By Kevin Kolodziejski
You’ve read, heard, or maybe even been lectured by a friend or family member not to live in the past. Regardless of the source, it’s good advice for sure.
But are you sure you know how to do so?
I thought I was. I thought wrong. Not terribly wrong, but still.
For while I was being fully aware of the present moment as often as I thought practically possible, I’ve come to realize that after rides I give too much credence to decisions and truths from the past. I now see how doing so adversely affects my mental health. And I came to see that after listening to a podcast by Andrew Huberman and hearing Ellen Langer give her definition of mindfulness.
Ellen Langer’s Definition of Mindfulness
“It’s the simple process of noticing,” the Harvard University psychology professor and author of “The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health” and a few other worthwhile reads says. She then explains what keeps us from noticing and being less than mindful is a feeling of certainty. Yet “virtually everything we’re taught is [taught] as if the world is constant and going to stay that way . . . that the answer today is going to be the same answer as tomorrow.”
All this hit me like the proverbial 2-by-4 across the forehead, but not because it was news to me. But because there’s one specific time I conveniently forget all this and drink the-world-is-constant Kool-Aid.
When I evaluate a ride as if it’s 1984.
Evaluating a Ride as if It’s 1984
While I find myself riding virtually indoors more and more and especially so in the winter and judge those rides by the now de rigueur metrics, I still ride old school when outdoors, using only a heart rate monitor chest strap and a compatible wristwatch. The info derived from it that I value the most is the amount of time spent in what I call My Work Zone. It starts at 77 percent of my max heart rate, and if I factor in the length of the ride, whether I’m alone or with a group, the intensity of yesterday’s workout, and today’s weather, it’s a reasonable way to gauge effort.
What’s unreasonable though is making that number the be all and end all, which is my tendency. Yet if I know I did a similar ride three weeks ago under similar conditions and record, let’s say, 9 fewer minutes of time in My Work Zone, I can’t help but feel I’ve failed and bummed out as a result. Which is why it’s so good to hear Langer say, “We need to let things vary [to] recognize that everything is always changing. [That] everything looks different from different perspectives.” In short, I should be able to see the reduced time in My Work Zone as something other than failure.
Just as you should be able to see that 1 plus 1 doesn’t always equal 2.
New Math Leads to Less Blindness
I’ve listened to four different podcasts where Langer is the guest, and during each she’ll ask her host what’s the answer to the aforementioned mathematical equation. When the host says, “Two,” she’ll explain that’s not always true. That if you add one piece of chewing gum to the one already in your mouth, the answer to 1 plus 1 is 1. That the same answer is correct when one cloud makes contact with another. Her point is, “When you know you don’t know, you pay attention [and then] you have choices you’re otherwise blind to.”
Those are the sorts of choices I’d like to think I present to you in RBR articles.
With that said, something now will be said about a study on flavanols and the potential harm done to your blood vessels by prolonged bouts of sitting. Which in this day and age — and even for really fit cyclists — has become common. What’s not nearly as run-of-the-mill is knowing flavanols are one of the sub-groups of flavonoids. Specifically, they’re the chemical compounds found in various fruits and vegetables, tea, and cocoa that give those foods their colors and your body what it needs to reduce inflammation, oxidation, and aging.
The Flavanols Vs. Sitting Study
Performed at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and published by The Journal of Physiology in October 2024, the study began with researchers recruiting males between the ages of 18 and 45, giving them a Max VO2 test, and then getting 20 found to be “high fit” and 20 found to be “low fit” to agree to the following. Fast for 12 hours, refrain from caffeine, alcohol, and foods that could affect the experiment, exercise no more than lightly the day before, and then return to drink a drink and sit quietly for two hours. Before the drinking and the sitting, a baseline of blood flow for each participant was determined. The drink they consumed was a cocoa concoction altered to be either high or low in flavanols.
Just before the sitting ended, the blood flow tests were given again. Those who had consumed the high-flavanol beverage were found to have maintained better blood flow — whether in good cardiovascular condition or not — when compared to those who drank the low-flavanol beverage.
Possibly even more important was the discovery that a high degree of fitness “did not protect against declines in vascular function and blood pressure during sitting.” Which means if you work out more than the average American but sit just as much as they do — about six hours a day — you still experience “declines in endothelial function, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease.”
A Suggestion for You
So besides breaking up any prolonged bouts of sitting with standing, stretching, or walking, when you sit back down, do so sometimes with cocoa, green or black tea, maybe even an apple or handful of carrot sticks. All are high in flavanols.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.