Vegan Crepes

I've recently been posting pictures of these to my Instagram account, and some people have expressed interest in wanting to make them. They are delicious and nutritious, so I thought I would share the recipe on my blog. This also ties into my Road Titans posts because Anthony and I ate these on the final morning of Road Titans when we had some extra time on our hands with the 10 am start vs. the 8 am start. This recipe yields about 4 crepes, and one serving for me before my training rides.

Ingredients

For the crepe:

3/4 cup rolled oats
1 banana
a little more than 3/4 cup of coconut almond milk
cinnamon (optional)

For the filling:

1 apple chopped into small pieces
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Put a pan or a cast-iron skillet on the stove over medium to medium high heat. First put the oats in a blender like a Vitamix. Blend the oats until they turn into a flour. Then add the banana and the milk. Blend until everything is smooth. Once the skillet is hot melt some coconut oil in the pan, and then pour about 1/4 of your batter into the pan. Spread the batter out using a rubber spatula. Once the crepe is cooked about all the way through flip it to let it finish cooking. Repeat this process until all your crepes are cooked. You could also make pancakes using this recipe if you use less milk, don't spread out the batter, and if you finish the pancakes in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10-15 minutes. With the thicker pancakes I feel that the insides are a little uncooked if you do not finish them in the oven.

For the filling heat a pan over medium to medium high heat. Melt some coconut oil. Then add your apples, your cinnamon, and your vanilla. Stir occasionally, and let this cook for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes the apples will be nice and soft.

When everything is cooked spread some almond butter on a crepe, add some apple filling, and roll up your crepe. Do this will all your crepes. Add some almond butter to the top of the crepes, and sprinkle the remaining apples over the top too. If you are going for a really long ride, and want some extra juice or if you just love the flavor drizzle some maple syrup over the top. I hope you enjoy this recipe because I know I do.

The Finished Product!

From Couch to Competitor: Post-Ride Fueling

In previous posts I addressed pre-ride fueling and how to fuel on the bike. This article will discuss how to fuel after an event where you burn 3000-4000 calories in a day like the Road Titans 300 challenge. When you burn so many calories your day needs to revolve around stuffing your face. You need to eat like a ravenous wolf immediately after you hop off the bike. I have seen many people thwart their recovery by becoming distracted by other activities such as standing around, talking, and uploading to Strava right after big rides. The ride you just did is super cool and epic, but you can do other activities and fill your belly at the same time. You may want to take a shower first, so you don't scare off your friends, but refueling needs to take precedence if you want to feel good the next day. Another reason it is necessary to start eating ASAP is because right after long and hard rides is when you body best processes simple sugars. You speed up the recovery process when you get fuel in immediately following a big ride. I prefer to eat muesli soaked in almond milk with a banana and blueberries with cinnamon and almond butter on bread because these things are easy to make and are made quickly. Pasta salad or last night's dinner leftovers are a couple other good suggestions for quick and easy post ride meals.

Me tuning and cleaning a bike after the ride

After we fueled up we drove back to my house. As soon as we got home Anthony made a salad while I washed and tuned our bikes. It is necessary to be sure your bike is clean and functioning well throughout an event like Road Titans. A tuned bike ensures you will not have any mechanical issues throughout the ride. Even though I keep my bike tuned it still doesn't prevent all chaos that can happen in the circus called bike racing and the occasional mechanical does occur. A clean and tuned bike makes the unexpected happen a lot less frequently though. The salad contained spinach, avocado, walnuts, blueberries, strawberries, balsamic, and olive oil. Even though this salad does not have many calories it is packed with vitamins. Those vitamins aid in recovery and help to prevent illness too. I eat a similar salad like this between my post ride meal and dinner on all my training days, and I only get sick once or twice a year. Eat your vegetables!

Anthony's "Epic Salad"

After I finished tuning the bikes we would start preparing dinner. We would cook up some pasta with sauce and beans or we would have sweet potatoes and beans. The pasta or sweet potatoes would help replenish our glycogen stores for the next day, and beans are packed with protein that would help us recover. Rice would work as another good carb to top off glycogen stores before your next workout. I prefer to eat brown rice and brown pasta as the brown varieties contain more fiber and vitamins than white pasta or white rice. The brown rice and brown pasta are also lower glycemic than white rice or white pasta. This means they process slowly and help you feel full for longer than white pasta or white rice. I prefer wheat bread over white bread for the same reasons. You could sub about half a pound of meat for the beans, which is roughly how much I ate back when I ate meat. However, I am doing that vegan thing, so no meat for me anymore. I have been eating vegan for the past two and a half months and was eating vegan at Titans, so I want to point out that it is possible to eat vegan and perform well at long and hard events. However, Anthony was having about half a pound of meat with his dinner because he did not want to try something new at a big event. I agree with not trying something new or different with diet at or around your biggest events.

The bike clean and ready to go for the next day 

As you can see Anthony and I worked well as a team to take care of our fueling and bike maintenance needs throughout Titans. Things always work smoothly when multiple people work together towards a common goal. You can see from my other posts that we ate the equivalent of 5 or 6 meals each day. As my friend Oliver says "You need to feed the speed." So fuel up! 

After dinner we would head straight to bed, so we could do it all again the next day. Rest is just as important as fueling well. If you do not rest your body does not recover, and you will not function very well the next day. You need to get a ton of rest if you want to complete 300 miles in 3 days on a bicycle. Be sure to stay tuned and check out my next post about how the final stage of Titans went. There will also be a surprise post. 

From Couch to Competitor: Titans Stage 2

View from the top of Sassafras

Stage two was the toughest stage of Titans. This was another 95 mile jaunt where we tackled Sassafras, rode along some rollers on the plateau, descended, rode along the shore of Lake Jocassee, and hit some rollers heading back to Lake Keowee. We set off in overcast skies but relatively warm conditions. It seemed there were some tired legs from the previous day because the pace was a little more leisurely at the start. Just like on day one I told Anthony to sit in, eat, hydrate, and conserve because this adventure was a new thing for him. It isn't a good idea to push hard from the start on the hardest event you have ever done. Pushing your hardest early only will ensure you suffer the entire time and that you may not even make it through the event. That doesn't seem like a fun experience to me. Anthony heeded my advice and sat in for an easy ride all the way to the base of Sassafras. 

                 
                   Sassafras Descent. I hit 60 mph!

Well...well...well... Now we had arrived to the biggest challenge of all at Road Titans. Simply put, Sassafras is the toughest climb I have ever done. There is no strolling up Sassafras. With an average grade of 8% (with some reprieves) and some pitches approaching 20% for 4.5 miles it is a near max effort at times just to make it to the top. Anthony chugged up it and did 6 more watts up Sassafras than his "stroll" up Caesar's Head on Stage 1, but his normalized power was 20 watts more than the previous day! His effort really impressed me. On the steepest pitches he grinded out a cadence of around 50 rpm. To make the situation tougher, Sassafras was still wet from the day before. The wet road made it impossible to get out of the saddle on the steepest grades because your rear tire would slip. When Anthony arrived at the top of the mountain I told him congratulations on finishing Titans. Did I mention Sassafras is a tough climb? The rest of the ride is tame compared to that beast. Since the descent was wet I really didn't want to take any risks riding with anyone. I wanted to take it easy, so I took off from the top of Sassafras with Anthony in tow. I helped show him some good lines on the 178 descent. After the 178 descent the group caught us, and we rolled along the flatter roads back to the start and took in the scenic views of Lake Jocassee. 

Lake Jocassee

With stage 2 of Titans done and dusted, we fueled up with some muesli and bananas and drove back to my house. Anthony was now thoroughly tired with sore legs but 2/3 of a Titan nonetheless. Be sure to check out my next post on how we fueled for optimal recovery after the ride and how the final stage went.