View from my Bicycle [COLUMN + VIDEO]

Once again in this instalment I've combined a video supplement. What I wll be doing over the next few weeks is discussing some optimum training and nutrition tips. These aren't hypothetical, but are in fact the results I've experienced on my road to the Ironman, via the Half Ironman (and not the first time I've taken this road).

In the same way love changes, so does our awareness of what we need to do, what is required, how to motivate ourselves, and in the simplest sense, what we want. Sometimes what we want is not realistic. Sometimes we need to frind different levels of success, different standards, in order to accept ourselves and our lives in ever changing circumstances.

The question I pose in the video is an interesting one. Do multivitamins work. This is a matter of opinion. Some doctors, highly educated people, believe multivitamins do work. Others, equally well educated, do not. Fact is, there is little evidence from clinical trials proving any health enhancing benefit from multivitamins.

In my own opinion, there is a benefit from mineral supplements. I find it hard to believe that vitamins can be stored. In my imagination I see vitamins as a magic mist that exists in living tissues. This mist has the vitality of life. As soon as a fruit is plucked, refrigerated or cooked, as soon as flesh is killed, wrapped or processed, the nutritive value declines quickly. Yes, there may be an energy value in foods we eat, but nourishment is something else.

The present cancer rates in the world are unprecedented. You have a 1 in 2 chance of dying of heart disease during the course of your life. This proves to me that:

1) our diets are severely defective
2) our attitude to health (which is really disease care) is dysfunctional

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the multivitamin industry is little different from the tobacco industry, or the fast food industry, or the meat industry. They will do and say anything to convince people that they're free to consume unhealthy food/products at liberty. We also like to believe we can because it suits us. I have heard athletes say, well, they are not sure whether vitamins work, but they take them anyway as a form of insurance. I prefer to be better informed. I prefer not to reward con artists, or to pour garbage down my throat.

I believe it is important to have an opinion on things that are not clear to all - things like love, happiness, our beliefs. These shape the quality of our lives, and give our lives shape and direction. It is better to have formed our ideas on these questions than to leave them...but we need to be open to a change of heart on those things we're not sure of too.