COACH’S CORNER

By Dave Latourette

LONG COURSE NUTRITION SIMPLIFIED

Over the last few weeks I have conducted some race day nutrition consultations for athletes moving from short races early in the year to longer races later in the year. The main goal was to calm some athlete’s nerves about establishing a race day nutrition protocol for those long races. J If you are tackling this topic by yourself or listening to all the claims out there it can get confusing. All my coached athletes get a sheet that includes sample protocols so they can start setting up a potential race day plan. From this plan we start with a baseline of calories and fluid per hour and then start deciding on types and quantities of food.  As the title implies I would like to simplify what type of caloric and fluid needs are necessary for long course racing.

Many athletes get caught up in the latest craze of sports nutrition product that claims you’ll go 25% faster if you use product xxx. Because of this they approach the process backwards. The first thing you have to learn is what YOU like in terms of taste and texture (liquids, solids, gels) and absorption, NOT decide based on what is claimed to work. You could start by doing some real research (and I don’t mean just reading the label) by sampling products to see if the latest claim is really all that good.

An example from my experience: A leading “sports nutrition” product claims it “enhances endurance performance by 25%”. I don’t see the claim for “improved performance”, AND here are some other facts:

-         The test was done on ONLY 10 trained cyclist (this is an INCREDIBLY small sample of athletes)

-         The results show that time to exhaustion in “their product” is 24.3 minutes +/- 4.5 minutes. While the time to exhaustion in “the other product” is 19.2 minutes +/- 4 minutes.

For me the bottom line is this: If the margin of error is say +/- 4 minutes, that’s an error margin of 16-21% on a sample of only ten people. Guess what? I don’t like giving much credit to any product that does its test on only 10 people and makes bold claims about its effectiveness. I’m not saying it doesn’t work better, it might, but I’ve learned a few things about this product. I can’t tolerate the taste of it when it’s not cold, it never did anything different for me over other products, I’m not sure of their testing protocol and it doesn’t work better FOR ME.

Getting back to simplifying long course nutrition, below I’ve listed what I consider “The Big Three” when developing your fueling plan for competing: (not in any specific order)

1)     Carbohydrate calories (ladies start w/ at least 200 cal per hour, men 300)

2)     Replacing fluids (we should be shooting for at least 20 oz per hour or whatever your body loses and can absorb relative to heat, humidity, calorie source and so on.)

3)     Electrolyte Replacement. This is incredibly different for everybody and can range from .5 grams to 5 grams (this is a huge amount) of sodium lost per hour based on climate, acclimatization, body size, sweat rate etc.

After these “Big Three” everything else is personal based on tastes, desires, absorption rates, or for some, simply what you like to eat! Because of our individual make up, trying to duplicate someone else’s nutrition plan is a bad idea. You should take different ideas from different resources and mold it around your needs.  To this day I have not seen any one person who has the exact same nutrition plan for racing as me and I wouldn’t expect it.

What’s the key to remember? Everybody is different, therefore you have to plan a little, practice a little, listen to your body and make adjustments. Here are some examples/signs to look for:

-         Do you crave salty food during and after training sessions? If yes, you likely need more sodium & electrolytes

-         Are you hungry during and immediately after training sessions? If yes you likely need to eat more before and/or during the training sessions.

-         Are you thirsty during and after training sessions? If yes then no doubt you are dehydrated to some level. Remember, athletic performance level begins to drop when you lose more than 2% of your body weight in fluids.

-         Are you easily absorbing all the food and fluids you take during training sessions? If yes, for starters you may try taking an extra 50 calories per hour. If no then you may have to lower the caloric intake, adjust the form of the calories or consider lowering the intensity of the training effort.

Don’t forget that no matter what the caloric and fluid source, you should be ingesting them in small amounts and at timed, frequent intervals. If you keep the plan simple and it’s worked in training then all you have to do is make small adaptations leading up to your important races.

Best of Luck,

Dave Latourette