What ammonia has to do with bicycling

Heavy Exercise = Ammonia

Yesterday we took to the Chehalis-Western Trail with out bikes in the hopes we could do some serious miles in our sporting efforts for exercise. We managed to make a 13.4 mile round-trip before my body went into shut-down mode.

When we returned to the car I was breathing deeply to wind down from the exertion, and I started smelling ammonia! It was pungent enough to make me pass out--and I thought perhaps if I just stopped breathing it would go away, but then I realized that some kind of funky biochemical process was at work, because after all I did spend 5 years of my life studying molecular biology and could tell you all about the phosphorylation of amino acids and recite in detail the biochemical pathways of ATP, and so on. Somehow I had lost through the mists of time why I'd be giving off NH₃.

For those nerds who are curious why I was producing ammonia, you can read all about it on this forum that explains my body was doing what it should be doing. If you are extremely curious about phosphorylation, Wikipedia.org offers plenty of information to numb your mind.

Total Miles This Week

I've had the bike one week and the total miles I've put on it is about 25 or so. Not bad considering that the bulk of that mileage occurred yesterday. I calculate that I burned about 500 calories yesterday, which means that I successfully burned off one small cheeseburger and almost a small French fry.

The Goal

Where we pick up the trail in Lacey, I believe it is 14 miles to the town of Rainier. My goal by the end of the season is to make it there and back and live to tell of this great adventure. Hopefully, I won't produce so much ammonia while doing so that I "gas" myself into a stupor. Apparently, I wasn't drinking as much water as I should have been, and I thought I was stopping enough to replenish my water. Apparently I need to hook myself up with a very long straw attached to my water and continuously sip away as I pedal.

Meanwhile, to "train" for the 28 mile round-trip, going out in the evenings for our daily 5 mile round trip will suffice to get my body used to creating ammonia.