A14| Monday, August 19, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
A
burger and fries sound like a
postrace reward, not a training
snack. But when you’re logging ex-
tra-long distances, fast food isn’t
the worst choice of fuel, says Ra-
chele Pojednic, an assistant profes-
sor of nutrition at Simmons Univer-
sity in Boston.
“I joke that what I eat when I’m
out riding my bike four hours is not
what I’d eat for lunch on any given
Tuesday,” she says. “When your
body is working that hard, you need
to shift your nutrition to meet your
energy needs.”
While she wouldn’t recommend
fast food for day-to-day meals due
to its lack of fiber and nutrients,
and high fat and sodium, she says it
is a surprisingly good choice for ul-
tra-endurance sports of four hours
or more.
“It’s high in calories, has a signifi-
cant amount of salt, and it can be
absorbed quickly with minimal ef-fort,” she says. “Typically, we want
to eat high-fiber, nutrient-dense
foods, but those take a long time to
digest.”
Katherine Zeratsky, a registered
dietitian nutritionist at the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minn., says mus-
cles run off carbs and fat, so in an
endurance situation, fries and burger
buns equal fast energy.
Dr. Pojednic cautions that not ev-
eryone’s stomach can handle fast
food, and bars and gels are more con-
venient to eat on the go. “If you ha-
ven’t trained on Filet-O-Fish, it’s prob-
ably not the best choice to make on
race day,” she says. “Your race fuel
should mimic your training fuel.”
Ms. Zeratsky says it’s important
to remember that endurance train-
ing puts a lot of stress on the body.
“An overall balanced diet of antioxi-
dant- and nutrient-rich foods is es-
sential to protect and repair your
muscles,” she says.ARareFreePassonFastFood
Jim Dannis and Sandy Dannis train
for long-distance tandem bike rides.
They also cut and stack wood to
train. Mr. Dannis does pull-ups, too.WHAT’S YOUR WORKOUT?| JEN MURPHY
A Seriously
Committed
Tandem
JOE KLEMENTOVICH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (3)of Hammarskjöld’s plane. (They re-
minded me of an old Bob and Ray
comedy sketch on radio. Bob El-
liott announces plans to build his
own tunnel under the Hudson
River to avoid commuter traffic.
Isn’t it hard to build a Hudson
River tunnel? Ray Goulding asks.
No, Bob replies, you just dig down
for a while and then out.)
Before their film is finished
Messrs. Brügger and Björkdahl
have interviewed a considerable
number of intriguing individuals
and turned up evidence, or circum-
stantial evidence of the existence
of evidence, or hearsay summaries
of third-hand conversations, in-volving such exotic details as an
ace of spades that may have been
a CIA calling card; a Belgian mer-
cenary known as The Lone Ranger;
a shadowy figure named Congo
Red (“shadowy” being a go-to ad-
jective for almost anyone in the
extensive roster of dubious charac-
ters); the probably deranged per-
petrator, always dressed in white,
of a surely bogus scheme to deci-
mate Black Africa by spreading the
virus that causes AIDS; and a gen-
uinely provocative reference by
South Africa’s Archbishop Des-
mond Tutu, in his capacity as
chairman of that nation’s Truth
and Reconciliation Commissionduring the 1990s, to a private
paramilitary research organization
that may not only have existed—in
the shadows—but hatched a plot
that actually caused Dag Hammar-
skjöld’s death.
And through it all, in spite of it
all, we await clues that will lead to
revelations and enlightenment. I
took more notes than my head
could handle during the screening,
worried about holes in the story
until I realized that there was no
connective tissue between the
holes. Still and yet, there may be,
might be, should be, something to
it. Every frame of the film can’t be
fake, can it?LIFE & ARTS
count to verify this claim.) Ms.
Dannis says she rides between
5,000 and 7,000 miles. Ahead of
the Natchez Trace 444, about 75%
of their training is on the tandem.
In a typical week their long ride
might include a circuit around
Mount Washington starting at the
Vermont border, riding to the east
almost to Maine, then back to the
south of Mount Washington. This
is a 109-mile ride with about 5,
feet of climbing. They might do
two shorter 30-to-75-mile rides
north into the Connecticut River
Valley, then one or two solo rides.
Ms. Dannis is logging 700 to 900
miles a month, while her husband
is averaging 1,200.
To cross-train, Mr. Dannis hikes
around his property with their
three dogs. He and his wife split
and stack wood. He also does pull-
ups and push-ups. “I’m stuck in a
middle-school calisthenics rou-
tine,” he jokes. The couple uses averts to a healthy diet. He has
sugar-free cereal with a banana
and almond milk for breakfast,
while Ms. Dannis prefers avocado
toast topped with an egg. Lunch is
light, often cheese and crackers.
Dinner is typically a salad with
beans, vegetables, grilled steak or
chicken and a light dressing or a
homemade bean-based soup.The Cost and Gear
The couple own three tandems.
They ride their Cannondale tan-
dem mountain bike ($2,000) in the
muddy early season. They use
their Co-Motion Macchiato
($8,000) for training on hills. They
purchased a titanium-carbon frame
Santana Synergy tandem to use as
their main racing bike. “We could
have bought a small car,” says Ms.
Dannis, noting it was a $15,000 in-
vestment. Mr. Dannis spent around
$17,000 on the three Specialized
bikes he uses for solo training, and
Ms. Dannis spent around $7,000 on
her two Specialized bikes.
“We know people think what we
spend on bikes is totally ridicu-
lous, but cycling is our main form
of exercise and recreation,” Ms.
Dannis says. “We don’t take vaca-
tions. We don’t belong to gyms or
have any coaches. We’ve reallo-
cated what many people would
spend on exercise and discretion-
ary fun to our cycling.”
When it comes to clothing, the
couple believes in safety over
style. “We wear bright neon or-
ange or yellow and put multiple
lights on the front and back of our
bike so we’re visible to drivers,”
Mr. Dannis says. During the winter,
the couple trains on their Peloton
bike, which cost $1,995, plus $39 a
month for unlimited classes.The Playlist
They avoid music. They must
hear oncoming traffic and are in
constant communication. “My job
in front is to tell Sandy if a bump
is coming so she is not surprised,
and she is responsible for traffic,”
Mr. Dannis says.30-pound granite rock to do func-
tional exercises like squats and
lunges. Ms. Dannis has silks hang-
ing from a tree in the yard to prac-
tice aerial yoga. “It’s like floating
meditation,” she says. “Jim is too
type-A to try it.”
In the winter, they cycle in-
doors: riding a trainer and a Pelo-
ton bike. They also snowshoe.The Diet
Like most endurance athletes,
Ms. Dannis fuels her rides with en-
ergy bars, protein shakes and elec-
trolyte-spiked drinks. Her husband
prefers fast food. “Jim knows
where every McDonald’s, Burger
King and ice cream place is along
his training rides,” she says. “It’s
his excuse to eat double cheese-
burgers.” Mr. Dannis counters that
it’s the best way for him to replen-
ish the 600-plus calories he burns
each hour on rides.
When he’s off the bike he re-RIDING IN THE REARseat of a
tandem bicycle with your partner
piloting you up and down a moun-
tain might be a recipe for divorce.
For Jim Dannis and Sandy Dannis
it’s the ultimate show of trust. The
couple has powered a bike together
for 32 of their 35 years of marriage.
“People think the person in the
front seat does all of the work and
the back-seat passenger is on for a
joy ride,” Mr. Dannis says. “But it’s
a team effort. If Sandy stops ped-
aling even half a stroke, we fall
down. There’s an art to reading
each other’s body language and
movement, so we can shift weight
and pedal in sync.”
Mr. Dannis, 62, and Ms. Dannis,
58, are retired from their finance
careers and live on an 1,825-acre
working farm in Dalton, N.H. Ms.
Dannis says she never tires of see-
ing people’s reactions to the bike.
“Cars chase us for photos,” she
says. “Sometimes I take my hands
off the handlebars and that always
gives them a chuckle.”
Last summer they competed in
the Mount Washington Auto Road
Bicycle Hillclimb, a 7.6-mile ride
with an average 12% grade and
4,650 feet of vertical gain. “We
came in first in the tandem cate-
gory, because nobody else was
crazy enough to race the mountain
on a tandem,” Mr. Dannis says.
MAGNOLIA PICTURES
Mads Brügger and Göran Björkdahl in ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld,’ which revisits the 1961 death of a U.N. secretary-general‘COLD CASEHammarskjöld” re-
minds us how eager we are to
make sense of impenetrable mys-
teries, and of possibly nonsensical
movies. The man who concocted it,
a Danish filmmaker named Mads
Brügger, takes us down a succes-
sion of rabbit holes populated by
shadowy creatures who may or
may not be related to shaggy dogs.
The trip is entertaining and even
instructive—not about the facts of
the case, which go from murky to
opaque, but about the slip-slid-
ingly elusive nature of truth.
The film begins by reminding
us, with the help of animated se-
quences, who Dag Hammarskjöld
was and how he died. A Swedish
economist who became the second
secretary-general of the United Na-
tions, he lost his life in 1961 when
the plane that was carrying him on
a U.N. mission crashed near the
border of what was then Northern
Rhodesia and the Republic of
Congo. At first the crash was attri-
buted to pilot error, but the nature
of the mission—Hammarskjöld’s
effort to settle a secessionist con-
flict over Congo’s mineral-rich re-
gions of Katanga and South Ka-
sai—soon gave rise to questions,
substantial doubts and conspiracy
theories involving colonialist min-
ing interests possibly backed by
Western governments.
As documentary prefaces go,
this one seems serious enough, ex-
cept that Mr. Brügger, a character
in his own production—he has
played that role in previous
films—seems to be dictating the
script of what may indeed be a
documentary, or a Spinal-Tappy
variant, to one of two vaguely de-
tached secretaries in a scruffy pro-
duction office in Africa.
Why are we listening to him do
that? On the other hand, why not?
Both of the secretaries are movie-
star attractive, and evince suffi-
cient interest, every now and then,
to ask searching questions about
the script. Still, the nature of Mr.
Brügger’s own mission is ambigu-
ous, and grows ever more so when
he and a colleague, or co-star, a
Swedish private investigator
named Göran Björkdahl, turn up
somewhere near the crash site
wearing pith helmets and carrying
a couple of shovels with which
they plan to dig up the wreckageFILM REVIEW| JOE MORGENSTERN
‘Hammarskjöld’:
Tangling a Mystery
This summer they’re training
for the Natchez Trace 444, a 444-
mile ride from Nashville, Tenn., to
Natchez, Miss., in early October.
Mr. Dannis has completed solo ul-
tra-endurance rides, including one
race over 800 miles, but this will
mark Ms. Dannis’s first ride longer
than 100 miles. “This has been a
bucket list thing for me,” she says.The Workout
The pair trains on single bikes
and tandems. Mr. Dannis says he
averages 10,000 to 13,000 miles
each year. That includes up to 60
miles or eight hours on some long
indoor winter training days and
100-mile rides outdoors. (He
shared data from his Strava ac-