Today a few hundred students invaded the Substage area of the Students Union Building on campus. It wasn’t to study for the exams that are coming up in a couple weeks, it was because today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. The University of Alberta Dignitas Youth Chapter joined several other chapters throughout the country in hosting the “Race for Dignity” – a 12-hour stationary bike-a-thon fundraiser in support of community-based HIV care in Africa. Teams of participants pedaled stationary bikes for 12 hours in the University of Alberta’s Students Union Building (SUB) to support Dignitas International’s innovative community-based care model. For more information about that check out www.ualberta.ca/~dignitas

I scraped together a team of friends through my small group with IVCF and we covered the 12 hours of riding in style. Our team totaled over $300 in donations and contributed to the more than $11 000 raised today.

I rode the home stretch from 6pm through till the finish at 9pm. I threw a summer tyre back on my fixie and put it on a trainer. It turned out to be a bit of a higher gear than most team members of mine appreciated, oops, but that’s just how things turn out sometimes. I realized that even though I’m commuting back and forth to school that the whole end of my body involved with sitting on a bike seat is a bit out of practice for long stretches. I’ve got re-acquainting to do before I start packing on really long miles for the ride next summer. The legs felt OK though and I have no intention of letting them go jelly-like between now and the time the snow finally melts. I was satisfied that I’m still in alright shape and maintained an average heartrate of 148 for the post-warmup 2.5 hours of the ride.

I did a bit of an experiment with eating, mostly because I’m a sucker for gastrointestinal punishment and like to see how much I can process while still putting out decent power. There was way more food left at the end of the day than we were ever going to eat, and that gave me an idea. I decided to keep my heart-rate above 150 bpm and chow through food to see how many calories I could get in before I could tell it was going to be a good idea to stop. I cruised in full throttle:

• 2.5 bananas, 300 cal
• 1/4 chocolate muffin ~100 cals
• 6 cookies, ~150 cals
• 2 bottles gatorade 360 cals
• 3 oranges ~150 cals

All that (excess of a thousand) in about 40 minutes, then I could tell! I would have guessed I could have done around 1200 because my stomach was pretty empty, not quite I guess. I didn’t push it to the point of nausea, there has to be another experiment left for another day. It was an entertaining experiment and I managed to still ride well when feeling full, effort steady-plus or plus-plus and heart rate was above 165 for a sizeable chunk in there when I was at my fullest and there was some loud drumming going on to help push the pace.