Thursday, November 30, 2006

Red Wine - RoadBikeRider

Scott's Spin: Red, Red Wine o^o o^o o^o o^o o^o o^o

The phone rings.
It's my training partner, Anna Robic.

"So, chump, you ready to ride?" she says. "We're gonna do four 10-minute intervals at 295 watts with four minutes rest, never letting our heart rates go . . . "

"Sorry," I say, "but I can't make it today."

"What's going on?" demands suddenly suspicious Anna, who thinks maybe I'm sneaking off to do a stealth workout that will be harder than hers and thus enable me to finally crush her. Not that we're competitive.

"I'm spending the day lying on the couch drinking cabernet sauvignon," I reply.

"Suit yourself," she says. "Next spring I'm going to crush you like a grape, wine-boy." Click.

I hang up and take another gulp of vino. Sorry, girlfriend, but it is I who will be the crushor and you the crushee. Bwah-hah-hah.

What she doesn't know is that I am training. My secret: resveratrol, a component of red wine and some other foods. I read in this newsletter last week that when scientists fed resveratrol to mice, the rodents turned into mini bewhiskered Lance Armstrongs.

The drug doubled the mice's endurance, built more energy capacity and athletic muscle, burned more fat, and lowered their weight and heart rates. Best of all, the researchers believe "the same mechanism seemed likely to operate in humans," according to the New York Times.

"Resveratrol makes you look like a trained athlete without the training," one researcher said. I'll drink to that.

Did I mention that resveratrol has previously been shown to reverse the effects of obesity in mice and make them live longer? Bring on the cheese.

There's one teensy hitch, however. Experts say no human can possibly drink enough red wine to obtain the doses used in the experiment.

To which I say: experts, schmexperts. Cheers!


RoadBikeRider.com

8 comments:

Adrian Olivera said...

7 Deadly Zins-my fav.

gravy said...

That training reg a ha ha!

KimC said...

Maybe they'll try in on The Tour!

nicol said...

Cleverly written article! Too bad we can't be "mini bewhiskered Lance Armstrongs!"

K Olivera said...

Are they sure about that last claim? :-D

Adrian Olivera said...

That's it..I'm replacing my water bottles with WINE bottles.

How do i get to my old stuff said...

yep, me too. To heck with accelerade and bring on the merlot.

Adrian Olivera said...

Merlot??? Who drinks Merlot? I said I'm replacing my WATER bottle with REAL WINE.