On Your Mark... Get Set...

In my preparations to put together a workshop series on the proper combination of nutrition and exercise, I have spoken with numerous friends and clients about what sorts of topics might interest them. In the process I have been regaled with some very funny tales of competition and training woes that were related to poor food choices pre or post exertion. One of the ones that had the biggest impact on me was about a guy who had arrived at the starting line for a bike race without properly fueling up in the pre-dawn pre-race hours and now was starving. In a last minute effort to get some sort of fuel in before the starting gun, he inhaled a hot dog with all the fixings from a nearby vendor. You can probably already guess where this story ends up... The interesting thing is this person is a semi-pro rider but never got any guidance about eating to win.

It should be pretty obvious that even if you didn't know about all the chemistry behind digestion and absorption, you might listen to your body when it cringes at the thought of a pre-race hot dog. The brain gets us into trouble in so many ways when it thinks it knows best and over-rides the needs of the body (hence all the various addictions to sugar and caffeine and other potential nutritional pitfalls). What you want immediately prior to a hard workout or competition sporting event is something that the body won't have to work hard to breakdown into fuel. This is why companies like Cliff Bar have developed products like "Gu" which is pretty much straight glucose and some maltodextrin which is a loosely held together starch that the body can work on while the glucose goes straight to the blood stream. That hot dog is a digestive time bomb that first starts out as a barely chewed up lump sitting in the stomach. Once that starting gun fires, the signals from the body are to forget about anything except the adrenaline pumped task at hand: RIDE FAST! A few miles into this endeavor, that hot dog has been jostling around in the stomach waiting to be digested with acid building up by the minute. The time bomb explodes into either vomiting or diarrhea because the body needs to get rid of it in order to continue to push hard in the race. Now, the rider is doubled over, exhausted, and drained of reserves because the last little bit of fuel left from dinner the night before has been used up.

Let's help this poor rider rewind and replay his morning in a way that sets him up to win. Three hours prior to competition (yes, often in the wee hours of the dark), let's be sure to give our rider a well balanced breakfast complete with easy to digest foods like pancakes with bananas and a little almond butter. Two hours prior to the race start, let's be sure our rider has 16 ounces of electrolyte replacement drink (I'll post a recipe for one you can make at home). One hour prior to race start he's warming up his muscles by jogging lightly or riding short distances pushing a little and then backing off. During this warm up, he is drinking about 8 more ounces of water. In the 15 minutes prior to start, nothing should be going into the stomach. Now when the starting gun blasts, our rider doesn't have a lump of undigested food to contend with, and his muscles are bathed in ready glucose with more on the way. The enzyme systems needed to produce this ready supply of fuel are already on line and working at near full capacity.

On your mark.... Get set....