Surviving Le Tour

Just remember kids, blogging is for fun and not in this case, not for serious advice. The following post is light-hearted and a personal dietary prescription from a practitioner is always more appropriate than advice you've read on the net.

BIG DISCLAIMER: If you are on meds, you really shouldn't take any of this as advice.

I was recently at a dinner party, and amongst the guests were some people who were known to me as cycling enthusiasts. I whispered "July 2" across the table. My friend winked and said "Better start sleep loading!"

A preposterous idea, of course. But it got me thinking - what can you do to survive Le Tour?

What are the issues here? Obviously number 1, you don't get enough sleep. But what are the flow-on effects of this?

1. At this time of year, you are likely to be run down as it is, and a lack of sleep may just tip you over the edge and bring on a flu. This may be a good excuse to sleep all day and stay up all night. You may also lose your job.

2. You are unproductive and lack mental alertness during the day.

1. Well known nutrients for the immune system include: Vitamin A, C, and Zinc. Supplementation is great, but in the diet, foods containing these vitamins include: Carrots - juice two of these with 2.5cm of ginger and maybe some orange/lemon. Delicious! In fact, make sure you use at least 2.5cm of ginger per day - you can juice it you can make a herbal tea with it (don't add it to tea though) you can cook with it - likewise, use shitloads of garlic wherever possible - in your cooking, but you may also just cut up a clove and suck it back with some honey to prevent burning your esophagus on the way down. This is extremely stimulating to the immune system for a variety of reasons to boring to mention here. Use 1 Orange, 1 Lemon, 1 Lime per day. You can eat it, you can drink it, you can make a dressing. Don't apply heat though, as this rapidly reduces Vitamin C levels available. Just eat Oysters all the time, hey. You can deal with the mercury poisoning later. August is for detoxing! Pepitas are little green seeds and they are pretty fuckin' boring if you ask me, but just grind it up, perhaps in your magnificent chicken soup with all that onion, celery, and the veges I've already mentioned.

If you want to win friends, you'll have been avoiding salad for some time now. It might be good just to blend the shit up, perhaps with a banana, if you're made of money. It tastes better than it sounds, believe me. Add some honey, but make it bush honey because that's more than just sugar, if you know what I mean. You probably don't - look up Manuka Factor and read something aside from marketing. Do you know how to use google scholar? You're right. Research is bullshit anyway.

Back to chicken and oysters - protein, my friend. It's your friend. You know you need it when you're on your bike, but you're going to want it to fight off the plague. It's also going to help you sleep at night, when you've been abusing your body and mind but not your soul, because you stayed up watching that beautiful Mediterranean or Swiss Alp scenery, only to fall asleep and find out at work the next day after your 6th coffee that Mark Cavendish won the sprint. Again. So you can eat raw eggs like those body builders you've always despised, combine legumes with grains like a hippy, or eat a goddamn steak and be done with it.

By now your body is probably quite tired, even though you haven't been exercising. Smash some nuts to get your magnesium fix (not peanuts, idiot) - you'll need some B-Vitamins too - hell, just start taking that multi again that you bought last year - it's still in the cupboard, i saw it last time I was over.

Whatever you do, don't order a Pizza at 11:55pm. They will spit in it.

Remember to drink water - you probably forgot because it's been cold lately.

OK

For mental alertness you can drink green tea, peppermint tea, take korean ginseng, withania is another good herb for endurance, try rubbing essential oils into your temples - alternatively you can quit wanking and have another coffee. Eventually it's effects will be dimmed, so you'll need to take more. Addiction is fun like that.

There it is, my tips to surviving the tour. I'd like to hear your ideas.

PS. Shiitake Mushrooms.