V to the Vth Degree
La Vie Velominatus isn’t a part-time gig. La Vie means the life, and The V is my life. Otherwise, I’d be Some V Velominatus, some of the time.
Even when I’m not riding my bike, like the last two weeks (for reasons which don’t really matter, and offering them only renders them excuses), I live La Vie through other avenues. Every day, no matter what I’m putting out, the only thing I’m putting in is V. I’m a Vegan. And like everything else that La Vie encompasses, it takes commitment.
Choosing to not eat meat, dairy or animal products usually elicits reactions ranging from surprise to condemnation. When it comes to riding a bike, being a V-tarian has benefitted me no end. Animal protein and fat doesn’t help one to spin pedals for hours on end. The proof is in the (dairy-free) pudding. This summer just past and the build-up to Keepers Tour was my best patch of form for a long time. Granted, it may not be entirely due to my diet, but it certainly didn’t hurt me. My endurance was excellent, I laid down plenty of V, felt light and strong on the climbs and recovery wasn’t a problem (malted, hopped beverages always work). And the riders on KT will attest to that fact. Never have I thought “if only I ate meat I’d be a better rider.” It works for me.
We all make choices in our life, and how to live it. I’ve made mine, and am sticking to them. And if for some unfathomable reason that offends you, then that’s for you to deal with, not me. I’m living La Vie for me (and the animals).
VLVV
What is really important is to know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and to do it responsibly!
Everything in la vie velominatus has to have a reason. Even if you found it in “The Rules” and don’t really get it.
Well said, that man. Exactly.
Nice one, Brett! I saw that piece on Mr. T. I was impressed, as I always am, at how thoughtful non-English speakers can be when interviewed in English. Maybe I’d be the same way if I could slow down and think before I answer?
I eat very little meat, cook most of my own food, and never eat fast food. I actually stopped patronizing fast food chains when I visited the south island of New Zealand and realized that if we have a McDonald’s in every goddamn town on the planet everything is going to look and feel the same. That was in 2001.
I actually started hunting a few years ago because I like venison and if I’m going to eat meat I might as well be the one taking it.
What really confuses me is that people who eat in the most uncleanly “restaurants” are usually the most sensitive about food, germs, etc. Ha, if they only knew where the kids hands were before he microwaved their burger. Industrial meat is fucking horrible for the environment and horrible for the animals. That being said, rich folks who only eat organic food because they care about themselves, but don’t compost, recycle, give a fuck about the environment piss me off.
And eating is a very complex thing. Vegetarian or vegan eating just isn’t an option for a lot of people. Soda and chips are the closest foods they have around them.
@czmiel
Well said! We can probably leave it at that and close the discussion. But that is definitely the key – self-awareness about what and why you’re doing something.
Nice one Brett. I hear ya. What I thought was a very positive thing at the KT this year was the reaction from the Velominati to not only your diet choice but also my own alcohol free choice, no negativity or incredulity, just acceptance and understanding. If only the rest of the fecking planet could get along like that !
@strathlubnaig
Live and let live….nuff said.
@strathlubnaig
Really? I’m sure I called you a freak for not drinking beer! And I copped a lot of inane animal killing ‘jokes’ from some quarters, but ignorance is bliss, so I ignored them.
But you’re right, on the whole the acceptance was fantastic, and some even went to the trouble of finding out more about my choices. And having Genevieve catering for me was awesome!
@Deakus
Except when it comes to animals, obviously…
@brett
Well perhaps my recollection was clouded by the sheer excitement of actually being in France and riding the pavé &etc. But I guess a bit of friendly ribbing is not unexpected, but defo no real negativity or venom or shitey peer pressure. If they had I would just have dropped the gloves anyways. The main point is commitment to your choices. Good man.
@brett
I cannot fathom how or why people, once they know you. would criticise you for not eating meat. There are far more compelling reasons to think you are a cunt. Not eating meat is the least of your bad choices. What about moving to New Zealand?
Great lead photo – i would have mentioned this before, I am sure. In about 1998 or so, a few people were around at my house where my bike was occupying a fairly prominent position. A young lady asked me whether i was into cycling – my response, a sniffy yes followed by some bullshit from me trying to discuss cycling, but really just somewhat immodestly deliver an underlying message that I was pretty darn good, “I do a bit of racing, I do the Hell Ride, etc etc. She responded amiably, said her family was into cycling and she thought her dad had a bit to do with the Hell Ride back in the day. I didnt think too much more of it other than i was pretty confident i had impressed her with my self-described cycling prowess. Pretty sure I was cycling C or B grade at the time. Two years later the above photo was taken of her brother.
@Marcus
There ya go… people think I moved to NZ for the sheep, but it wasn’t to eat them!
That was an amazing ride from Macca… when I first moved here, @minion and I worked with Matt Illingworth, who was also on the Linda McCartney team, as was Wiggins and Yates. He was a Commonwealth Games medallist, UK TT champ and such. Said the vege lifestyle wasn’t a problem for the team, but there were other issues. Now he lives in Perth and does Ironman tris, so he’s got real issues to deal with.
Dont eat Buffalo, ride Buffalo.
@RedRanger That video is the fuckingly funniest thing I have seen in ages! Foock me. I am still dying over it. Too funny.
Brett: You do not eat meat for the nutritional reasons or for the animal killing reasons?
I have no problems with someone being a vegetarian. I actually wonder if it might not be more healthy. I try to eat as little red meat and pork as possible but love chicken and fish.
But I always love it when someone gives me shit for eating meat and the animal cruelty of it all while they are standing there in their leather Burkenstocks. Talk about the fuckin hypocrisy!
Brett, mate, you’re not a vegetarian you’re vegan. Use the right V word you mixed up antipodean.
I know this this is a loaded topic much like politics and hopefully this forum doesn’t go down the dark path into arguments that can never be resolved online, but I have a lot of respect for anyone who commits to that lifestyle and makes it work for them. I have a lot of friends who follow it and it seems to work well for them.
@mcsqueak Oh come on, now, this is just heating up! Got to cook me a big bloody steak, hell, might as well eat it raw, and chase some leather wearing hypocrites across the yard!
@Buck Rogers
Both health and ethical reasons, but I started (and stopped, and started again) for the latter. The health reasons kicked in the more I learned about eating well. Like everyone, it’s hard to eat well when life gets in the way, but being veg usually means I still get better choices when I have to look a bit harder for them.
@mcsqueak
No, not Vegan… I own leather shoes, and totally avoiding products that haven’t affected an animal in some way is pretty difficult. And that’s the point, it’s not about eating meat or not, but being aware of how it got there and hopefully changing the way it gets there. Unfortunately, the best and seemingly only way to do that now is to avoid it altogether. Yes, this is a loaded topic, I’m amazed how worked up some people get about it, I could say I’m a Holocaust denier and get less aggressive reaction!
For the record, giant fucking rare steak for dinner tonight.good for rebuilding the ol moosklees after yesterday’s visit from the man with the hammer.
A millennia has gone by with our evolution tuned to killing animals and eating them. In fact, our ability to kill and eat animals and cook the meat contributed to evil evolving our awesome brains. not to mention freeing up our time from having to gather 10,000,000 berries to support a gang instead of killing a stag one afternoon and feeding everyone.
we have canines for a reason; they’re not there because they look so hot.
@brett
Ah, my mistake – thought you said in the article that you avoided all animal products. FWIW I guess I’d still consider you a vegan, as all the vegetarians I know use animal products (such as clothing) without issues and many eat fish/eggs/honey still. But I guess that is all silly semantics!
@frank
I hear Scaler is going to feed you all vegan pre-and-post Hour meals. Have fun!
@brett
Fucking pervert. At least you’re starting to sound like a proper New Zealander now.
@frank
The canine argument has long been debunked, but is still a favourite.
@minion
You taught me well, mate…
@frank Mmm steak. Ole Ritter approves:
http://youtu.be/CRzomXXsauw?t=31m52s
@brett
Scientific fact: 9 out of 10 vegetarians prefer recumbents.
@mcsqueak
Was just at the grocer and Mrs. Scaler purchased (for the weekend): pork, beef and bacon (which of course is better pork). I can also lop the head off a chicken in the back yard if that’s not enough animal protein for after the attempt.
That said, I have no issue at all with veg/ vegans. More to the point, little scaler is a self-professed vegetarian. And he’s the first to tell anyone that offers up a chicken nugget or corn dog that he is. As @ron said, I think, personally, that it’s most important for us omnivores to make sure that we make our food choices, specifically meat, carefully. Local, small farm sourced is how we get ours.
If someone makes a conscious ethical decision to be veg, I’ll never say a bad word. If someone dresses the decision up in pseudoscience and then moralizes about it, I get cranky.
Personally, I’m a meatasaur but a different kind than I was a few years ago. Most of the meat I eat now was either wild–and killed and butchered by moi–or humanely raised on a small organic farm by a friend. I’m okay with that. I’m also okay with the habits and decisions of my friends who choose differently.
Brett, having always thought of you as a take no shite and bite de heads off kind of guy, it is nice to know that you can be so forthright and be a veggie. My VHM and I come close, she eats nothing with 4 feet and I eat very little in that direction. The industrial world and animals are not a good mix. Words like factory, battery, and cows that never leave a stall are a crime. We could do it well or at least raise animals humanely but until we all change our diets to a more moderate one it will never happen.
Really there is no easy answer with 7+ billion although if the western world started to eat insects for protein…
I’d be totally down with insect protein shakes in the morning, if the food scientists got on that. Which they won’t, until their corporate masters can patent the GMO bugs…
@Marcus
Luckily, I’m the 1.
@Ron
@scaler911
@PeakInTwoYears
@Rob
+1. You all get it.
Definitely local butchers give better cuts, and usually they are from local farms. Same thing with farmer’s markets and such. Most people just don’t care or would rather have “steak” every night on the cheap.
@brett
Don’t you rock fizik shoes? Poor baby ‘roos. (emoticon goes here)
Right on Bretto. I believe friend of Velominati, Robert Millar was (is?) a vegetarian when he was racing and did he get a lot of shiet about it back then. And he still kicked asses.
@DerHoggz
You get it too.
Indeed, I did rock fizik shoes… but they got lost on the way to KT, and I’m not keen to rock them again because of that. Of course it’s hypocritical to wear dead animals but not eat them, so I’m hopefully getting non-leather replacements.
@Rob My thoughts as well pretty much.
My wife is from a certain part of Asia that has the longest lifespans of anyone on the planet. This doesn’t come from snacking on dried hoofed meat or XXXL take aways.A lot of their food is locally sourced and they take great pride in stating that this vegetable is grown by a certain local farmer for example.
Through this our families diet has changed significantly over the years to a more plant based one, with animal protein as a flavouring rather then the main course. All of us are the better for it and it certainly hasn’t affected my cycling life.
Interestingly in her home country they they drink like fish as well from what I have seen; so the morale of the story..eat less land animals, more vegetables and seafood and drink way more booze to live longer
@DerHoggz Spot on. I like my meat but it’s quality before quantity. We had a local butcher open in the neighborhood recently and when meat is on the menu that is where it comes from.
The son has been a state champion twice…. and he’s vegan. I couldn’t be prouder.
I used to be veggie for many years, and still eat a mainly non-meat diet – but I will have fish mainly and sometimes ham or chicken.
I found it difficult to remain veggie when I was doing a lot of travelling and business lunches – it got a bit dull to always be having the one thing on the menu that was suitable for vegetarians, usually involving goat’s cheese. Not having dairy would be a nightmare, so I admire your persistence.
It’s not an issue as far as I’m concerned, and I could never understand why meat-eaters had an issue with vegetarian meals at dinners or restaurants, as if they found it compulsory to have meat at every occasion. So for once you’re having a vegetarian lasagne – does it taste nice ? Yes… well, end of story.
My wife is still veggie as are two of the three children – I tell the meat-eater not to rub it in the noses of the others, and equally I tell them not to sit there with a look of disgust and try to put him off.
Respect other people’s choices, innit.
Good for you Brett. Couldn’t really give a fuck what someone eats to be honest, if it works for you, great! Variety is the spice of life, and all that.
I’m not going to hassle you for being vego, just as I would expect not to be hassled for being omnivorous. Hopefully you’re not putting all omnivoures in the ‘ignorant’ basket. ‘Ignorant’ generally comes around when two opposing sides get defensive about what they do.
I’m conscious that way back primitive times when people lived in isolated villages, what you ate would have been luck. Live on the prairie? Buffalo for you. Blessed with natural fruit orchards? Fruit for you. Root vegies growing wild? Mondo carbs for you. An island in the middle of nowhere? Fish for you. Tree nuts and seeds? Regular movements for you. The human body is very adaptable and clearly can run on many different fuels, it’s only adding conscious thought and therefore opinion about things like diet that makes things fucked up! One choice is therefore no more special than another. They all can work! And your form obv proves that.
Just reminded me a local burger joint makes a killer Satay veggie burger. All this talk of food is making me hungus…
@brett When you visit Seattle next, I’ll take you to the vegetarian place I ate at tonight. Amazing food. I eat there regularly and I’m not even vegetarian.
Good cocktails, too. In my opinion, some of the best in Seattle.
I’ve been influenced by one of my (grown) daughters, who is a passionate student and practitioner of traditional Asian healing arts and Tibetan Buddhism. I’ve watched her go from a somewhat rigid (and temporary) set of food rules to a more flexible and yet more conscious approach to what she eats.
On the Mahayana side of the dharma thing, I have loved, loved reading, and reading about, Shunryu Suzuki. He was such a character, such a great person to introduce Zen to US culture. “I like work trips. I don’t like food trips. But I like work trips.” “Don’t kill is a dead precept. Excuse me is an actual working precept.” Excuse me. I beg your forgiveness.
@ChrisO: “Respect other people’s choices.” I.e., let’s be friends. That should be the objective, IMO.
Teaching, if teaching there be, is best done by example.
What a nice little veggo love-in this is!
I’m a meat eater with no real knowledge of where my food comes from or what experience the animals have had before I chew…that makes me common in my culture but an uncommon Velominatus it seems.
Yesterday at the supermarket there was no chicken breast and I was able to choose from a wide selection of other meats including kangaroo and camel. My choice was based on fat content, taste and price. In the end I found some packets of ‘organic’ chicken but I have no way of knowing what that actually amounts to. It tasted like chicken. Maybe that’s ethically vacuous but I’ve grown to be cynical enough not to think that ‘people power’ can take on the government – big business alliance and make any difference to the bottom line…I feel totally disempowered because I basicaly am. There, I said it.
I’m suprised as fuck by Tjallingii’s diet. Not that he’s veggo but that he doesn’t really eat protein. How doesn’t he waste to nothing? Clearly I’m no dietician. Maybe I should try it out – I’m pretty much plateaued on cutting weight and riding speed.
I’m not trying to be the smart arse here. I’m firmly in the ‘respect choices’ camp. Just trying to contribute balance…
@Harminator
One way to experience “balance” is to cook and eat the meat of an animal that you shot and watched die, and that you cut into pieces with blood up to your elbows and carried out of the hills on your back and spent two nights butchering and packaging for storage so you could eat it over the next few months. It gets personal that way, and personally I think that’s a good way to experience some of the real costs of eating animal protein. In my experience, when you feel the costs, you feel the value.
But–in the interest of balance–I will not imagine that the tofu/tempeh I put in my stir-fry a couple of times a week is cost-free. I’ve lived where soy is grown, and it’s not a pretty sight at all. A monocrop from asphalt to asphalt, nothing left for wildlife, even the birds deprived of a living. That sucks, too.
But, shit, I love cycling again. Even today in repulsive weather, I felt good on my bike, even while bitching to myself about the rain and road grime like a little pain in my own ass. Vive la Vie.
@Harminator
“Yesterday at the supermarket there was no chicken breast and I was able to choose from a wide selection of other meats including kangaroo and camel. My choice was based on fat content, taste and price. In the end I found some packets of ‘organic’ chicken but I have no way of knowing what that actually amounts to. It tasted like chicken. Maybe that’s ethically vacuous but I’ve grown to be cynical enough not to think that ‘people power’ can take on the government – big business alliance and make any difference to the bottom line…I feel totally disempowered because I basicaly am. There, I said it.”
you have the answer right there, your power lies in your purchasing, because that’s what makes a difference to the bottom line. The best vote you have is your currency, that’s what counts so if you want to make a difference “show me the money”
As the son of an Australian farm boy and a German village girl, a plate of food without meat wasn’t a meal when I was growing up. I changed a few things a couple of years ago — meat maybe once or twice a week, more fish, cutting out added sugar, fast food, cow’s milk and plain wheat, less alcohol, then more veggies, especially the green leafy kind, seeds and nuts, pulses, beans and complex grains — and noticed big changes to my energy levels, strength, resistance to illness, digestion, appetite and weight stability.
Cycling is what I love to do on roads; off-road, I’m more like to be running, and being involved in that scene has exposed me to people like Scott Jurek, whose book Eat & Run is a really interesting look at elite endurance performance on a vegan diet. I think there are lots of things for an omnivore to take from this, and there’s no reason things like quinoa, lentils and tempeh shouldn’t be part of a meat-eaters regular diet.
I’m a bit resistant to the tendency of athletes to refer to food as ‘fuel’, however if it gets people thinking about the quality of energy they’re putting into their systems and the effect it has on output, it might be a good thing.
In a past life I did some work on behalf of lobby groups, specifically chicken producers and farmers. While I have a lot of respect and time for most farmers, the things the lobbyists wanted to be allowed to do would make Marcus choke on his pet donkey. Free range is a perfectly meaningless term in Aus, unlike NZ; with poultry there is no discernible difference in taste, which I suspect means birds sold as free range can be pumped full of the same hormones and antibiotics as caged animals. Stocking rates for birds are astronomically high, while still being allowed to be called free range; currently it basically moves the same number of birds outside as are allowed in a high density cage barn: If you have 20,000 birds in cages and a door to a 1 acre enclosed space, they’re free range. The RSPCA sticker is the best one to look out for, because their criteria are based on animal husbandry rather than stocking rates. They will label barn raised eggs, so long as the birds are not debeaked, stocked below a level that leads to aggression problems and are in good condition. Funnily enough I’ve never seen an RSPCA sticker among the 12 or 13 labels on egg packets round here, and as such have a massive distrust of how the eggs are labelled and produced.
Beef doesn’t seem nearly as bad although a lot of it seems to be finished on feedlots where the food is heavy in hormones and other fun stuff to make them put on weight as quickly as possible. The big problem is that the animals are moved twice, often huge distances. Before they’re moved they are kept off food and water for 12 hours so they dont’ shit and piss all over the truck, and stand around in it for hours, and some of the trips to the feedlots are pretty long. Then they are moved from feedlot to Abattoir, when they need to go through the same procedure which stresses the animals again. We don’t buy ANY meat from the supermarket ever, largely because of the industrial processes that lead up to the product getting on the shelf. We are lucky enough to live in Australia’s “bush capital” so we have good butchers and produce easily accessible, but eating at restaurants is a bit dicey, as again there’s no reliable way here of checking on the quality of the product or how it was raised.
@DerHoggz
Fuck no Roo’s awesome. Its the most viable animal on this continent in terms of converting what grows here (two thirds of fuck all) to protein. The local government culls the roos regularly as well, (that’s a separate argument but it stops them starving to death over winter, they’re inside the city limits and can’t range as widely as they should)) so if they end up on feet that’s awesome. Good use for it I reckon.
@brett Nice article. Do you eat fish and sea food, I can’t remember from talking to you about it at the Keepers Tour.
I’m a confirmed meat eater although I do find that I tend to eat much less of it and be much more selective about it’s quality and sourcing when I’m really focussed on my fitness and weight.
Have you read Team on the Run by John Deering? It talks a bit about riding a Grand Tour on veggie power and it’s an interesting read in the same vein as Wide Eyed and Legless.
@piwakawaka I’m not convinced that the likes of us have any true purchasing power. As long as there are huge numbers of poorly educated stupid people who either don’t care or understand what they’re eating, voting with your currency amounts to pissing into the wind.
@PeakInTwoYears I like the idea of my kids understanding where their food comes from and I should probably do more to educate them in that sense – no one else is likely to. They get the whole meat comes from animals that have been killed part (I’ve got a few friends who shoot and the kids are quite unperturbed when a pheasant or duck is shot, plucked, cooked and served up to them) but I’m not sure they get the lower end of the market other than being told that I won’t ever take them to KFC.
@Chris
Slap yourself, Marx brothers style… If he eats fish and seafood he’s not a vegetarian.
You sound like a French waiter.
“Je suis vegetarien” usually provokes a confused look followed by the suggestion (or assumption) that you eat chicken, and when it is “non” to le poulet then they move along to fish.
Funnily enough they don’t think of omelette as vegetarian, or any of the naturally vegetarian dishes that most cuisines have. Because ‘normal’ people eat that too.
Even in the middle east where we have all that lovely mezze to choose from – tabouleh, felafal, houmos, halloumi, vine leaves etc etc etc they still look a bit puzzled if you start talking about veggetarian options.
@ChrisO “Je suis vegetarian” “Ah, qui, would you like ze chicken?” is probably better than being offered a vegetarian sausage, most of which are about as offensive as alcohol free beer.
I’ve met a few people who claim to be vegetarian but really just draw the line at red meat/poultry based on the ethics of meat production as opposed to the organic/free range nature of fish. Anyway, I was leading into asking Brett if he takes the time to enquire whether his beer is vegetarian.
I think the underlying theme isn’t so much vegan as much as it is discipline and sacrifice in pursuit of living the V. Just got back from training camp in Wisconsin where we climbed 8000 meters over six days. It was pretty freaking inspiring to be with 10 other guys who rolled out each morning to push themselves and each other. In terms of lifestyle, its a unique common ground that we share in our commitment to our craft.
That said, nutrition plays a huge role. Attending training camps tends to hit the reset button on my eating habits – especially after a long-ass winter followed by cold and wet spring riding. If low fat proteins, whole foods and minding the intake of high fructose corn syrup help take the weight off – so be it. I know how much better I’ll climb five pounds from now. For me its about bringing as much focus and discipline as I can manage [in spite of my many mid-age bad habits] to become a stronger cyclist. Whatever the pain or sacrifice…it’s worth it.