Bite Size Tip #3: Eat The Carbs – Make The Break

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Sports nutrition has many elements to it, one being what you consume during training and competition. If you’ve never given much attention to this, this article will review some guidelines and share some some practical examples with you.

It’s understandable that recommendations of carbohydrates given in ‘grams’ can be confusing at first. It’s possible you’re accustomed to thinking about food in calories or portion sizes or perhaps you don’t think about the details of what you eat during training at all. But if you care about maximizing your training and performing optimally at races, understanding what you’re consuming and having a game plan will pay dividends, and you won’t be leaving outcomes to chance.

When training or racing in a high intensity sport, particularly when duration exceeds 90 minutes, you should have a training nutrition strategy in place. Specific training nutrition is going to be individual to you. Having said that, there are some general guidelines you can start with and tailor based on your performance feedback. For the purpose of this article, let’s assume your competition is under 5 hours in duration. Ultra events have their own nutrition intricacies and are predominantly not high intensity due to their length.

As an athlete you ideally have a good grasp on your daily nutrition needs including macro-nutrients; carbohydrates, protein and fats as well as the quantity, quality and timing of their intake. If not, it would be a good place to start, with your foundation. If you start a race with depleted glycogen stores (glycogen is the storage form carbohydrate in your muscles and liver), you’ll be hard pressed to save yourself with a sports drink and a few gels.

For events under under hour long, you should fare well with water, assuming you are entering training with enough energy and carbohydrate stores. In shorter events like these, a mouth rinse with a carbohydrate sports drink is also an option. It sounds exactly as it is, you take a carbohydrate sports drink and rinse your mouth with it, and spit it out. You may have seen this done during world cup soccer games. Basically the carbohydrate receptors in your mouth are communicating with your central nervous system and research has shown this can lead to improvements in performance. Additionally I like to bring a gel or a few mini potatoes in my back pocket in case I decide to lengthen my ride mid route!

Events longer than 90 minutes in duration should be accompanied by an hourly carbohydrate intake plan.

The intensity and duration of your activity and your personal experiences with different intakes, will determine how many carbohydrates you’ll consume hourly. The range of carbohydrate intake can be anywhere from 30g/hour up to 100g/hour. If you’re only consuming glucose, your body can only utilize (oxidize) 60g/hour, however most foods, sports drinks and gels are composed of multiple types of sugars, sucrose, glucose, fructose etc. and these combinations allow for higher levels of absorption through the intestinal wall. Essentially each type of carbohydrate uses a different intestinal transporter, so when you consume a variety you’re able to utilize more.

More recently, evidence in mountain runners has shown that consuming 120g/hour can be beneficial to performance and reduce post exercise muscle damage. You’ve also likely read about the Maurten gels that Eliud Kipchoge used during his ‘Breaking Two” effort in Berlin, where he consumed 100 grams of carbohydrates per hour. Science is always evolving so watch this space and remember the context of the sport and each individual’s situation will be key determinants of carbohydrate intake.

The higher the intensity of your effort, the more carbohydrates you’ll ‘burn’ through, something you want to keep in mind as you do some trial and error with your nutrition during training.

Your fitness can also impact how many carbohydrates you’ll need to consume. You may do a group ride one year and be very out of shape; the ride feels like a race. Alternatively a year later that same ride may feel relatively easy after a winter of sweet spot training. The ride that felt like a race would have required you to call on more stored and exogenous (the ones you consume during training) carbohydrates versus the one that was ridden at a moderately aerobic pace.

Your carbohydrate intake is not based on your weight, rather it’s based on how many carbohydrates you can absorb through your intestines hourly. Another reason to not compare your sports nutrition with your training partner’s. Remember, you do you.

The best way to determine your needs is through practice during training. If you have a weekly 3 hour hard group ride for example, you could start with 50-70 grams of carbohydrates hourly, consumed via a sports drink and food or gels etc.

Assuming your nutrition needs are met heading into the ride, you’ll be able to gather some good feedback based on how you felt. Your pre ride nutrition state should be fairly consistent for this, that way you know you are isolating the effect of your training nutrition.

What to look for? Did you hit the wall in the last hour? Maybe time to revisit your nutrition and increase your intake to 80g/hour. Perhaps you finished feeling strong and 60g/hour is ideal in this particular context. If you never measure, you’ll never know, because you can’t know what you don’t measure and you can’t tweak what you don’t know.

Lastly, we can’t forget about fitness. You have to have the wherewithal to understand if you were dropped due to poor nutrition or poor fitness, or both. You could have the most dialed in nutrition plan, but if the fitness isn’t there, the fitness isn’t there.

Taking notes about what you drank and ate after completing each ride is a great way to keep tabs on what’s working for you. Each type of ride may call for different fueling strategies, so you’ll want to be cognizant of this too. Be your own experiment.

A motto I like to keep in mind for a long ride is “early and often.” Don’t wait until you’re 2.5 hours into a 4 hour group ride or race to start eating. You’re eating during the first hour so that you’re still capable of hitting your top end in hours 3 and 4. All too often cyclists don’t eat until the coffee shop stop, hours into the ride, they grab a brownie and then blow up as the ride hammers back home. It’s often too little too late when there’s intensity involved.

I’ve put together a list of carbohydrates you can try during training. Some are liquid, some are solids. This is a matter of personal preference. The type of sport may be relevant if you need something super convenient and quick to access, such as during mountain biking. Context typically plays a large role in your nutrition choices. You’ll want to experiment with specific foods and drinks to best understand what works for you. Just because “rider A” can eat a few slices of pizza and hammer out a ride without stomach upset, it certainly doesn’t mean that’s the ideal recommendation or that you’ll have the same experience.

By practicing your nutrition during training, you not only learn what works for you, but also what doesn’t work for you. Ideally you don’t invest all of these hours training for race day only to discover during your dream Ironman debut that a certain food causes you such severe stomach pains that you have to withdraw. Plan for success with your nutrition, just as you do with your training.

Seeing grams of food represented in measurements most of us can relate to, like a cup or tbsp, can help us to better connect with training nutrition recommendations.

Here’s a list of foods with associated grams of carbohydrates. Of course you can simply double or triple these portions to equal 60g or 90g etc. and there are many other options. Some foods like dates, due to their fibre content, should be eaten in moderation (it’s possible you can’t stomach them at all).

Before you head out for your next longer training session, lay out your hourly intake created from a combination of hydration and food. Have a plan, execute, rinse, repeat and dial it in until your plan becomes your strategy.

Here are a few resources for anyone who would like to learn more.

Effects of 120 g/h of Carbohydrates Intake during a Mountain Marathon on Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage in Elite Runners https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/5/1367/htm

Carbohydrates for training and competition: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51208260_Carbohydrates_for_training_and_competition

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Anne Guzman

Sport scientist, sports nutritionist, content creator, former pro cyclist, life long learner. “Find a way to your dreams, even if it involves detours."
Running, Cycling, Triathlon, Track Cycling, Wrestling
Hamilton, ON

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