cycling science

The strongest is at the top, the weakest at the bottom. Cycle fastest with an espresso – hence its name.

Thanks to a timely tweet by Asker Jeukendrup (@Jeukendrup), I got to read about new research that shows coffee can improve performance as effectively as caffeine on its own.

The paper, one of whose authors is Asker, can be read here.

What caught my eye in subsequent tweets was that different coffees contain different caffeine levels.

This is somethng I learned nine years ago during one of my more bizarre commissions.

I had to drive the length of England to collect 25 coffee samples, mostly from motorway service stations. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to spend two days.

The Centre for Mass Spectrometry at the University of Sussex generously agreed to measure the samples. It’s the lab where Professor Sir Harry Kroto first identified the form of carbon now known as buckyballs and for which he received a Nobel Prize.

The results were more stimulating than a treble espresso/Red Bull cocktail.

They showed that the strongest coffee contained more than 25 times as much caffeine as the weakest.

So, if you’re gong to drink coffee to ride faster for longer, don’t drink a Nescafé Latté from the Sutton Scotney service station on the A34.

Better to start your ride in Cheshire, at the Sandbach servces on the M6,with an Espresso double from Costa Coffee. Vrooooom!

This entry was posted on 06/04/2013 at 9:06 am and is filed under Performance, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.