Pro Cyclist Gains 45 Pounds, Gets Better

By Kevin Kolodziejski 

A Story to Open Your Mind and Better Battle Mental Stress

It’s hard to argue against the benefits of being open-minded. But it’s just as hard to be that way if you’re asked to reconsider something you’ve long since closed your mind to. And the difficulty of doing that probably doubles when the requested reconsideration seemingly defies logic.

Yet that’s what you’ll be asked to do today.

To consider that the best countermeasure for the mental stress you’re so often under may not be meditation, diaphragmatic breathing, or any other learned relaxation technique. That it may lie in your gut — and that it not only results from what you’ve eaten but also from the internal feast that follows in the banquet hall known as your microbiome. Hard to accept, I know, but I also know how to help you do that.  Because after all, you’re a cyclist.  A kid at heart.

So I’m about to tell an equally as hard to accept pro cycling story as if it were a children’s bedtime story. Well, at least at the start.

Born to Be a Hill Climber

Once upon a time, a young amateur cyclist is racing so well that it’s clear he’s on the road to becoming a pro. The road steeply ascends yet perfectly suits him. The kid’s lean, lanky, and seemingly defies gravity when he rides a bike. A born-to-be hill climber if there ever was one.

Who does something once he turns pro that to anyone not fanatical about racing up mountains on a bike would see as unhealthy as it is unnatural. To further improve his power-to-weight ratio, he intentionally goes from lean and lanky to skin and bones. That’s when, despite the absence of a fairy godmother (or maybe because of it), one of the many unnatural parts of this story begins.

He climbs no better than before. Worse, he has less power on flat and rolling roads, little energy when he’s off the bike, and he’s always hungry. His career stalls to the point where he fears he might not be offered a second contract.

He knows he has to do something. He also knows he feels better when his muscles are properly fueled, so that becomes his new goal. Which means he starts eating more.

Skin and Bones No More

Almost instantly he feels much better and rides better, so he increases his portions even more. Before long, he’s doing something previously unheard of in the professional road racing ranks: Gaining more than a pound or two intentionally. That doing so is what his body needs for more than just cycling soon becomes apparent.

Now in his mid-20s, the guy finally needs to shave and grows two and a half inches taller.

He keeps adding “good” weight and nearly hits 180 pounds, almost 45 pounds more than his lowest pro racing weight. He develops a pedaling power he’s never had before and becomes an absolute monster on the sorts of courses too flat for pure climbers and too hilly for pure sprinters. But any mention of a monster defeats the purpose of a bedtime story, which means it’s time to scrap that pretense and cite specifics.

The monster is Jonas Abrahamsen. He rides for Uno X Mobility, a Norwegian UCI ProTeam. On June 2, he won the Brussels Classic, his first pro win ever — and a race important enough to be considered a semi-classic.

The Race-Win Specifics Plus TdF Highlights

In that race, Abrahamsen attacks with about 10km to go and only Soudal-Quick-Step’s Martin Svrček follows. But Abrahamsen eventually drops him and somehow holds off a hard-charging group of 27 by 4 seconds. The win is both impressive and the harbinger for Abrahamsen’s mind-blowing Tour de France performance.

At about 172 pounds, Abrahamsen won the King of the Mountains competition on stage 1 and held the prized red polka-dot climber’s jersey for the first 10 stages — something only one other rider ever accomplished since KoM scoring started in 1933. He also received the equally coveted green sprinter’s jersey after stage four, as well as the Most Aggressive Rider award after stage 8 for riding in the lead and alone for nearly 87 of the stage’s 113 miles.

It’s a performance that led the Euro journos to call Abrahamsen this year’s TdF “revelation.” Something that Abrahamsen would have never become without being open-minded enough to, in a manner of speaking, follow his gut. Which brings us back to yours and how what lives inside it sends positive messages to the brain — provided you eat well, exercise enough, and get sufficient sleep.

Messages, according to a recent study from UCLA’s Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center published in the June 2024 issue of Nature Mental Health, that in times of stress allow you to be more resilient.

Resiliency Resides in Your Gut

How researchers came to this conclusion began with 116 people answering the 25 questions that comprise the complete Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. It’s designed to measure how well one is equipped to bounce back after stressful events, tragedies, or traumas. The researchers also had the subjects submit stool samples and undergo brain scans.

The big news from all this work is nicely surmised in a Medical News Today article. That the stool samples of the individuals found to be more resilient “had less inflammatory bacteria” in their microbiome — something that only occurs if you’re eating mostly healthy stuff. Moreover, these same individuals “exhibited signs of robust integrity” in a specific area of the gut microbiome known as the gut barrier.

There’s good reason why you want to have a healthy gut barrier, by the way. For if yours is not, there’s a good chance your gut will leak what it’s supposed to hold.

A Leaky Gut Is No Good

It can lead to the sort of inflammation outside the gut that causes, according to a paper published in the August 2019 issue of Gut, the following “minor problems”: cramps, bloating, fatigue, food allergies and insensitivities, gas, and headaches. As well as a few “major ones”: autoimmune conditions, depression and other mood disorders, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis.

Based on the results of the UCLA study, stress should be added to both lists. And if you’ve managed to remain open-minded through all this, it should serve as further proof that eating well, exercising enough, and getting sufficient is health and fitness’s —as well as a cyclist’s — holy trinity. And that my use of that phrase is far from hyperbole.

But you’ve read something like that from me before, so here’s something you haven’t — something that also requires an open mind to contemplate. It’s from Casey Means, MD, and found in her book, “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health” (Avery, 2024).

A Final Thought for the Open-Minded

“The microbiome is like our soul: it’s invisible, lives inside of us, and determines the quality and quantity of our life and what we think and do. . .  Mistreat or misfeed [it], and our lives will suffer in unbelievable ways. . .

Care for the microbiome, and ‘poof’: our life magically becomes easier.”

Which means we handle stress better, right?

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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.