My favorite sports doctor has two sections in his weekly newsletter that have a bearing on bicyclists. As you will read it is almost impossible to eat 18,000 calories a day. For the RAAM riders this can be an issue.

Dr. Gabe Mirkin’s Fitness and Health E-Zine
July 3, 2010
18,000 Calories per Day in Race Across America
You need to take in large amounts of food when you exercise for more than a few hours, otherwise you will slow down and eventually have to stop.   In the Race Across America, four cyclists alternated shifts as a relay team and completed the race distance of 2800 miles in 6 days, 10 hours and 51 minutes.  Each rode about 10 hours per day in one hour shifts.  Even though they cycled only a quarter of the time and distance, they each burned an average 6,420 calories per day, compared to the average for North American men of a little over 2000 calories per day. …

Dear Dr. Mirkin: Will running or cycling long distances daily, year after year, damage your heart?

No!  A study of athletes who participated in extreme and uninterrupted endurance training for up to 17 years, in two to five Olympics, showed no evidence of heart damage (left ventricular weakening, cardiomyopathies)…

Cycling Notebook: Craddock’s performance one for ages
By DALE ROBERTSON
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
June 30, 2010, 11:49PM
Houston’s Lawson Craddock went to the 2010 USA Cycling Junior Nationals this past weekend as the presumed best young cyclist in the country, then proceeded to prove he’s absolutely in a class by himself among the 18-and-under crowd.

The recent Cypress Springs High School graduate scored a hat trick in Bend, Ore., by thoroughly dominating the criterium, the time trial — his specialty, which he won by a remarkable 2-minute…

Great Bike People We’ve Met | The Path Less Pedaled
by Russ
It was wonderful to watch him ride a bike because you could see him instantly transformed into someone with effortless grace on two wheels. We also spoke a lot to Martina, who was determined to expand cycling to families. …. Bernie and Bryan, the owners of Trinity Bicycles, hosted our most amazing presentation to date in Fort Worth. We got a crowd of over 100 people and it was evidence that Fort Worth and North Texas had a large latent bike culture. …

Tour de Soft Serve
By Claudia C. Gibson and Paula Gray
June 28: Little Texas to Sterling
Monday June 28, 2010, 35 miles (56 km) – Total so far: 335 miles (539 km)
We had the predicted buckets o’ rain in the night and early morning and packed up wet flies; I was wearing the laundry I didn’t get a chance to do but that didn’t hurt as much as I’d expected. We thought that, rain or no, we could at least move to Fulton and find a place to stay indoors. As the sun came out on this steamy day, the occasional shower was a relief. I did need a bike shop — again. This time it wasn’t my fault (I hadn’t jammed the chain between gears). The sound of a…