Fuelling the machine “part 1”

With springlike conditions all around, my thoughts are to the upcoming race season. And ultimately my performance this year. After surviving all my races last year, my goal this year is compete at a whole new level. To this end I have identified several areas of needed improvement.

High up on this list is my food and liquid intake, before, during and after each race. We have all heard before the saying, “train like you race like you train”. I have tried this winter to incorporate this into all my workouts. I have had success and failure doing so. But more so to the success side.

My training day strategies have been as follows lately. I wake and make sure to eat before I have coffee. Otherwise the coffee makes me not want to eat. This has been the single most beneficial thing I have done food wise in the morning. I have until recently never eaten breakfast. And if I did, it certainly wasn’t before 9 or 10am. Getting up and right into training was difficult until I changed this one thing. I make sure to get something natural and full of carbs for  my first meal. Mostly it has been a bowl of granola. But I have started making energy bars (yes the ones I spoke last time about, and that  I will post the recipe of shortly). I love the fact that I can eat one before coffee and another just before training. During workouts I have tried to follow a guideline of 2 litres of liquid per hour. I have not faired so well here. So far I can reasonably get 1.5 litres down. Usually it’s a carb drink like “HEEd” or “Accelerade“. Each contain about 150 calories and about 38 gr of carbs the way I mix it up. Knowing that I also require about 60gr of carbs per hour for exercise or racing, I also consume 2 gels per hour. Although the gels I have used are odd to get used to, I have noticed increased energy throughout my training sessions. They provide an additional 25gr of carbs per shot. If you were to add it all up, I am taking in 88gr of carbs per hour, and 1.5 litres of liquid. This seems reasonable and has  worked so far. But is there a better way?

To find out I am going to get a full vo2 threshold test done. And get a full nutritional breakdown based on the results. I will post it all here in “part 2”. And hopefully discuss the results with those more informed than I. Also we will try to figure out the ins and outs of carb loading before the big race.