"Spilling the Beans"

Thought this article was interesting on the MSN page today.

We had a discussion over the weekend on caffeine and it's effects on working out. So it was interesting to read the following excerpt from that article:

"Caffeine benefits the endurance athlete," Lawrence Armstrong (a professor of exercise and environmental physiology at the University of Connecticut) says. "It's for the weekend warriors, the rowers, cyclists, swimmers and runners who cover long distances. It is not for sprinters," he says. :It seems to have no effect on events that are less than 90 seconds long."

In fact, coffee gives exercisers its biggest boost when the workouts are four to 20 minutes long and the intensity is high (a 7 or above on an intensity scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being sitting on the sofa), says Armstrong. But what about the world's mellower athletes, is there nothing in a cup of coffee for them?

Don't sweat it, Armstrong says: "If someone works out at 40 to 50 percent of their maximum [intensity], drinking caffeine is probably not going to help them physically, but it will affect their alertness and their mood, and this will translate to a better workout."

"If you are going to use coffee to help you with exercise, drink it one hour before your workout," says Armstrong, because caffeine needs about 60 to 90 minutes to work its way into your bloodstream.

So there you go. Drink up fellow cyclists.