Aaron Wolfe salivates for cycling almost as much as for a big plate of homemade food. Here he’ll drool publicly and sometimes count calories with weekly recipes aimed at you finicky cyclists. Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here.

Can you trust recipes from such a skinny man?

Caramel Corn

I am loving my new cross-training sport, short track speedskating. The sport is short races (from 500 to 1500 meters, or 5000 for a relay) around the outside of a hockey-sized rink. Each lap is 111 meters. The world record is 34.3 seconds, or 32.6mph, for a 500 meter race. That’s really fast, especially considering the standing start and the two hard turns every lap. Pulling a 180 at that speed incurs a lot of extra g-force on the skater, so it’s necessary to lean in at up to 45 degrees to keep from flying into the wall at 30mph.

But short track races are not time trials. You just have to get to the line first, which makes it a lot like a very short crit. There’s drafting, attacking, sprinting and crashing. Counter-steering, line and aero position all have analogues in speedskating.

@##=#<5,L>@##=#Back to reality. In my first and only speedskating meet I fell in each of three races. I was soundly crushed by people who would be dropped from a Cat 5 field before the first time up the “hill” in Prospect Park. Speedskating is hard. Strength and fitness matter far less than form. The motion resembles ballet more than it does our simple two-dimensional pedaling. Each part of the body has a constantly changing point where it needs to be in three dimensions. Straying from correct form means loss of speed or balance. Center of gravity has to be precisely maintained at just the right point over the blades or say hello to mister wall.

To pick a random number, I’d say there are 100 points of form to learn. Maybe it’s 1,000. Some fall in place naturally. As I’ve gotten faster it’s become impossible to execute some of those points incorrectly. When I first started learning there was no problem that I couldn’t get my arms to swing in opposition to my legs, because balance doesn’t matter much at slow speeds. But now the speed or the g’s won’t let me pump my arms out of synch. Whenever I want to kick to go faster I just end up un-sticking the edge of the blade and slowing down. Strokes are relatively slow, and smooth and powerful compared to how you would exert yourself to close a small gap in a bike race. Many of these points have been explained to me by people in the Newburgh club where I skate (part of MASA): Imagine you’re carrying a pail of water. It’s just like you’ve got molten metal sloshing around inside you. Move your skate like you’re moonwalking.

@##=#<6,R>@##=#Physically speaking, it’s a muscular activity rather than aerobic, at my level anyway. I wore an HR monitor at my last workout and couldn’t get my rate above 145, yet my back and legs were definitely feeling it. All in all, as cross-training, the improvement in balance, strength and cornering confidence can only help for bike racing. But mostly it’s just damn fun and thrilling to go so fast so close to the ice while balancing on the edge of a 2mm wide blade. It’s hard to believe such a small blade can stick to the ice.

Now that speedskating has barely been linked to bike racing, let me link it tenuously to food.

As a bachelor, I feel it’s my privilege to eat popcorn for dinner once in a while. In fact, popcorn is one of my up to six daily meals almost every day. As a weight-conscious bike racer, air-popped popcorn is my favorite. But because it’s not cooked in oil, it has the problem that nothing sticks to it. So I’ll hose it down with hot sauce and/or lime juice as it flies out of the chute or sprinkle it with olive oil before dusting with spicy cheese powder, salt, nutritional yeast and any blend of finely ground dried herbs and spices. A particular problem with air popped corn and ground hot pepper is the inadvertent inhaling of cayenne pepper if you happen to breathe as a handful of corn and cayenne approaches your mouth.

Caramel corn is not the perfect solution