Keith Bontrager, who designed the wheels and other components that carried Armstrong to victory throughout seven Tours de France, could have returned to a life more ordinary, too. Instead, Bontrager continues to design, test, and tweak his signature bike parts for Armstrong's former Discovery Channel team. He also maintains his own demanding race calendar that ends in grand finale style Oct. 14-15 with the 12th annual 24 Hours of Moab mountain bike endurance race.

Bontrager, an engineer by trade, is also driven by another avocation. Call him a culinary explorer, always on the lookout for dishes that can inspire bike camp cuisine that's part gourmet, part sport-performance. Flavor dominates his culinary experiments and, like a pit bull on a T-bone steak, Bontrager has sunk his teeth into learning about the chemistry of food and its physiological effects.

Starting at noon Oct. 14 in Moab, Bontrager and his four-person team will spend the next 24 hours racing, eating or sleeping. Refueling and rehydration during an endurance mountain bike race become a virtual tightrope act, where finding the perfect balance between the two requires an acute diligence.

"Food is an endurance racer's gasoline and water is his oil. If he runs low on either, the race is as good as over," said Bontrager. "The race demands constant attention to these, whether you are riding on a team or solo. The 'by-the-book' approach to refueling (using prepackaged, high-carbohydrate foods) is OK in the beginning of the race. But as the race progresses and fatigue sets in, eating gets trickier. Rich, savory or even spicy food starts to appeal much more to racers. Since getting food in can be the biggest challenge and since the strict rules of racing nutrition can be bent a little, some creative cooking can be worthwhile."

Moab's desert climate plus the physical demands of a 24-hour race can accelerate dehydration drastically, which is why it is important for competitors to know their individual sweat rate. A sweat rate is defined as how much weight one loses during exercise plus how many fluid ounces one consumes to equal how much fluid one should drink to replace sweat losses. A person's sweat rate could be as low as one quart per hour or as high as three quarts per hour.

"These racers will come from all over and it's important for them to test their sweat rates in various training and weather conditions. This allows them to know what to expect during the race," said Monique Ryan, sports nutritionist and author of Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes. "Someone racing on a four-person team will have a chance to test how well he is keeping up with his sweat rate by bringing a scale and weighing himself before and after each lap. Every pound lost during a race will need to be replaced with 20 ounces of fluid with a recovery drink that has carbohydrates, protein, and a little sodium in it."

So far this season, Bontrager's racing performance has been checkered with bouts of dehydration and heat exhaustion, which cost him the desired results that his superior fitness would otherwise dictate.

Whatever has been causing the problems, Bontrager is determined to snuff out all margin of error by tailoring his nutritional requirements to each event with the same exacting precision that marks the quality of his brand.

When he arrives in Moab next week for his 12th 24 Hours of Moab, his car will be stuffed to the roof with bikes, tools, clothes, extra wheels, camping and of course, cooking equipment.

"I try to bring everything I will need to make a wide variety of meals," he said. "It's fun to figure out the most versatile kitchen tools to keep the menu possibilities high but the load light. At a minimum I bring a propane stove, a grill, several Dutch ovens, a food mill, a range of pots and pans, a griddle and knives."

Compared to other camp kitchens at the 24 Hours of Moab, Bontrager's will be the one to go to for gourmet tips, nutrition book recommendations, and maybe even homemade tire sealant. Given the physical demands of the race and its rugged setting in the desert south of Moab, to compete takes a shrewd strategist and it never hurts to have a good chef on the team.

About his 24-hour grilled veg on couscous, for example, Bontrager said, "The idea is to make something that's easy to cook on an open fire, that's salty (a personal craving late in a 24-hour race), that's tasty even if eaten cold, and that can be eaten quickly and without a lot of effort." Couscous, he said, is an ideal carb for rustic cooking because, unlike regular pastas, the process doesn't need to be timed very closely.

Then there are his top fuel brownies in a Dutch oven. "The trick is in the additional chocolate and in the way the thing crisps up and chars in a Dutch oven. One or two nibbles of this and you are ready to do five laps in a row."

24-hour grilled veg on couscous

1 red or green pepper

Handful of grape or cherry tomatoes

2-3 medium carrots

1 each summer squash and zucchini

1 red onion

1 bulb fennel

Olive oil, to taste

Vinegar or lemon juice, to taste

Chopped fresh herbs to taste (basil, oregano or thyme work well)

Dash salt (optional)

Dash crushed red pepper (optional)

Couscous

Clean the vegetables, cut into large chunks (cut the carrots lengthwise if they are large so that they cook more quickly, don't cut the tomatoes), put everything into a freezer bag with olive oil and toss it around a bit to coat all the pieces. Season the vegetables, toss some more and empty carefully onto a grill over coals.

When everything is cooked through, with some light charring on the outside, take it off the grill and put it in a bowl to cool. Cut the vegetables into bite-size pieces and return to bowl. Drizzle a little olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice on the vegetables, stir in some chopped herbs and season the mix again. Let stand one hour.

A bit of salt is good and will help fight off cramps late in the race. Crushed red pepper is also good, but only a little. If there is any doubt that your digestive system can take it late in a race, leave it out.

For the couscous, bring a 50/50 mixture of water and broth to a boil in a pot with a lid, remove from heat, stir in the couscous slowly, cover the pot, wait 10 minutes and it is cooked. Fluff with a fork to keep it from clumping immediately after it has cooked.

Mix vegetables and couscous together or keep them separate to combine when you are ready to eat.

Adaptation: Grilled boneless chicken or grilled salmon sliced into the mix can add additional flavor and a bit of protein, too. Season or marinate the meat anyway you want (be sure seasoning is compatible with the other ingredients), grill it, let it cool a little and slice into bite-size pieces. Make sure to pull the pin bones out of the salmon if you are using fillets. If you use chicken, add to the mix immediately to keep it from drying out.

- Keith Bontrager

Top fuel brownies in a Dutch oven

2 cups sugar (turbinado or raw recommended)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa (Green and Black's Organic Cocoa recommended)

Pinch of salt

3 eggs

1 stick ( 1/2 cup) softened unsalted butter

1/4 cup milk (or more as required to get the batter to the right consistency)

A splash of vanilla

1 bar (or 2 if you really want to go for it) of good quality chocolate with a high cocoa content, 70 percent and above (Green and Black's Chocolate recommended), broken into pieces (bash the package on something flat to break it into small- to medium-sized chunks)

Heavy cream (optional)

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the eggs, butter, milk and vanilla and mix this until it is combined but not whizzed into a paste. Fold in the chunks of chocolate until they are more or less uniformly distributed in the batter.

Grease and lightly flour an 8-inch Dutch oven; pour in the batter.

For cooking on a campfire, an 8-inch oven takes about 15 briquettes (the equivalent amount of wood coals will also do the trick. Just make sure you have enough wood coals to finish the job).

Cover Dutch oven well, place on coals, scatter some coals evenly on top. If you have a raging inferno campfire, push things around a little to moderate the heat or things will get out of control.

Check after 25 to 30 minutes. Remove coals from top. Stick something sharp and pointy into the molten mass, pull it out and see what it looks like. The chocolate will be molten, so it will stick to the probe, but if you see batter on it, it needs a little more time.

When brownies are done, remove Dutch oven from fire and let it cool briefly. Pull, chip, and claw the brown mass out as best you can (careful though - that iron caldron is very hot!). It might come out in chunks, but eating, not fancy presentation, is the goal here.

Cut into servings and let cool only as long as you have to in order to be able to eat it without burning yourself, but no longer. The molten chocolate should still be soft when you eat it. It is, of course, tolerable when it has cooled the rest of the way, just not as nice.

A drizzle of heavy cream is a fine way to make it even better and, if you are racing, you will easily deal with the extra calories.

Overcooking won't be a problem. These are very good when the mass is crisp around the edges - even slightly charred. Incineration, however, will spoil it, so check cooking regularly.

- Keith Bontrager

Eat and ride

* IF YOU GO: The 12th annual 24 Hours of Moab is Oct. 14-15, 5,000 racers, support crews and spectators expected. Race, directions and accommodations info at http:// www.grannygear.com.

* INSIDE: Recipes that make a long race easier to stomach.