Which Haribo gummie is best for climbing?
Is this not the question all cyclists, whether hardcore peloton based professional or lowly weekend warrior, are desperate to answer?
Of course it is.
In the name of science I decided to take a pocket full of Haribos and go up some climbs. I could then definitively say which gummie had produced the most impressive climb.
In the pocket today were the trust cola bottle, the kids favourite “ring” gummie, and where would we be without the original bear based gummie? Nowhere. That’s where.
Now, I must stress that the above gummies are not the ones I took. These are post ride gummies. The ones I took were all consumed.
Depicted at the top there are two non competitive gummies. I have previously determined that the white ‘fluffy’ material is terrible for sports. It clags up, forming a kind of foamy that hinders breathing. These two edibles were left in the bag.
I took two cola bottles, two bears, and a single ring.
You may be wondering: Chris, which gummie did you eat first?
A valid and sensible question. However, I must confess to blowing my science experiment early doors. You see I only decided to market the gummie challenge when formulating this post, and not, as I might have lied about, prior to my actual ride. Oh Chris, you fiend. How could you?
Well. I did have in mind that I was going to do Jeffrey Hill twice today. Once up the longest, most gradual route – from Longridge to the top of Forty Acre Lane. I appreciate, that’s actually a bit more than Jeffrey, but whatever. I would then descend into Ribchester, about turn, and repeat the climb back up Stoneygate Lane.
The plan was to eat a gummie every 15 minutes, starting 15 minutes into the ride. I did eat my the ring chewable around 15 mins in, but rather than just nosh it down, I let it sit under my tongue and slowly dissolve. So by the time 30 minutes rolled around, I hadn’t actually finished it.
Eating the first one before I’d even hit a climb, and with my lunch still fairly fresh in my stomach, I can’t say I noticed much from this one. What I can say is I find the shape, the ring with its hole in the middle, to be uncomfortable. However it lasted ages and even with several swigs of water it didn’t just disappear.
I went hard on myself on the ride from Preston to Longridge, coming in around 25 seconds behind my PB. With the headwind at times, I was definitely pushing harder than I have on previous occassions. Mentally I had resolved to keep up a similar pace to the top of that first climb.
There was some respite as I came to Longridge and began the climb to the start of Jeffrey Hill ascent, as road works mid way up Kestor Lane saw me crawling just to stop myself from having to unclip and go with a hill start.
Then it was on to the first climb of Jeffrey Hill.
Due to some washing machine mishaps today, I’d gone out in a bit of a mishmash of kit. Considering it’s still February I wasn’t sure about riding in bib shorts. But I had no choice. Equally I had on a short sleeve base layer, short sleeve jersey (first ride out in my holy Assos jersey), and arm warmers. Over that I had my gilet and trusty Rapha commuter jacket. I’d even gone with my fingerless gloves rather than my rubber mitts. Also I was back to my old shoes, not wanting to risk mucking up my new and clean ones. Prima Donna?
With the wind smacking me at times I wasn’t particularly warm. More on that in a moment.
But on the climb?
Yeah, it’s definitely easier to climb in shorts. Less sweaty. Easier to cool down. Definitely prefer that. Maybe it went some way to smashing my previous PB on this one. The annoying thing was I couldn’t work out on my Garmin if I was ahead of behind my PB. No matter how much I pressed, it seemed to keep going up. I was wondering what kind of performance enhancing supplements I must have been on that day to still be pulling away…
During the early stages of this one I’d popped in a cola bottle gummie.
Yes, I have to say that held up well. Strong and chunky, though lacking in flavour, it remained solid as much as I resisted the chew.
That one took me all the way to the top. And I carried on, up on to the very summit of Forty Acre Lane climb, before pausing briefly, and then beginning the fast descent down of Stoneygate Lane to Ribchester.
What I should have done, for sure, was to put my hood up. As it was, I was freezing coming down that descent. Hitting 54kph with wind chill of God alone knows what, my forehead, cheeks, and ears were hurting. At that point, lacking bib tights was suddenly a thing.
By the time I made it to the bottom of this one I was really pretty uncomfortable.
Along the way down I passed maybe 8 cyclists on their way up. Several were on mountain bikes, two on regular bikes, and two fellow roadies. I wondered if I’d be able to catch them back up on my turn around.
Not really wasting any time – did I mentioned I was cold? I chewed on the last of my cola bottle gummie, popped another one straight in, and started back up the hill.
Going back up was thankfully nowhere near as windy. Obviously that’s because I was doing about 1/5th of the speed.
Even so, I PB’d Jeffrey Hill via Stoneygate Lane today, much to my amazement.
I didn’t catch any other cyclist though – boo. Though if you look hard enough in the screenshot above (and I do mean magnify ala CSI), you can see one of the roadies on his final turn.
Amazingly I felt decent as I summited Forty Acre Lane for the second time. I’ve been up that way before feeling awful, like I was crawling and unsure if I could make it. Not so today.
I think it’s to do with the gummies.
Must say though, after the second descent I’d lost all the heat I’d accumulated during the climb and got back into Longridge utterly freezing and really quite miserable. I decided to head home and along the way checked the stats. Over 1000 calories by that point, and truthfully 5 gummies and a bit of water was terrible preparation for an effort like this.
All I could think about was food. And beer. And a nice cup of coffee. Well, I stayed away from the beer when I got home, but regretted not having any of that whey powder stuff for recovery. Need to order up a fresh batch of that. Thinking of getting the peanut flavour one… though if I buy 2kg of something that tastes bad at £55, I may want to kill myself.
On the way back I ate the remaining two gummie bears. I think the downside was that I also have used that pocket for other stuff… so they had bits of who knows what on them. That killed it for me.
Anyway, the winner to me was clear: the king of gummies is the cola bottle.
I’ll do some tests now of gummie vs other sweets, sports mix and so on. It’s all science, I assure you.
With that effort in me, I felt really lightheaded for the rest of the day. It’s taken me till 21:30 to finish this post. Whoops. Anyway, I’ve earned myself a nice and gentle recovery ride tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed it stays dry.
