The Doctor

Soon! ;-)

Bad timing. Gastro the week before the race and then caught a cold on the day. I tried one lap but realised I was doing harm and called it a day.

Just in case my first post was not clear. As far as the UCI rules are concerned the CSA ruling is incorrect. The policy and appropriate sanction apply irrespective of whether the rider is found with needles in our out of competition. i.e. at any time.

Needles are prohibited at all times.

No

The rules pertaining to 13.03.052 apply to both in and out of competition periods. Rule 13.03.052 is a sub clause relating to rider or full team being withdrawn from races following a violation of the no needle policy. It refers to additional sanctions not covered in 13.03.057. Hence the words "In addition to..." This is not at all ambiguous. Full rules follow. " 13.3.052 The injection of any substance to any site of a rider’s body is prohibited unless all of the following conditions are met: 1. The injection must be medically justified based on best practice. Justification includes physical examination by a certified medical doctor and an appropriately documented diagnosis, medication and route of administration; 2. There is no alternative treatment without injection available; 3. The injection must respect the manufacturer-approved indication of the medication; 4. The injection must be administered by a certified medical professional except where normal practice is that the patient with a disease requiring injections injects him/herself (for example diabetes); 5. The injection must be reported immediately and in writing not later than 24 hours afterwards to the UCI Doctor (via email [medical@uci.ch] or fax [+41 24 468 59 48]), except for riders a. With a valid TUE; b. Vaccination c. When the injection is received during hospital treatment or clinical examination; d. When normal practice is that the patient with a disease requiring injections injects him/herself. The report must be made by the medical doctor having examined the rider and must include the confirmation that a physical examination took place, the diagnosis, medication and route of administration. Where applicable it shall also include the prescription referred to in article 13.1.065. Comment to par. 5: the report may be sent by the medical doctor or the rider. The rider is responsible for the report to be sent. The prohibition under article 13.3.052 applies to any substance that is injected, whether endogenous or exogenous, whether prohibited under the UCI Anti-Doping Rules or not. 13.3.054 The prohibition under article 13.3.052 applies to any type of injection: intravenous, intramuscular, intra-articular, peri-articular, peri-tendinous, epidural, intra-dermal, subcutaneous, etc. 13.3.055 In case of a local injection of glucocorticosteroids, which is subject also to the UCI Anti-Doping Rules and the Prohibited List, the rider must rest and is excluded from competition for 8 days. The medical doctor having prescribed the injection shall prescribe this rest in writing to the rider and add to the documentation referred to in article 13.3.052.1 a copy of such prescription signed by him/herself and the rider. 13.3.056 In case of an injection of a prohibited substance, in addition to the requirements of articles 13.3.052 and 13.3.055, a Therapeutic Use Exemption remains required and the procedure foreseen in the Chapter IV of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules has to be followed. 13.3.057 The following penalties may be imposed by the UCI Disciplinary Commission in the event of an infringement of article 13.3.052: suspension from eight days to six months and/or a fine of CHF 1,000 to CHF 100,000; in the case of a second offence within two years of the first: a suspension of at least six months or lifetime suspension and a fine of CHF 10,000 to CHF 200,000. The penalties shall apply to any licence-holder found to have committed the violation or to be an accomplice; application of article 1.1.086 is reserved; 13.3.058 In addition to the sanctions stipulated in article 13.3.057 the following shall apply: 1. In case of infringement of article 13.3.055 all results obtained by the rider in the 48 hours period shall be disqualified. 2. In case a violation of article 13.3.052 occurs at a race the licence holder(s) concerned and, where appropriate, the whole team of the licence holder(s) at fault may be excluded from the race; in this respect the possession of objects used or fit for an injection shall be presumed to constitute evidence of a violation of article 13.3.052 having been committed except if the objects are in the possession of the medical doctor who has made the report referred to in article 13.3.052.5 and are covered by such report and except for those objects that may reasonably be in a medical doctor’s possession. The exclusion may be decided by the president of the commissaires’ panel after having given the persons concerned the opportunity to be heard or by the president of the UCI Disciplinary Commission upon report by the president of the commissaires’ panel.

Or try the Red Berry Carbofuel. Some like the zing, some like it sweet. We cater to everyone.

So right you are. Maybe he got some from our athlete, Andrew Neethling. Then again...maybe he got his own. Thanks for the post.

Hi AngelourKing, Naturally we are quite shocked to see that. It is obviously difficult to say where in the chain this little Christmas beetle got under the lid of your Marathon as it may happen in store or the warehouse as well. We will take it up with our chain from manufacturing to store level to reduce the risk of a recurrence. Glad to see it's not under the safety seal though! With regards to the mixing and having some sediment. Both Marathon and CarboFuel will need to be mixed vigorously to dissolve the maltodextrin. In Marathon, the addition of the protein may make this more difficult. This is a standard situation with any maltodextrin. If you give it a few minutes and then shake the bottle it will dissolve. Regards, Jeroen

Hi Everyone and thank you for your feedback. From the comments and our own recon it is clear that the problem is primarily one in the Gauteng area and we are actively looking at solutions to overcome this. Rest assured that we will improve the situation in the coming weeks. Thanks, Jeroen

First bottle - Marathon Second bottle - CarboFuel

Hi Juddy, The new marathon is much closer in formulation to Classic Energy. The sweetness and flavour is also more than 50% lower. Try the new natural citrus and natural passion fruit So all your concerns are addressed. In addition, all of our products are now 100% natural. This is a big step and has taken a lot of work to implement in the last 6 months. Regards, Jeroen

No inside scoop. Our sponsored athletes are: Team Scott powered by LCB (Philip Buys, Matthys Beukes, Gert Heyns, Arno Du Toit) LCB development team (10 riders) Velokhaya / Rand Water team J-9 Team (Joost Van Der Westhuizen foundation) Matt Beers (SA's hottest upcoming marathon talent) Renay Groustra Clover vets team Andrew Neethling Vanessa Haywood Linus Van Onselen Natalie Bergstrom Martin Zietsman Di Carolin Alex Stieda (First American to wear the yellow jersey in the TDF) Rene Hasselbacher Mike Posthumas John Wakefield

Research about a decade ago showed that adding protein during exercise enhanced performance. Hence all our drinks contained protein. More recent research has shown that when the total caloric content is the same, a carb drink will result in the same performance as a carb / protein drink. However, protein in the drink result in a faster recovery after exercise and improved performance in any subsequent exercise bouts. It is for this reason that we invented CarboFuel - A carbohydrate and electrolyte drink. Sans protein. We have therefore also discontinued Classic Energy. The presence of three different energy products was increasingly confusing to customers. We have therefore consolidated with Marathon for endurance cycling and stage racing and CarboFuel for shorter duration training and racing. Marathon has been reduced in price to reduce the impact of this change.

Hi Mark, Apologies for the delay in replying. This thread went quiet for a while and I only saw now. I thought there would be comments about Rourke & Travis jumping ship to USN. With regards to your Thyroid: You don't need to be concerned about the effects of nutrition on your levels of T3 & T4. Those values do not fluctuate during exercise and are not influenced by exercise nor your nutritional strategy during exercise at all. Rather check to ensure that your TSH, T3 and T4 values fall within normal range every 3-6 months until they become stable. The strategy your friend is using is an optimal approach and I would recommend that you follow the same. Regards, Jeroen

Hi Jay_B We have flavour stickers for our products and otherwise use the same label across specific products like Marathon or CarboFuel. Label printing is very expensive and needs to be done in large quantities to keep costs down. If we printed a separate label for each flavour we would sit on thousands of labels for months at a time and this is really not a good way to invest your money. With regards to the citrus Marathon, it is a nature identical flavour. Regards. Jeroen

Let's give it 3 more months. If you still struggle with getting stock we will consider other avenues.

We have called each and every store in Gauteng this week to confirm stock presence. You can find stock at: Cyclelab Fourways (lots of stock) Velolife Rosebank (lots of stock) Bike Scene Hot Spot Bruce Reyneke (Lynnwood & West Rand) Cycle House Cycle Zone Design in Motion Solomon's Lynnwood Epic Sport Finish Line CycleLab Centurion Hatfield Cycles Cyclelab Little Falls Omega Cycles Kyalami Pro Linden Cycles With the above list I think you really can't say that you cannot find the product (I know it's not as easy as popping into Dischem but we made a rational decision not to sell in Dischem for valid reasons) If you happen to go to any retailer and can't find stock or a particular flavour, please let us know via the website comments section or twitter or on this thread. We will make sure it gets there. Please also ask the store why they don't have enough stock and ask them to order. The biggest problem with cycle stores is that they don't want to hold lots of stock so that they can maximise cash flow. However, then they unfortunately sell out between restocking. As the consumer we also need you as the end user to advise the store that you want the product. Telling them that from our side does not hold nearly as much credence as the customer demanding it themselves. Omnico B2B system is extremely efficient. Stores can order online in seconds and delivery is guaranteed 24-48 hours later. The stores will confirm that this system works and that they get great service from Omnico. Which is why we decided on Omnico as a distributor. You can also order our product from CWC online. We will not sell to an online store that is not a brick and mortar store as well as it undercuts the cycle retailers who we aim to support. Thank you for your ongoing support and constructive feedback. Jeroen

Thank you. We are updating it already. We should have this sorted early next week.

It would be very expensive. I don't think it would be justifiable to raise the price any further. Thanks for the input though. Jeroen

Unfortunately we don't have anything that will be able to assist you. However, I would suggest using CarboFuel and then getting your protein in another form. Regards, Jeroen

Hi Colin, We have converted most of our range to low sweetness drinks already. In addition, we are switching all of our products to 100% natural versions. This process is already 80% complete. The following drinks are already low in sweetness and taste: Marathon - Natural citrus Marathon - Passion Fruit natural (natural version can be distinguished by the green bar on the label) CarboFuel - Natural citrus CarboFuel - Red Berry (1kg tubs) We have more than doubled the number of cycle stores that stock our products in the last 4 months. However, the rate that the stock moves has caught them a little by surprise and we have had to work hard to get store owners to increase the order sizes to keep up with demand. In addition we need to work harder to get them to stock the correct flavors and products. e.g. CWC gets a new order delivered every week but we still can't keep enough Marathon on the shelves. We have now increased the order sizes further to cater for the demand. If you can't find our product at your LBS then please tell them you want it and also which flavors you want. Let us know too and we will ensure that they get stock. Thanks, Jeroen

2 x 2, that's a good question. Early research studies conducted on supplementation showed that exercise performance could be increased when protein was ingested together with carbohydrate in comparison to exercise with ingestion of carbohydrate alone. That's why when we launched our range we included protein in all of our drinks (Classic Energy & Marathon). However, these researchers failed to control the overall caloric content of the trials. When the caloric content was adjusted so that both drinks had the same calories the studies failed to show any benefit to performance from protein ingestion. For this reason we removed Classic Energy from our product line and added CarboFuel (a carbohydrate and electrolyte drink without protein). However, protein intake during exercise does result in improved performance during any subsequent exercise. In very prolonged exercise sessions you will also start to scavenge protein from working muscles. This will reverse some of the strength gains you have made in training. The take home message? When it's all about that one big day (Argus, SA champs or World Champs) you can stick to carbs alone. If you're training hard and need to recover well so that you can train hard again in the next session or when you are racing a stage race, then the addition of 10-15% protein will accelerate your recovery and training adaptation as well as your performance in later stages. In addition, in the first 2 hours of a very long ride, drink a protein containing drink. Then switch to a protein free solution later on (when the high levels of physiological and GIT stress mean that your gut will cope better without protein).

We are looking at this. However, we will only ever provide a product with any ingredient based on sound scientific principles. The rationale for an electrolyte only solution is very limited. The only scenarios that could make this product effective are: 1) Drinking the electrolyte solution while consuming carbs in another form (e.g our soon to be launched bars). 2) Using an electrolyte solution to replace fluid losses during the time between stages in a stage race. Those scenarios are quite limited. We will never consider selling anything because it is a fad or purely based on market demand. I think that would be disingenuous to our ethos. So justifying bringing such a product to market is difficult (even though making electrolyte tabs is very easy and cheap and the margin on the product would be massive). Regards, Jeroen

Hi 2 x 2 Our CarboFuel is gluten and dairy free. Try that. Regards, Jeroen