Product Review By: Rickey Visinki - Pro Mountain Biker
Rickey Visinski is a Pro Mountain Bike and Cyclocross racer. In 2004 he was an Olympic Trialist and in 2009 he was the Georgia State Road Racing Champion.
I had the opportunity to give oxygen from Oxygen4Energy a thorough test in both a controlled lab setting as well as “out in the wild” of competition.My two test were a computrainer time trial and the Cradle of Liberty Adventure Race.
POWER:
Power was tested during the computrainer time trials.A computrainer is a device that captures how much force you put on your pedals.I was originally slated to do one all out 10 mile time trial, but ended up doing 2.Oxygen played an integral role helping me sustain not just one max 25 min effort, but two back to back, helping me post the 1st and 3rd fastest times of the day.I saw less than a 5% drop in performance after a full all out 25 min effort thanks to oxygen…incredible numbers.
ENDURANCE:
Endurance was tested two ways, the first was the sustained power of the computrainer time trials, the second was how well oxygen helped the body adapt to changing stresses of the Cradle of Liberty Adventure race.Transitioning from paddle, to mountain bike to run/trek is a lot of stress to put on your body, let alone having ran once since knee surgery in January and not having paddled seriously ever.
In the computrainer time trials, oxygen gave my endurance a much needed boost in keeping my second time trial’s performance numbers very close to the original numbers.
During the adventure race, oxygen was key in helping me manage lactic acid and keep going strong through the entire 6 hour race.
RECOVERY:
Recovery is the single most important part of endurance sports.Recovery isn’t just day to day or workout to workout.Recovery means being able to go as fast as you can every time you step on the gas.Oxygen is essential to my recovery program because not only does it keep me coming back strong workout after workout, it keeps me coming back from every single effort.The winners aren’t the people who go the fastest; it’s the racers who slow down the least.By maintaining as close to your peak power as possible for the duration of the event, you blow by your competition when the going is tough at the end of races. This is what I find to be the most useful aspect of oxygen.It doesn’t just help you on the macro level of daily training.It helped me on every single effort where I needed more out of my body.This is why at the Cradle of Liberty; we were the fastest coed team and fourth overall out of over 30 teams, and at the computrainer time trials, my second all out effort was within 5% of my first effort.
OVERALL CONCLUSION:
Oxygen is a no-brainer for anyone who is looking to set personal bests and perform better than ever before.
