I'm really interested in nutrition and so, off the back of my recent
article on multi-day versus single-day events, I thought I'd compare how
I fuel myself for each of these...
Until last year my running events had mostly been on road and had maxed
out at marathon distance. After my two first half marathons taught me it
wasn't sensible to race on water alone, I became a committed user of
energy gels. I'd use them in my long training runs and that plus water
got me through a lot of races. I never particularly liked the idea of
putting such concentrated sweet stuff into my body but it did the trick.
I also discovered TORQ gels fairly early on - at least I knew they were
pretty natural so I didn't feel I was putting something from the
chemistry lab inside me!
When I started training for the Transalpine last year I did a quick
calculation and realised I'd need about 60 gels over the course of the
week. That just didn't seem like a particularly good idea. I also
figured I would lose the taste for them pretty quickly - even towards
the end of the Ironman day I find that all I can stomach is coke and
that I don't fancy anything sweet for several days.
So I thought back to how I'd fuelled myself for multi-day treks and
cycle rides. These had all been done on "proper food" and so I started
applying this concept to my running. The intensity I'm at when I'm doing
ultras is so much lower than straight road races that digestion hasn't
been a problem and I've transitioned pretty well. Most of my Transalpine
running was fueled by plain cake or Kelloggs Elevenses bars. During the Transalpine itself I also enjoyed orange segments, cucumber and
watermelon at the feed stations. But recently I'm a convert to TORQ bars -
I love the fact that the flavours aren't too sweet and that they taste
natural cos of the dried fruit inside them. And thanks to the clever
science of the guys at TORQ, they're obviously made in a way that gives
me exactly what I need from a performance point of view.
The other thing I've learned with multi-day events is the importance of "fueling for tomorrow". When I'm out running, I need to make sure that I
don't deplete my energy reserves to a point that will be hard to
recover from in time for tomorrow's run. I might sometimes take on more
nutrition than is totally necessary to make sure I am always comfortably
fueled. I'll also still have a couple of "emergency gels" in my pack just in case - though on the 8 days of the Transalpine I didn't touch these once.
Linked into this is what I eat after I finish each day. Through
practice and experimentation I've learned that the difference between
eating within 30 mins off finishing versus not is massive when it comes
to running the next day. And when I don't then the next day isn't pretty! When I'm doing training runs I'll leave some TORQ recovery powder in the
car and some water. I can mix it up and have it inside me within 10
mins off finishing. It goes down really easily, contains everything I
need and it's really convenient as it doesn't need to be kept cool. It's
less practical if I'm light-packing though (e.g. when we were in the Isle of Wight) as I want to keep my weight
down as much as possible. In that case I'll find somewhere that can
sell me a chocolate milkshake. I'll usually have a sandwich as well.
And on the Transalpine they had a massive vat of quinoa at the finish
every day - perfect!
No comments:
Post a Comment