUT, to refer to our Kenyan friends. Before they "make it" as a sponsored elite member of the national team, most of them eat only one meal a day! This isn't some feastly banquet (it's mostly rice and vegetables), or part of some cutting edge dietary strategy - it's simply because they have no money to eat more. Yet they train hard, multiple times a day, everyday. When they're not running, they also have a full time job doing backbreaking work as a farmer, or some other menial manual labor job . Their meals are often what they grow on the farm themselves, and if they don't farm enough, they don't eat..,simple as that. There are no food kitchens or banks in Iten. They eat meat maybe once every few weeks, if at all. But they adapt to this. Look at their bodies. Most people would look at a Kenyan runner and consider them to be at or near starvation, but they are at absolute peak efficiency for endurance sports, really the pinnacle, and nothing comes close. Unsurprisingly, they don't know what glucose is, probably never even seen a gel before in their lives, and would probably vomit if they tried one.
Failing workouts because you're not fueling enough is 100% self sabotage.

And at the end of the day running, while still an endurance sport is short duration compared to cycling, especially at the elite level. The elite run a marathon in just over 2 hours, bike races at the elite level start at about 4 hoursa and go up from there. Any running distance below a marathon and the elite can do it easily without any fueling.

And let's not forget that doping in Kenya is rampant. It's not the one meal (also you make it sound like rice and veggies is a bad diet which it certainly isn't, in fact probably better than what most western people eat on a daily basis) a day that makes them fast, it's all the EPO they're taking.

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by TobinHatesYou

Then again it's quite hard to fail a workout due to lack of glycogen stores unless you're doing them in the evening and haven't had any meals / snacks all day. I easily have enough energy to complete a workout in the morning with nothing to eat since the previous night's dinner. It makes me wonder what kind of diet this is... a starvation diet?

iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

Lina wrote:
Tue Jun 01, 2021 7:56 am

Failing workouts because you're not fueling enough is 100% self sabotage.

And at the end of the day running, while still an endurance sport is short duration compared to cycling, especially at the elite level. The elite run a marathon in just over 2 hours, bike races at the elite level start at about 4 hoursa and go up from there. Any running distance below a marathon and the elite can do it easily without any fueling.

And let's not forget that doping in Kenya is rampant. It's not the one meal (also you make it sound like rice and veggies is a bad diet which it certainly isn't, in fact probably better than what most western people eat on a daily basis) a day that makes them fast, it's all the EPO they're taking.
The gist of my "controversial" opinion was that you may actually be promoting longer term success, by accepting short term failed workouts. If you are in starvation mode, you will really struggle with any type of exercise for months, goes without saying...but you may, just may come back with a better body composition for endurance activities. DON'T ACTUALLY DO THIS - this is just a mental exercise.

I think you minimize the energy demands of elite marathon running. Take for example, Kipchoge, who had an average heart rate of around 165bpm during his *fake World Record marathon, or roughly 85% of his max heart rate. That means he was, at or near his lactate threshold for 2 hours, which is quite incredible. A 4-5 hour Classic WT race? Over half the peleton is cruising at 110-140bpm (50-70% of max) for the vast majority of the race.

Also, most Kenyans can't afford EPO. You only get access to that stuff when you start getting paid (yeah it's everywhere, at least last time I was in Kenya), and there are thousands of Kenyans who would destroy the US distance racing scene who never earn a dime from their running. I've seen Kenyans living in literal huts and shanties, sleeping on dirt floors. A lot of them live in abject poverty and can't even afford shoes until their mid- to late teens (so when you visit, they say to bring running clothes and shoes, doesn't matter the size they'll wear it big or small!). Iten is the most publicized location for running in Kenya and is the homebase for many elites. Yet the track is dirt, and most of us would consider Iten to be a slum. Now picture the conditions in other parts of Kenya where the runners grew up, and ask yourself if anyone but the cream of the cream using EPO.
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Lina
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by Lina

iheartbianchi wrote:
Tue Jun 01, 2021 11:52 am
The gist of my "controversial" opinion was that you may actually be promoting longer term success, by accepting short term failed workouts. If you are in starvation mode, you will really struggle with any type of exercise for months, goes without saying...but you may, just may come back with a better body composition for endurance activities. DON'T ACTUALLY DO THIS - this is just a mental exercise.
One could also diet when off the bike to achieve that body composition and train effectively while on the bike.
iheartbianchi wrote:
Tue Jun 01, 2021 11:52 am
I think you minimize the energy demands of elite marathon running, which I think are on par, if not greater than, any single day of World Tour cycling.

Take for example, Kipchoge, who had an average heart rate of around 165bpm during his *fake World Record marathon, or roughly 85% of his max heart rate. That means he was, at or near his lactate threshold for 2 hours, which is quite incredible. A 4-5 hour classic? Over half the peleton is cruising at 110-140bpm (50-70% of max) for the vast majority of the race.
Why are we comparing world record performance to pack fodder?

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by joejack951

Lina wrote:
Tue Jun 01, 2021 12:15 pm
Why are we comparing world record performance to pack fodder?
Because runners don't get the benefit of drafting off others like those in a bike race do. So any elite runner is doing the same thing as Kipchoge in that effort, just for 5-10 minutes longer (and quite a bit longer for women and sub-elites).

As TobinHatesYou notes, failing a workout due to lack of glycogen stores means somehow starting the workout already wiped out. I can go run/ride for over 2 hours in the morning having eaten nothing since 8pm the night before and I'm not bonking. Push that time past 2.5-3 hours and sure, I'm going to feel it, but most true 'workouts' simply aren't going to last nearly that long.

Now, if I recall correctly, Shrike has does some interesting experiments with fasting for lengthy periods of time (I think I have the right poster, correct me if not). Fasting and hard training simply don't mix and it seems he is learning that, or perhaps eventually will. My guess is that some patience with weigh loss, or even better, a general increase in self-control to not gain the weight in the first place, is overdue here and would go a long way to avoiding these failed workouts without spending any money on the latest training fad.

iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

Lina wrote:
Tue Jun 01, 2021 12:15 pm

Why are we comparing world record performance to pack fodder?
The other guy responded as well, but semi-pro (pack fodder) marathoners have a much rougher time in the marathon. I recall they average something like 88-90% of MaxHR for roughly 2:30 hours (that's a whole other level of suffering) - punishment for being slow and overweight! That's why you see so many semi-pros collapsing at the finish line or fainting, and the Kenyans just more or less jog it off and smile after setting world records because their aerobic engines are much more refined and they can go faster at lower effort levels.
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by joejack951

iheartbianchi wrote:
Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:03 pm
That's why you see so many semi-pros collapsing at the finish line or fainting, and the Kenyans just more or less jog it off and smile after setting world records because their aerobic engines are much more refined and they can go faster at lower effort levels.
They are more efficient, but just as important, they aren't crossing that threshold of glycogen depletion because they aren't running for that extra 20-30 minutes (15-25% longer at aerobic threshold).

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by glepore

From what I've heard and read from diabetics who have been using these devices for years, there is a significant lag time in tracking falling levels-say 15 minutes. So you'd likely feel the effect of depletion before the device told you.
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