Iceman Cometh Challenge News

Carb Loading, Done Right

Carb loading might be the most misunderstood thing in endurance nutrition. Half the riders at Iceman will do some version of it, and a solid chunk of those will do it in a way that makes them slower, heavier, and more uncomfortable on the start line than if they’d just eaten normally.

The good news is that the actual protocol is simple. Simpler than what most people are doing. The modern version doesn’t require a depletion phase, doesn’t require a week of misery, and doesn’t require you to eat until you’re sick.

The loading itself happens in the final 48 hours before the race. The planning, though, should happen well before that — which foods, how much, bought and in the house before race week turns into a logistical scramble.

What Carb Loading Actually Is

Your muscles store carbohydrate as glycogen. Under normal eating, you’re carrying a certain amount. Carb loading is the deliberate practice of eating substantially more carbohydrate than usual, while training very little, to push those stores above their normal ceiling.

Done properly, you can raise muscle glycogen well above baseline. In practical terms, that’s a bigger fuel tank for race day — one that delays the point at

last third of the race becomes an exercise in survival.

That’s the whole mechanism. It doesn’t make you fitter. It doesn’t raise your threshold. It extends how long you can hold the fitness you already have.

Who Actually Benefits

This matters, because the answer isn’t “everybody.”

The benefit shows up in efforts lasting roughly 90 minutes or longer at meaningful intensity. Below that, you aren’t going deep enough into your stores for the extra capacity to matter, and you’ve just carried some extra water weight to the start line for nothing.

The 30-mile race: Yes, for nearly everyone. Front-of-race riders finishing near 1:45 are right at the threshold and still benefit. Everyone behind that — the 2:15 riders, the 2:45 riders, the 3:30-and-beyond riders — benefits more, not less. The longer you’re out there, the more this matters.

The Slush Cup: Depends on you. Nine miles with real climbing, ridden in November, puts plenty of riders in the 60-to-90-minute range and some beyond it. If you expect to be out there over an hour, a modest version is worth doing — not a full aggressive load, but a carbohydrate-forward day before and a solid breakfast. If you’re a stronger rider finishing well under an hour, just eat normally and focus on a good breakfast. Don’t carry pointless water weight up those climbs.

The Sno-Cone: No. Please do not carb load a six-year-old. Feed them breakfast and bring snacks.

The Protocol: Simpler Than You’ve Heard

Forget the old-school version with the depletion phase — the brutal week where you ride yourself empty, eat almost no carbohydrate for three days, feel terrible, then gorge. That approach came out of research from the 1960s. It works, but it’s unnecessary, it leaves you flat and irritable during a week when you want to feel good, and it carries real risk of showing up stale.

The modern version:

One to two days of high carbohydrate intake, combined with minimal training.

That’s it. For Iceman, that means Thursday and Friday, with Friday being the more important of the two.

Your number

Target 8 to 12 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day during the load. Most riders do well in the 8 to 10 range — the top end is genuinely hard to eat and tends to cause more GI trouble than it’s worth.

Run the math in advance so you’re not doing it Thursday night:

140 lb rider (64 kg): roughly 510–640 g per day
160 lb rider (73 kg): roughly 580–730 g per day
180 lb rider (82 kg): roughly 650–820 g per day
200 lb rider (91 kg): roughly 730–910 g per day

Those numbers are much larger than normal eating. That’s the point. Most riders who think they carb loaded ate a big pasta dinner and landed around 350 grams for the day, which is barely above maintenance.

The taper is half the equation

This is the part people skip, and it’s not optional. The reason the modern protocol works without a depletion phase is that you’re not burning through what you’re storing. If you’re still doing hard efforts Thursday and Friday, you’re filling a tank with a hole in it.

Race week training should be short and easy. A couple of short spins with a few brief openers is plenty. The fitness is already banked — nothing you do in the last five days makes you faster, and plenty of things you could do make you slower.

How to Actually Eat 700 Grams of Carbohydrate

The practical obstacle is volume. Whole grains, beans, and big vegetable servings are excellent food and terrible options for this. You’ll be full long before you hit your number, and you’ll be carrying a lot of fiber into race morning.

Shift toward lower-fiber, more concentrated sources during the load:

White rice instead of brown
White pasta and white bread instead of whole grain
Potatoes without skins
Fruit juice and sports drink alongside whole fruit
Bananas, grapes, melon
Pancakes, waffles, bagels, pretzels, crackers
Sports drink mix, which is a genuinely useful tool here — a few hundred grams of carbohydrate can go down as fluid far more easily than as food
Honey, jam, syrup, sugar in your coffee

Dial down during these two days:

High-fiber grains and large volumes of raw vegetables
Beans and legumes
Large salads
High-fat foods, which fill you up and crowd out the carbohydrate you’re trying to eat

And eat on a schedule. Four to six smaller carbohydrate-focused meals works far better than three enormous ones. Trying to hit a big number in three sittings is how people end up bloated and miserable.

Protein and fat don’t go to zero. Keep protein moderate — around 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg is plenty for these two days — and let fat drop somewhat. You’re shifting the ratio, not eliminating anything.

The Scale Will Go Up. That’s Correct.

Glycogen is stored with water — roughly three grams of water for every gram of glycogen. A successful load typically shows up as two to four pounds of weight gain, sometimes more.

That water is not a penalty. It’s stored fuel plus the hydration that comes with it, and it’s part of why loaded riders handle a cold, long day better. Do not weigh yourself Friday night, panic, and skip breakfast Saturday morning. I have watched riders undo a perfect week over a number on a bathroom scale.

If you know this will bother you, the simplest fix is to not step on the scale during race week.

The Mistakes That Actually Cost People

Loading with fat instead of carbohydrate. The classic pre-race pizza, the fettuccine alfredo, the cheese-heavy everything. These are fat-dominant meals wearing a carbohydrate costume. They fill you up, slow gastric emptying, and leave you short of your target.

Starting too early. A full week of loading doesn’t store more glycogen than two days does. It just means five extra days of feeling heavy and sluggish.

Trying new foods. Race week is the worst possible time to introduce an unfamiliar sports drink, a new bread, or a restaurant you’ve never been to. Everything you eat Thursday and Friday should be something your gut already knows.

Forgetting about fiber. A big jump in total food volume with your normal high-fiber choices is a recipe for an uncomfortable Saturday morning. Reduce fiber deliberately starting Thursday.

Alcohol. Friday night with friends is tempting, and a beer won’t ruin you. But alcohol impairs glycogen storage directly, disrupts sleep, and increases fluid loss — all three of which are exactly what you spent two days building. Save it for the finish line, where it’ll taste considerably better anyway – but after the protein!

Neglecting sodium and fluid. Storing glycogen requires water, and you need sodium to hold onto it. Salt your food normally or a little more than normal during the load and keep drinking. Loading on carbohydrate while under-hydrating leaves you with less than you think.

Doing this for the first time on race week. See below.

Practice It First

This is the piece I’d most like you to take from this post.

Pick a day well before race week and do a trial run. Eat a loading day, then ride the next morning. You’ll learn three things: whether you can actually hit your number, which foods sit well in volume, and how your gut handles it.

Almost everyone discovers something. Usually it’s that the number is harder to reach than expected, or that a food they assumed would work doesn’t at that volume. Finding that out on a quiet Tuesday costs you nothing. Finding it out on race day costs you the race.

Race Week, Day by Day

Monday through Wednesday. Normal eating, normal carbohydrate intake, training getting short and easy. Nothing special. Start lowering fiber slightly on Wednesday.

Thursday — load day one. Ramp carbohydrate up toward your target. Low fiber. Short easy spin at most. Buy everything you’ll need for Friday and Saturday now, so race week doesn’t hand you a grocery problem.

Friday — load day two, the important one. Hit your full target. Keep fiber low. Spread it across five or six feedings. You’ll likely be at the Ice Cycle Expo at the Grand Traverse Resort — plan your food around that rather than relying on whatever’s available there. Pack what you need and eat on your schedule, not the expo’s.

Dinner Friday should be moderate in size and familiar. The enormous night-before pasta dinner is a tradition, not a strategy — if you’ve loaded properly across both days, you don’t need a massive final meal, and a lighter dinner means you sleep better and start Saturday without a brick in your stomach.

Lay out your kit, fill your bottles, and prep breakfast Friday night. Race morning should require no decisions.

Saturday. Breakfast three hours before your wave, familiar and carbohydrate-focused, low fiber and low fat. Then execute the on-course plan you’ve already practiced.

Your Action List

Calculate your number — body weight in kg times 8 to 10.
Schedule a practice loading day and actually do it, well before race week.
Write the grocery list and buy the shelf-stable items early.
Decide your Friday eating schedule in advance, including around the expo.
Plan race-week training to be genuinely easy. Put it on the calendar so you don’t improvise your way into a hard Thursday.
Decide now that you’re not weighing yourself during race week.

Carb loading is one of the few nutrition interventions in endurance sport with genuinely strong evidence behind it. It’s also one of the easiest to botch through enthusiasm. Two days, a real taper, familiar low-fiber food, and a number you’ve actually calculated. That’s the whole thing.

Coming up next: race week and race morning. The taper-week eating that doesn’t undo your work, the night-before plan, breakfast timing by wave, and exactly what goes in your pockets before you roll out of Kalkaska.

Gina Render is a certified Performance Nutrition Coach that works with a variety of athletes and active individuals both locally and remotely to help them meet their goals. As a wife, mom of two teens avid mountain biker, and strength athlete, she understands the demands that come with balancing life and sport. From sport-specific fueling to general nutrition, she’s your partner and advocate to empower you to Adventure More. Contact her at gina@adventure-more.com.

The Season I Didn’t Plan For

This has not been my typical race season.

By this point in the year, I would normally have ten or eleven races behind me. This year, I have raced only five. That difference represents more than a number. It represents changed plans, missed opportunities, and a version of myself I have been trying to understand.

I entered this season expecting it to be epic. My calendar was filled with challenging races, long days on the bike, and goals that excited and scared me in all the best ways. I pictured frequent visits to the trails and the deep satisfaction that comes from pushing myself through difficult miles.

Instead, a back injury changed the direction of my season.

Healing has been slower and more frustrating than I wanted it to be. I have had to step away from some of the longer races I love and accept that my body is not ready to do everything my mind still wants to do. I have spent far less time on the trail and far more time learning where my limits are.

Finding my way and my place in this season has been challenging.

I also know I am not the only person who has experienced a season like this. Many athletes have watched carefully made plans change because of an injury, illness, family responsibilities, work demands, or circumstances beyond their control. It can feel isolating when everyone around you seems to be racing, improving, and reaching goals while you are simply trying to heal. If you are in that kind of season too, I hope you know that stepping back does not erase who you are or everything you have already accomplished.

There have been moments when the rest felt good and necessary. My body needed it, even if I did not always want to admit that. But there have also been moments when I deeply missed the familiar rhythm of training, racing, and spending long hours in the woods. Mountain biking has become such an important part of who I am that stepping back from it has sometimes left me wondering where I fit.

Injury has a way of challenging more than the body. It tests your patience, your confidence, and your ability to adjust when life does not follow the plan you carefully created.

I am learning that healing requires its own kind of endurance.

There is no race clock, no cheering crowd, and no finish line marking the moment you have made it through. Progress can be slow and difficult to measure. Some days bring hope, while others make you feel as though you have gone backward. The challenge is continuing to listen, adjust, and trust the process even when you cannot see exactly where it is taking you.

With Iceman on the horizon, I know the race will look and feel different to me this year. I may not arrive with the season of preparation I imagined. My goals may need to change, and success may have a different meaning than it has in the past.

Maybe success will be respecting my body instead of fighting it. Maybe it will be appreciating every mile I am able to ride. Maybe it will simply be showing up with gratitude for the opportunity to be part of an event and community that mean so much to me.

I am still figuring that out.

What I do know is that I do not want to spend this season mourning the one I thought I would have. I want to embrace the journey I am actually on. This season may include fewer races and shorter rides, but it is still teaching me about resilience, patience, and the courage required to begin again.

The season I planned would have tested me through distance and difficult courses. The season I received is testing me in an entirely different way.

It may not be the challenge I chose, but it is still a challenge worth meeting.

Thank you Heather Newman @goodtimesally_mtblife for being our Iceman Cometh Challenge Trailbazer!

Bring your friends

Team sports have never been my thing.

I wasn’t tough enough for the football team. I wasn’t cool enough for the soccer team. I didn’t have the height for the basketball team. I also didn’t have the skillset or talent for any of these sports…but that’s besides the point. Running and especially cycling came naturally to me because I could run my own show. I wasn’t relying on someone else to pass me the ball, or to block someone on the other team. Just me at my own pace. No one else to blame when things went a little sideways.

This can and did work just fine. But as an adult racing for fun, there’s something missing that may need to be forced back into the equation.

Accountability.

No doubt if you’re reading this you inherently enjoy riding your bike. But there will always be those rides where the weather is questionable, the miles are long, and the alarm clock is set too dang early. It’s easier to just stay in bed, right?? I can say from experience that it’s waay tougher to bail if you know there’s a couple of buddies waiting for you at the trailhead (even though they probably feel the same way). Those “questionable” rides often end up being the most rewarding, too! Your dad would call it character building. Sometimes you just need that extra push from your friends. It’s good for you.

Motivation.

Competition sure ain’t everything but having someone to chase will help keep you sharp. Some people compare Strava times. Some people compare mileage for the year. Maybe you just need to follow someone else’s line through a difficult section of singletrack. There are a lot of really talented people out there, and if you’re paying attention you can learn something from just about anybody. Surround yourself with people who think and behave how you want to think and behave. Whether they’re aware of it or not, they can help you achieve your own fitness goals, diet or weight loss goals, or improve your technical skills on the bike. Heck: you probably are that person for somebody else.

Camaraderie.

Ok, ok; let’s not get too serious here…bikes are more fun with friends! Share your stories about the aforementioned “questionable” rides. Find the people that are just as excited about your new bike/wheels/helmet/etc as you are! Show off that sweet new sticker you got. Grab a coffee or a beer after the ride. Send them stupid stuff you see on Instagram or Facebook marketplace. Riding bikes is cool. You’re probably pretty cool, too.

You’re racing in November, right? It might be too late for your friends or family to sign up this year, but invite ‘em along! Especially those who might not know what a mountain bike race is like. Make a weekend out of it. Celebrate your successes and share your challenges from raceday and from the season leading up to it. Iceman is a unique and exciting event, and is a great way for us to introduce others to the sport. In addition to the food trucks and the beer; the afterparty is filled with interesting and accomplished people who are there celebrating the same things you are. Share that with your friends!

They’re going to want to be a part of your team.

Thank you to Aaron Schutter @aaron_two_tired for being our 2026 Iceman Trailblazer.

Men, Muscle, and the Long Ride: Fueling Strategies for Male Riders

Last month’s post was about the gaps in women’s fueling advice. This one is about a different problem. Men generally get plenty of nutrition advice — it’s just that a lot of it is wrong in the same predictable ways, and the mistakes change shape depending on how old you are.

A fifteen-year-old racing the Junior Iceman and a fifty-five-year-old racing his eighteenth Iceman are both under-fueling, but for completely different reasons and with completely different consequences. The teenager is under-fueling because he’s growing, riding hard, and physically cannot eat fast enough to keep up. The fifty-five-year-old is under-fueling on purpose, because he read somewhere that he should show up lighter.

It’s September. Iceman is Saturday, November 7 — about seven weeks out. Your training load is near its peak right now and your fueling discipline usually isn’t. Let’s go through it by decade.

The Mistake Almost Every Male Rider Makes

Before the age-specific stuff, here’s the pattern that shows up across every category.

The default approach to endurance fueling for most athletes is some version of “ride hard, eat whatever, it’ll sort itself out.” For a long stretch of your life, that works well enough. Young men have enormous metabolic margin — you can skip breakfast, ride three hours on one bottle and half a bar, eat badly, sleep poorly, and still perform.

The problem is that the margin is doing the work, not the strategy. And the margin shrinks. Slowly at first, then noticeably. When it finally runs out, most people don’t recognize what happened — they just conclude they need to train harder, which accelerates the exact problem they’re trying to solve.

The fix is the same at every age: stop treating food as an afterthought and start treating it as a training input. What changes with age is the margin for error, not the principles.

Carbohydrate: The Number That Actually Matters

Iceman is roughly 30 miles of punchy, cold-weather racing. Front-of-pack riders finish near 1:45. Competitive amateurs run 2:15 to 2:45. Mid-pack is 2:45 to 3:30. Plenty of riders are out there four hours or more.

At those intensities and durations, carbohydrate is the limiting fuel. Not fat, not protein, not willpower. And most male riders are running on considerably less than they need.

Daily intake during heavy training

Moderate training weeks: roughly 5–7 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day
Hard training weeks with multiple quality sessions: 7–10 g/kg/day

For a 180-pound rider, the hard-week range works out to roughly at least 570 grams of carbohydrate daily. That is substantially more than most guys eat, and it’s the single most common gap I find when I review a male athlete’s actual intake.

On the bike

Efforts under 90 minutes: 30–60 g of carbohydrate per hour
Efforts over two hours at real intensity — which is Iceman for nearly everyone: 60–90 g per hour

That upper range requires a mix of glucose and fructose sources, and it requires practice. Your gut adapts to carbohydrate intake the same way your legs adapt to intervals. Do not try 90 grams an hour for the first time on November 7. Start now, on your long rides, and build tolerance over the next twelve weeks.

The September trap

Here’s the pattern I see every fall. Training volume peaks in August and September. A rider looks at the calendar, decides he’d like to show up in Kalkaska a few pounds lighter, and cuts carbohydrates — at exactly the moment his body needs the most fuel it will need all year.

Six weeks later his intervals feel terrible, his recovery is shot, and he’s frustrated. Then he pushes harder, which makes it worse.

If you want to change your body composition, the window for that was April through June. In August, the job is fueling the work. A slightly heavier rider who’s properly fueled beats a lighter rider who’s dug a hole, every single time, over 30 miles.

Protein: How Much, and How to Spread It

Endurance athletes need 1.6 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 180-pound rider, that’s roughly 130 to 165 grams.

Total matters, but distribution matters nearly as much. Aim for 30 to 40 grams at each main meal rather than eating a light breakfast and an enormous dinner. Four moderate servings across the day drive more muscle repair than the same total dumped into one sitting.

The gap is almost always breakfast. Coffee and a bagel is not a protein serving.

Young Male Riders

If you’re a teenage rider, or you’re the parent of one, this section is the important one.

A young male athlete in a growth phase has the highest per-pound energy demand he will ever have. He is building bone, building muscle, running a nervous system through a major renovation, and training on top of all of it. His fuel needs are not “adult needs, scaled down.” Per pound of body weight, they are higher than an adult’s.

What this means practically

Eat frequently. Three meals is rarely enough during a growth spurt with a training load on top. Plan for meals plus two or three substantial snacks. The after-school window before evening riding is the one most often missed.
Protein across the day, not just at dinner. Growth and training both draw on it. Breakfast protein is the usual weak point in teenage eating.
Carbohydrate is not the enemy. Teenage boys pick up a startling amount of nutrition misinformation from social media, most of it aimed at physique rather than performance. A young endurance athlete needs carbohydrate, and plenty of it.
Iron matters here too. Rapid growth raises iron needs substantially, and heavy training raises them further. If a teenage rider is chronically fatigued and training isn’t producing results, an iron panel is worth asking about.
Calcium and vitamin D. Roughly 1,300 mg of calcium a day through the teenage years, managed by bloodwork and a doctors guidance – don’t just start supplementing. Focus on nutrition. Peak bone mass is built during adolescence and it’s largely built by about age twenty.

On weight and young athletes

Cycling has a weight (diet) culture, and it reaches teenagers early. I want to be direct about this: under-fueling in an adolescent male athlete suppresses growth, suppresses testosterone, compromises the bone density he’ll carry for the rest of his life, and reliably makes him slower.

Low energy availability is not just a female issue. It affects male athletes too, and it’s diagnosed later in men because nobody’s looking for it — there’s no missed period to serve as an obvious alarm. Warning signs in a young male rider: growth that stalls, frequent illness, stress injuries, persistent fatigue, mood changes, training that stops producing progress.

If a teenage rider is talking about cutting weight for racing, that’s a conversation to have with a sports dietitian, not a plan to execute alone.

Parents: next month’s post covers the family and kids’ race logistics in full. What to pack, and what young riders will actually eat on a cold race morning.

Men in Their Twenties and Thirties

This is the stretch where everything works and nothing is optimized. The margin is wide, so mistakes stay invisible.

The thing worth doing now: build the habits while it’s easy, because they compound. Specifically —

Practice race fueling in training instead of assuming you’ll figure it out on race day. Gut training is real and it takes weeks.
Get protein to your target consistently. Muscle you build and maintain in your thirties is muscle you’re not fighting to keep in your fifties.
Start resistance training if you haven’t. Two short sessions a week. It’s protective for bone, it’s protective for durability on technical descents, and it gets harder to start the longer you wait.
Take sleep as seriously as you take intervals. It’s the highest-return recovery input available to you and it’s free.

You can get away with skipping all of this. You’ll just be a worse rider at forty than you needed to be.

Masters Men: Forty and Up

Something genuinely changes, and it’s worth naming so you can respond to it instead of just being annoyed by it.

Muscle becomes less responsive to protein. The same 20 grams that triggered a solid repair response at twenty-five does less at fifty-five. The fix is a larger per-meal dose — 35 to 40 grams at each main meal — plus resistance training, which restores a good deal of that sensitivity.

Recovery takes longer. Glycogen replacement slows, muscle repair slows, and the adaptation window stretches. Practically: prioritize the post-ride meal more deliberately than you did at thirty. Carbohydrate plus protein within an hour or so, especially after hard sessions and especially when you’re riding again the next day.

You likely need more carbohydrate than your perceived effort suggests, not less. This is counterintuitive and it trips up a lot of masters riders. Your ride may feel easier than it used to at the same heart rate, but the substrate demand hasn’t disappeared. Under-fueling masters riders is extremely common.

Body composition moves even when nothing else changed. The instinct is to cut calories. The better lever is more protein, more resistance training, and holding your carbohydrate intake steady during hard training. Cutting calories during your peak block costs you fitness and doesn’t fix the underlying issue.

Sleep quality degrades. Which means recovery nutrition has to carry more of the load, and it also means evening alcohol costs you more than it used to.

Alcohol: The Honest Version

You’re going to get a beer at Timber Ridge after you cross the line, and you should. That’s not what this is about.

What matters is the training block. Alcohol impairs glycogen replacement, blunts muscle protein synthesis for hours afterward, disrupts sleep architecture even when total sleep time looks fine, and costs you more recovery as you get older. Three or four drinks the night before a key session is a meaningfully compromised session.

Practical version: keep it away from your hardest training days and away from the night before anything that matters. Race weekend, that means Friday night at the Expo is not the night for it. Saturday afternoon at the finish festival absolutely is.

Creatine

The evidence here has gotten strong enough that it’s worth mentioning directly.

Creatine monohydrate, 3 to 5 grams a day, is one of the most studied and best-supported supplements available. The benefit is clearest for repeated high-intensity efforts — which describes Iceman well, given how punchy the course is. The evidence for masters athletes in particular, for muscle maintenance and possibly for cognition, has strengthened considerably.

It’s inexpensive, it doesn’t require loading, and it’s well tolerated. Expect a small weight increase from intramuscular water, which is not fat and is not a performance penalty. Worth a conversation with your physician, particularly if you have kidney concerns.

For teenage athletes: this is a conversation for a physician and a sports dietitian, not a decision to make off a blog post.

Race-Day Carbohydrate Math

Take your realistic finish time and work backward.

1:45–2:15 (front of race): 80–90 g of carbohydrate per hour, almost entirely liquid and gel. You won’t have hands free or heart rate low enough to chew much.
2:15–2:45: 70–90 g per hour. Mix of gels, chews, and drink mix.
2:45–3:30: 60–75 g per hour, plus real food if your stomach handles it in the cold.
3:30+: 50–70 g per hour, and eat on a timer rather than by feel. At this duration in cold weather, appetite is not a reliable signal.

And the cold-weather warning that applies to everyone here: you will not feel hungry, you will not feel thirsty, and you will under-fuel if you go by sensation. Set a timer on your computer. Eat when it goes off, whether you want to or not.

Your September Action List

Add up one honest day of carbohydrate intake and compare it to 5–7 g/kg. Most riders find a gap.
Fix breakfast protein. Aim for 30–40 grams before you get on the bike.
Practice 60–90 g of carbohydrate per hour on your next three long rides. Build the tolerance now.
Put two strength sessions on the calendar weekly through October.
Pick your hardest training days and keep alcohol away from the night before them.
If you have a teenage rider in the house, look honestly at whether he’s eating enough during his growth phase.

The theme across every age here is the same: the guys who fall apart at Iceman are almost never under-trained. They’re under-fueled, and they got there by treating nutrition as the part that doesn’t require a plan.

Coming up in October: the whole family. Fueling young riders from the Sno-Cone and and beyond, plus the race-morning parent checklist that keeps everyone fed and functional in the cold.

There Is Room for All of Us at the Finish Line

The start of a new school year always brings a major shift in my life. The relaxed rhythm of summer quickly gives way to early mornings, busy days, lesson planning, classroom routines, and a calendar that seems to fill faster than I can keep up with it.

This year, I am also finishing my teaching degree and completing my student-teaching internship. It is an exciting season, one that I have worked toward for a long time, but it is also demanding. When life becomes this busy, the things we do for ourselves are often the first things pushed aside.

Training can begin to feel like one more responsibility. Rides must be squeezed into already full days, and sometimes finding the energy to begin is harder than completing the workout itself. But I am learning that protecting time for the things I love is not selfish. Riding my bike and getting to the gym gives me space to breathe, think, challenge myself, and reconnect with a part of who I am outside of work, school, and everything I do for others.

Recent events in my life have brought challenges and reminded me that we are often stronger than we realize. Sometimes moving forward means accomplishing something big. Other times, it simply means continuing to show up when life feels difficult. The bike has always helped me work through hard things, and that made this year’s Ore to Shore especially meaningful.

For five years, I had been chasing a podium finish at that race. I had come close before, but I had never quite made it. This year, I finally did.

Crossing the finish line and earning a place on the podium represented more than one good race. It represented years of showing up, training through busy seasons, learning from disappointments, and continuing to believe the goal was possible.

I am proud that I competed hard. I wanted that podium, and I worked for it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to race well, push our limits, or discover what we are capable of accomplishing. Competition can motivate us to train harder, take chances, and become stronger riders.

However, there is a line between racing competitively and allowing the desire for a certain result to override good judgment.

Mountain biking requires all of us to share the trail. We may have different experience levels, goals, and speeds, but every rider deserves to feel safe and respected. Passing responsibly, communicating clearly, giving other riders enough space, and recognizing when a move is unnecessarily risky are all part of being a good competitor.

A few seconds or one finishing position is never worth putting another rider, or ourselves, in danger.

It is easy to become caught up in the adrenaline of racing, especially near the start, on a crowded section of trail, or as the finish line approaches. Those are also the moments when trail etiquette and respect matter most. Racing hard does not mean racing recklessly. Strength is not only measured by how fast we ride; it is also shown through patience, awareness, and the decisions we make when emotions are high.

This is especially important as we encourage more women and new riders to enter the sport. Cycling communities grow when people feel welcomed, supported, and safe. We build that kind of community when we invite someone to her first group ride, calm another rider’s nerves at the starting line, share advice, call out a safe pass, offer help on the trail, and celebrate one another at the finish.

We can race one another fiercely and still respect one another. We can want the podium without believing that another person’s success takes something away from our own. We can be strong competitors and supportive members of the cycling community at the same time.

That is the example I want to set as a cyclist and an Iceman Trailblazer. The next generation of riders is watching how we compete, respond to challenges, celebrate victories, and treat one another on the trail. I want them to see that determination and kindness can exist together, and that being a strong competitor never requires leaving respect or compassion behind.

As another busy season begins, I am reminding myself to continue making room for the things that help me feel strong and whole. Some weeks, training may look different. Some rides may be shorter, slower, or squeezed between responsibilities. But that time still matters.

I will continue chasing goals. I will continue competing. I will continue pushing through difficult seasons. And I will continue respecting and cheering for the people riding beside me, because there is room for all of us at the start line, on the trail, and at the finish.

Thank you to Heather Newman @goodtimessally_mtblife for being our 2026 Iceman Cometh Trailblazer.

Fueling for Women: The Hormonal Nutrition Playbook for Iceman

Most of the fueling advice floating around cycling was built on studies of male athletes, then handed to everyone else as if it were universal. That’s not a conspiracy – it’s just how the research funding worked for decades. But it does mean that if you’re a woman lining up in Kalkaska in November, some of the standard advice is going to fit you fine, some of it needs adjusting, and a few pieces of your nutrition picture never get mentioned at all.

This post is about that last group. Not because women’s nutrition is exotic or complicated, but because the things that most often hold female riders back – iron status, chronic underfueling, bone health, the shifts that come with perimenopause – are rarely part of the conversation until something breaks.

It’s August. Iceman is Saturday, November 7. That’s about three months, which is exactly the right amount of runway to fix the things on this list. Most of them can’t be fixed in race week.

Start Here: Put Your Cycle on the Calendar

If you’re still cycling, the single most useful thing you can do this month is figure out roughly where race day is going to land.

Count forward from your last period in cycle lengths. If you average 28 days, November 7 is about four and a half cycles from mid-July. You won’t nail it to the day – cycles drift, and training load and stress push them around – but you’ll know whether you’re likely to be in the first half or the second half of your cycle on race morning. That’s enough to plan around.

If you’re not tracking already, start now. A note in your phone is fine. What you want by October is a few months of your own data, not an app’s average of someone else’s.

Why it matters: not because one phase is “bad” for racing – women win national championships in every phase – but because knowing where you are lets you make small, specific adjustments instead of guessing at why you feel off.

What Actually Changes Across Your Cycle

Let me be honest about the state of the science here, because I think you deserve that more than you deserve a tidy answer.

The broad hormonal picture is well established. In the first half of your cycle – the follicular phase, from the start of your period through ovulation – estrogen rises and progesterone stays low. In the second half, the luteal phase, both estrogen and progesterone are elevated. Those hormones do measurably affect substrate use, core temperature, fluid balance, and protein turnover.

What is much less settled is how much any of that changes race-day performance. When researchers pooled the available studies, the average effect on performance turned out to be small and, importantly, highly individual. Some women feel a real difference. Some feel nothing. Both are normal.

So the useful framing isn’t “your hormones will sabotage you.” It’s “there are a handful of predictable physiological shifts, and if you happen to be someone who feels them, here’s what to do.”

The shifts worth knowing about

Body temperature. Core temperature runs slightly higher in the luteal phase – roughly half a degree Fahrenheit. In a summer criterium, that’s a real thermoregulatory tax. At Iceman, in 30-degree woods, it’s a non-issue and arguably an advantage.
Fuel use. Estrogen promotes fat oxidation and tends to spare muscle glycogen. Progesterone works somewhat against that. The practical translation is not “eat fewer carbs in one phase” – at Iceman intensities you are burning carbohydrate regardless. It’s that some women find they need slightly more total carbohydrate to feel normal in the luteal phase, especially on hard days.
Protein turnover. Progesterone increases protein breakdown. If you’re going to be in your luteal phase during your heaviest training block or on race day, nudging protein up is a low-cost hedge.
Fluid balance. Fluid shifts are common in the late luteal phase. That can show up as a scale change that has nothing to do with body composition, and as a slightly higher sodium need. Don’t panic-diet in response to a number on the scale that week.
Perceived effort. The days right before your period are when most women report higher perceived exertion at the same power. Effort feels harder than the numbers say it should. If race day lands there, plan to race by feel less and by plan more – stick to your fueling schedule and your pacing targets rather than negotiating with how you feel at mile eight.

If race day lands in your luteal phase

Nothing dramatic changes. Add a bit more carbohydrate in the two or three days before the race than you otherwise would, keep sodium intake steady rather than restricting it, hit your protein, and trust the plan you practiced. The cold weather at Iceman genuinely works in your favor here.

Iron: The One Most Likely to Be Quietly Costing You

If you take one thing from this post, take this one.

Iron is central to oxygen transport, and endurance athletes lose it through more channels than the general population – sweat, gut losses, foot strike and impact, and for menstruating athletes, monthly blood loss on top of all of it. Low iron stores can drag down your aerobic capacity and leave you flat and heavy-legged long before you’d ever show up as clinically anemic on a standard blood panel.

This is the classic silent performance leak. You don’t feel a sudden drop. You just feel like your fitness stopped responding to training, and you assume you need to work harder – which makes it worse.

What to do

Ask your doctor for a full iron panel, not just hemoglobin. You want ferritin, which reflects stored iron, along with hemoglobin and transferrin saturation. Ferritin is the number that flags a problem early. Many sports medicine practitioners start paying attention in endurance athletes well before the lab’s “low” cutoff, so ask for the actual number rather than just “normal or not.”
Do it now, not in October. If your iron is low, correcting stores takes months, not weeks. August testing gives you time. Race-week testing gives you nothing but anxiety.
Don’t supplement blind. Iron overload is a real problem, and supplementing without knowing your status can mask other issues. Test first.
If you do supplement, get the details right. Absorption is better in the morning and worse in the hours right after a hard session, when your body’s iron-regulating response is elevated. Vitamin C helps absorption; coffee, tea, and calcium-rich foods taken at the same time work against it. Every-other-day dosing is often absorbed better and tolerated better than daily.
Build the food side regardless. Red meat, shellfish, liver if you’ll eat it, plus beans, lentils, tofu, and fortified grains paired with a vitamin C source. Plant iron is absorbed less efficiently, so pairing matters more if you’re eating mostly plant-based.

Are You Actually Eating Enough?

This is the uncomfortable section, and it’s the one I’d most like you to sit with.

Low energy availability means you’re not taking in enough fuel to cover both your training and the basic business of keeping your body running. It doesn’t require an eating disorder. It happens constantly to conscientious, motivated athletes who simply increased training volume and never increased food to match – or who picked up a nutrition message somewhere that leaner equals faster and quietly ran a deficit for months.

The downstream effects hit bone density, hormonal function, immune function, mood, gut health, and – eventually and inevitably – performance. The performance drop usually arrives last, which is exactly what makes it so easy to miss.

Warning signs

Your period has become irregular, lighter, or stopped altogether and you’re not pregnant or on a contraceptive that explains it
You’re getting sick more than you used to, or minor illnesses linger
You have a history of stress fractures or bone stress injuries
You’re always cold, even by Northern Michigan standards
Recovery between hard sessions is taking noticeably longer than it used to
Training is going up and performance is flat or going backwards
Sleep is poor, mood is low, or you feel unusually irritable and can’t point to a cause
You think about food, restriction, or your weight more than feels comfortable

Losing your period is not a sign that training is going well. It is a physiological alarm, and it’s the one most often dismissed as normal in endurance sport. It isn’t.

If several of these sound familiar, please talk to a sports nutrition coach or a physician who works with athletes. This is fixable, and it’s much more fixable now than after a stress fracture in September takes your season.

Bones: More Relevant to Cyclists Than We Admit

Cycling is largely non-weight-bearing, which is wonderful for your joints and unhelpful for your skeleton. Mountain biking gives you more impact and loading than road riding does, but not enough to count as bone-building on its own. Add in the fact that bone loss accelerates around menopause, and this becomes a category worth actively managing rather than assuming.

Calcium. Aim for roughly 1,000–1,300 mg per day, mostly from food. Dairy, fortified plant milks, canned fish with bones, tofu set with calcium, and leafy greens all count.
Vitamin D. At this latitude, we make essentially none from sunlight between roughly October and March. Get your level tested and supplement based on the result rather than a guess.
Load your skeleton. Two short strength sessions a week does more for your bone density than any supplement, and it will make you a more durable bike handler on rough sections of the course. This is the single best training investment most female cyclists aren’t making.

Perimenopause and Menopause

If you’re in your forties or fifties, some of what you’re experiencing on the bike may have nothing to do with your training plan.

As estrogen declines, several things shift at once: muscle becomes less responsive to the protein you eat, body composition tends to move even when your habits haven’t, recovery slows down, sleep quality often degrades, and thermoregulation gets less predictable. It’s a genuinely disorienting stretch, and a lot of women respond by cutting calories – which is precisely the wrong lever.

What actually helps

More protein, better distributed. This is the phase to stop being casual about it. Aim for 30–40 g of protein at each main meal rather than back-loading it all at dinner. The higher per-meal dose is what overcomes the reduced sensitivity.
Resistance training. Not optional anymore. It’s the primary defense of both muscle mass and bone density through this transition, and it directly protects your power on the bike.
Creatine. The evidence for 3–5 g per day in menopausal women- for muscle, and possibly for cognition and bone – has gotten meaningfully stronger. It’s inexpensive and well tolerated. Worth a conversation with your physician.
Don’t cut calories to chase the scale. Under-fueling accelerates every problem in this list. If you’re training for a 30-mile race, eat like it.

Protein: The Number to Actually Hit

Endurance athletes need considerably more protein than the general population guidelines suggest – in the range of 1.6 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 140-pound rider, that’s roughly 100 to 130 grams daily. Emerging work suggests women may sit at the upper end of that range rather than the lower, particularly in the luteal phase and after menopause.

Distribution matters as much as the total. Three or four servings of 25 to 40 grams spread across the day beats a small breakfast and an enormous dinner, even if the totals match.

The practical test: add up what you actually ate yesterday. Most riders I work with are surprised, and the gap is almost always at breakfast.

Callouts

Masters women, 40 and up

The perimenopause section is your section, but so is the strength training line in the bone section. Two sessions a week, consistently, from now through October will change how you feel on the rough sections between Williamsburg and the finish. It is the highest-return thing on this entire page for you.

Junior girls racing the Slush Cup or Junior Iceman

You are training and still growing, which means your fuel needs per pound are higher than an adult’s, not lower. Eating enough is not a side note to your training – it is your training. Underfueling during your teenage years affects bone density you will carry for the rest of your life, and it ends more promising athletic careers than any crash ever will. Eat the second breakfast.

Men reading this

Don’t skip it. If you train with women, coach them, or are raising one, the iron and low-energy-availability sections are worth knowing well enough to recognize in someone else. Your post is next month.

Your August Action List

Start tracking your cycle so you know roughly where November 7 lands.
Book a blood draw and ask for a full iron panel including ferritin, plus vitamin D.
Add up one honest day of protein and see where you land against 1.6–2.0 g/kg.
Put two strength sessions a week on the calendar and treat them like rides.
Read the low energy availability warning signs again, honestly. If more than two apply, make the call to a professional this month.

None of this is exotic. It’s the unglamorous infrastructure underneath a good race – the stuff that determines whether the fueling plan we build in October has anything solid to sit on top of.

Coming up in September: we flip to the men’s side. Testosterone, protein timing, masters-specific carbohydrate needs, and why the “just ride hard and eat whatever” approach works right up until the year it doesn’t. Fueling for Women: The Hormonal Nutrition Playbook for Iceman doesn’t.

Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance.

Ok ok, cheesy and possibly overused title referencing a book that is only tangentially about maintenance of any kind.

For the sake of this post, let’s ignore “Zen” for now (which I know basically nothing about) and talk about bicycle maintenance (which I know a whole bunch about). I certainly can’t cover everything in one blog post. There are countless books on the subject (do people still read service manuals?) and things are constantly being updated as technology marches steadily on. I can, however, share my ritual that I perform approximately one to two weeks before any major ride, event, or race. Glamorous? No. Satisfying? You betcha.

Let’s start with a clean bike. Give it a quick rinse, lather it up with some water and Dawn dish soap (is anyone from Procter & Gamble reading this? #sponsorme) to help cut grease buildup on the drivetrain, and rinse everything off with a hose when you’re done. Towel dry what you can; compressed air may be helpful for the hard to reach places.

Wheels off!

Remove both wheels and give both tires a quick visual, looking for tread wear, cracks from age, and any small cuts or punctures that you may not have noticed. Pull the valve cores and check sealant levels using a small zip tie or allen wrench as a dipstick. Make sure the valve stems are free of any dried sealant, and consider installing new cores if it’s been tough to get air in or out of your tires.

Feel the hubs. You don’t need to be a bearing whisperer to tell when they’re worn. Bearings should turn smoothly and quietly, with no lateral (side to side) or axial (up and down) play. Crunchy? Noisy? Might be time to stop by your local bike shop unless you’re comfortable digging deeper.

Check for any broken, damaged, or loose spokes. Measure spoke tension if you have the means. If you don’t have the tools, plucking the spokes like a guitar string will at least identify any that are severely loose or tight. Spokes should all have approximately the same pitch.

Now is also a good time for a quick brake inspection. Disc brake pads often feel and function fine right up until they are completely worn out! As a reference: when pads are brand new, the friction material is just a little thicker than the backing plate. Are yours gettin’ skinny?

Chain off!

Quick measure your chain with a chain wear indicator (available at any local bike shop for $10-$20), and pop it off with a masterlink pliers (also $10-$20 at your LBS). If it’s worn out, or nearly worn out; replace it. If it’s BAD worn out proceed with caution: you may need a new cassette too ($$$…this is why we measure our chains frequently often). If you have the tools and/or motivation to do so, remove the cassette and derailleur pulleys, too: although they can be cleaned on the bike it’s easier to be thorough when everything is disassembled.

Soak the chain in some mineral spirits or simple green. Scrub, rinse, repeat as needed. The cleaner the better (especially if you wax!). Old school tip: soak your chain in a plastic pop bottle partially filled with solvent. Thread the cap on and shake periodically to release any grit. Contaminated solvent can be dumped out and refilled as needed. Cut the top off the bottle to get the chain out. Let it air dry, or blow dry with compressed air.

Scrub the cassette, derailleur pulleys, and chainring. It’s hard not to make a mess if they’re still on the bike, but again: the cleaner the better.

While the chain is off, give the crank arms a spin. It’s way easier to identify noisy bottom bracket bearings when they’re isolated from the rest of the drivetrain.

Reinstall your nice clean parts.

And don’t forget to lube your nice clean chain! Cleaning and lubricating your bike is the equivalent of unplugging it and plugging it back in. Making noise? Try this first.

Give the wheels a quick spin and make sure they’re straight (heads up: a tire that is not fully seated can disguise itself as a tweaked wheel and is not at all uncommon) and that the brake pads are not contacting the rotors.

With the bike on the ground, grab the front brake and rock the bike forward and backward a little. Any play in the front end is usually a loose headset. Pick up the front of the bike and turn the handlebars back and forth. There should be no sad crunchy bearing sounds or drag. Overly tight headset bearings are very common, especially after swapping stems. That top cap doesn’t need to be that tight, people! Draw the top cap bolt down just enough to take up any play in the headset bearings, then tighten up the bolts on the stem. Done!

Feel the pedals for any play in the bearings; this is another very common issue, especially with you high mileage riders!

Double check the torque on the stem bolts, crank bolts, chainring bolts, axles/skewers, suspension hardware, and brake caliper bolts (and any other important bolts that I’ve forgotten to mention).

Anything electronic on your bike? AXS batteries (don’t forget about the coin cell batteries in electronic shifters or power meters)? Computer? Lights? Charge ‘em up.

Test Ride.

And not just up and down your driveway. Go out for a regular ride and just ride like you normally would. Any brake noise? Is the chain skipping under heavy load? Maybe you made things worse? No worries! This is why we do these things a week or two before the main event (see paragraph one). You still have time to try again, grab any replacement parts if needed, or seek professional help.

But hopefully everything is smooth and quiet and we have guaranteed that nothing could possibly go wrong, right?!

Well, no.

Crashes, flat tires, and even mechanical failures can and do happen at inopportune times. But we can now approach our race with confidence, knowing that we have addressed the variables that are in our control. We’ll just have to roll with whatever else happens along the way.

Maybe that’s our Zen.

Thank you to Aaron Schutter @aaron_two_tired for being our 2026 Iceman Trailblazer.

The People Behind the Riders: The Heart of Iceman

When people think about Iceman, they usually think about the riders. The training. The miles. The finish line. The challenge of getting from Kalkaska to Traverse City on two wheels.

But this month, I want to talk about some of the most important people on race day, the support crews, volunteers, family members, friends, and complete strangers who line the trail to cheer us on.

If you have ever raced Iceman, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

There is something special about the support you receive out on that course. Maybe it’s someone handing out water. Maybe it’s someone offering a snack. Maybe it’s someone ringing a cowbell, blasting music, or even offering a rider a beer or a shot as they pass by. Whatever form it takes, that encouragement has a way of showing up exactly when you need it most.

I still remember my first Iceman.

Like many first timers, I had heard all about Anita Hill. I was new to mountain biking and racing, and Anita got the best of me that year. I ended up walking my bike up the climb.

The following year, I came back with one goal: do not walk the hills.

As I approached Anita, I got into position and started grinding as hard as I could. Riders around me were beginning to dismount and push. I was fighting to stay on the bike when I heard someone yelling.

“Rider coming up! Rider coming up!”

A spectator standing on the hill started clearing a path. People moved aside, and suddenly I had room to keep climbing. Then he stayed right behind me, shouting encouragement the entire way.

“You’ve got this!”

“Keep going!”

“Don’t stop now!”

I made it to the top.

To this day, I credit that spectator for helping me get up Anita. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know my goal. He had no idea that I had spent an entire year wanting another chance at that hill.

But in that moment, he made a difference, and I cried tears of joy as I continued on.

I don’t think support crews always realize how much impact they have on riders.

Sometimes the difference between getting off the bike and staying on the bike is simply knowing someone believes you can do it.

I’m not the only rider with a story like this.

A friend recently shared one of her Iceman memories with me. She was struggling up a climb when a spectator noticed her pigtails and started cheering specifically for her.

“Come on, pigtails! You’ve got this! Get up that hill!”

What stood out wasn’t just the encouragement. It was that someone saw her. In a sea of riders, someone was cheering for her specifically. In that moment, she wasn’t just another racer going by. She was a person being supported by someone who wanted to see her succeed.

That’s the magic of Iceman.

The course is filled with stories like these. Riders digging deep. Spectators cheering until their voices are gone. Friends and family waiting at aid stations. Volunteers spending long hours helping make the event happen.

Many of us cross the finish line carrying memories of the people who helped us get there.

So, if you are someone who doesn’t race but loves to support, this post is for you.

You matter.

Your cheers matter.

Your encouragement matters.

The rider you helped up a climb may remember your words for years. The person you high-fived might have been struggling more than you realized. The athlete you cheered for may have been one encouraging voice away from giving up.

Iceman is known for many things, its history, its challenge, and its incredible community.

And that community exists because of people like you.

Thank you for showing up. Thank you for standing in the woods in the cold. Thank you for ringing the cowbells, shouting encouragement, and believing in us when we’re hurting.

You may not be wearing a race number, but you are a part of every finish line.

Thank you to Heather Newman @goodtimessally_mtblife for being our 2026 Iceman Cometh Challenge Trailblazer.

A Case for Racing.

Have you ever caught yourself thinking: “I could just ride my bike for free…why do I sign up for these things?”

Maybe a particularly annoying cousin has called you out at a holiday gathering: “So you spend all this money on entry fees for your bike races…how much do you win back in prize money?” But there is rarely any winning. And the prize money is out of reach for most of us. And your cousin is still annoying.

I’ll admit this thought enters my mind from time to time, too, and I’ve definitely heard it mentioned among my riding friends. In addition to the entry fee itself, events often require lodging, dining out, fuel expenses, maybe the cost of a tune up to make sure the bike is as ready as you are. There’s no way around it, race weekends are not cheap.

HOWEVER. There are a multitude of reasons, some obvious, others less so, that do indeed make it completely and undeniably worth it.

Let’s back it up six or seven months ago to when there was snow on the ground, and our bikes probably weren’t seeing as much action as they are now. The holidays are done but spring is a long way off. A looong way. I’m on my couch with a cup of coffee lazily perusing the internet for events that are new or interesting, or confirming registration dates for events that I don’t ever want to miss. There are tons of options these days for quality events in all disciplines. Before money ever leaves my account for a single registration fee, I’ve got a list of dates that I’m excited for. There’s still some waiting to be done, but in the meantime I’m geekin’ over my potential bike setup, I’m more motivated to stay fit and eat healthy, and I’m texting the squad “check this out we should TOTALLY do it!!”

Registration day comes and goes with its own excitement and challenges. The money is spent. Maybe you share it on social media. The group chat lights up; who’s in, who’s still on the fence. Things have been set in motion. It’s real now. I absolutely love the planning phase.

Fast forward up to race weekend. I don’t get as anxious before races as I used to, but there will always be some nerves and I love sifting through it all with whoever I’m going to be riding with. Goals. Weather. Coarse conditions. Bike setup. An endless string of what-ifs. Having just wrapped up another mountain bike race this past weekend a lot of this is still fresh in my mind (my legs are still sore as I’m writing this). This can definitely be stressful, too, but identifying and managing all those little variables feels really good. You’re not going to get it 100% right every time but that makes it all the sweeter when you really nail it.

I’m going to breeze past the thrills, chills, and spills of the race itself for this post, and lean right into two wonderful things that any cycling event worth its salt will undoubtedly have at the end: good FOOD and good BEER! Hopefully lots of both. And everyone knows they both taste better when you earn them.

And finally, when all the planning has paid off, my official time is in the books, and I’ve been thoroughly revived by tacos and an IPA, I love to spectate. The entire spectrum of it. A crowd going bananas as a bunch of pros rip by is a pretty tough atmosphere to recreate anywhere else. Handups, cowbells, hometown heroes, darkhorses. But ya know what? Those particular men and women do this kinda stuff all the time, and as impressive as it is, it’s pretty much what we expect from professional athletes. But stick around and you’ll see a different type of athlete. Riders who have been out there for hours and never gave up. Young riders. Old riders. Riders crossing the line Strider-style with no chain…what happened? How long has it been missing?? How did they make it to the finish?! Watch the people in the back of any race; there’s some seriously impressive stuff going on back there.

So can you go ride your bike in the woods for free? Sure. I’d highly recommend it actually. But get yourself signed up for some races, too. Make a plan, get it done, enjoy the rewards, and enjoy watching others crush it, too.

Thank you to Aaron Schutter @aaron_two_tired for being our Thank you to our 2026 Iceman Cometh Challenge Trailblazer!

Building Your Nutritional Base: The Foundation That Makes or Breaks Your November

You signed up for Iceman. Maybe you’ve been riding through the winter, maybe you’re just dusting off the bike. Either way, if you’re reading this in May, you have one job right now: build the nutritional infrastructure that your race-day performance will sit on top of.

Not carb loading. Not race-week fueling. Foundation work. And just like building your aerobic base on the bike takes months — not days — building your nutritional base is something you do now, not in October.

Let’s get into it.

Why May Matters More Than You Think

Here’s the thing about nutrition for a race like Iceman: the window between now and November is actually a gift. You have time to experiment, adapt, and train your body — both physically and metabolically — to perform on race day.

The athletes who struggle at Iceman usually aren’t under-trained. They’re under-fueled in the months leading up to it. They skimp on carbs during hard training blocks, they don’t pay attention to protein, and they wonder why their legs feel flat by mile 15.

What you do in May sets the ceiling for what’s possible in November.

Carbohydrate Periodization: Fuel the Work

Carb periodization is one of the most effective tools endurance athletes have — and one of the most misunderstood. It doesn’t mean going low-carb all the time. It means matching your carbohydrate intake to the demands of your training.

Hard training day? Load up on carbs. Easy recovery ride or rest day? Pull back. It’s that simple in concept, and it pays off in two important ways:

Performance: your muscles have the glycogen they need when they need it — so you can actually hit quality training efforts instead of slogging through them.
Body composition: easy days with lower carbs keep your insulin levels steady and encourage fat oxidation — without sacrificing performance on the days that count.

A rough guide: on days with 60+ minutes of hard effort or interval work, aim for 5–7g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight. On easy or rest days, 3–4g/kg is usually plenty.

Protein: The Non-Negotiable

Endurance athletes chronically under-eat protein. It’s the most common gap I see in athlete nutrition, and it silently erodes your adaptation over months.

The current sports nutrition research is consistent: endurance athletes need 1.6–2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day to support muscle repair, adaptation, and performance. That’s not a bodybuilder target — that’s what the research shows for people doing sustained aerobic training.

For a 150-pound (68kg) rider, that’s roughly 109–136 grams of protein daily. For most people, that’s significantly more than they’re currently eating.

Distribution matters too. Aim to spread protein across 3–4 meals and include a post-ride dose within 30–60 minutes after training — 20–40 grams is the sweet spot for stimulating muscle protein synthesis. Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, chicken, fish, or a quality protein shake all work here.

Training the Gut: Start Now

This one is underrated and often overlooked until it’s too late.

Your GI system is trainable. If you want to be able to eat and drink while riding hard in November — and you will need to — you need to start practicing now. That means fueling during training rides, not just before and after.

Start with real, familiar foods first: banana pieces, dates, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, rice cakes. Then gradually introduce whatever you plan to use on race day — gels, chews, sports drinks. Give your gut 10–16 weeks to adapt to on-bike fueling, which is exactly the window you have right now.

Athletes who skip this step often hit GI distress or appetite shutdown mid-race. Don’t be that person. Train your gut like you train your legs.

The Micronutrients That Actually Move the Needle

You don’t need to supplement everything — but there are a handful of micronutrients that consistently show up as performance limiters in endurance athletes. If you’re not paying attention to these, you may be leaving fitness on the table.

Iron / Ferritin

Low ferritin — the stored form of iron — is the most common silent performance killer I see, especially in women. You can have “normal” hemoglobin but still have depleted ferritin stores that impair oxygen delivery and leave you feeling chronically fatigued and flat on the bike. Get a full iron panel including ferritin, not just standard hemoglobin. Aim for ferritin above 50 ng/mL for optimal performance.

Magnesium

Magnesium is involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions — including energy production and muscle function. Endurance athletes lose significant magnesium through sweat, and most don’t replace it adequately through diet. Signs of low magnesium include muscle cramps, poor sleep, and general fatigue. Food sources: dark leafy greens, nuts, seeds, dark chocolate. A magnesium glycinate supplement in the evening is a low-risk, high-value addition for most athletes.

Vitamin D

If you live in Michigan, you are almost certainly vitamin D insufficient by the end of winter. Vitamin D plays a role in muscle function, immune health, and bone density. Get your levels checked — you’re aiming for 40–60 ng/mL. Most people need 2,000–4,000 IU daily to maintain adequate levels, especially heading into summer training.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Omega-3s support inflammation management, which matters a lot when you’re stacking training blocks week over week. Fatty fish (salmon, sardines, mackerel) twice a week is ideal. If that’s not realistic, a quality fish oil supplement of 2–3 grams of combined EPA/DHA daily is a reasonable approach.

Audience-Specific Notes

Women

If you haven’t had a full iron panel recently, this is priority number one. Low ferritin is pervasive in active women and rarely gets caught by standard bloodwork. You’ll also want to pay attention to how your energy and appetite shift across your cycle — many women find they need more calories and carbs in the luteal phase (the two weeks before your period), and forcing restriction during that window often backfires.

Masters Athletes

Protein timing around any strength training you’re pairing with your riding matters more than many realize, especially over 40. Muscle protein synthesis becomes less efficient with age, which means you need both more protein and better distribution throughout the day to stay ahead of it. Don’t skip the post-workout window.

Junior Riders

Growing athletes have higher protein needs relative to body weight than adults — closer to 1.8–2.2g/kg — because they’re rebuilding from training AND still developing. Parents: don’t let young athletes train on empty. A real pre-ride meal and a solid recovery snack aren’t optional for juniors.

Competitive and Pro Riders

If you’re tracking training stress scores (TSS) or using a power meter, you have the data to make carb periodization precise. Match your carbohydrate targets to your actual training load, not a generic formula. High-TSS days should be fueled aggressively — this is not the time to under-eat.

What to Focus on This Month

You don’t have to overhaul everything at once. Start here:

Get a blood panel. Ask specifically for ferritin, vitamin D (25-OH), and magnesium. This is the most impactful thing most athletes can do in May.
Start tracking protein for one week — not to obsess, but to find out where you actually are. Most athletes are surprised.
Bring food on your next training ride. Even something small — a banana, a handful of dates. Get your gut used to eating on the bike.
Pay attention to how you feel on hard days vs. easy days, and start matching your eating to your training load — not just to hunger.

Next month: the topic most riders completely underestimate in cold weather — hydration. Cold air blunts your thirst response, which means you can be significantly dehydrated and feel nothing. We’re going to talk about what that actually costs you, and exactly how to fix it before race day.