Fueling and the Endurance Athlete
I want to speak about fueling this week and in particular for endurance training and events. The majority of cyclists I feel are very much involved in this category of training. I reckon, and I might be wrong, are there still some of you who are doing your own thing when it comes to fueling. i.e I’ll take my first gel at 90mins because I’ve had a solid carb breakfast so I won’t need any carbs until then and after that, I’ll be grand until the next feed at 120mins because I’ll take on a good bit of grub. This is not a good fueling strategy by the way!!
Keep reading to find out why.
Poster taken from ESQ.Coaching, an Instagram account held by Dr. Thomas Mortelmans
The poster above does a fine job at showing the negative effects of delayed fueling when training/racing. The rider that has gone dramatically downhill decided to wait until he/she was hungry before fueling. At which point, the brain was beginning to stress out and start to prioritise fat as the fuel source more so than carbohydrate, resulting in a reduction in energy output and subsequent slowing down of the body. It is very very difficult to come back from this state during training and racing, so it is best to avoid it altogether.
By staying on top of your fueling from the get go, you will be providing the necessary fuel and at the necessary times to keep your body moving, consistently.
The same can be said for hydration. The better protocol is one of drinking every 15mins instead of many mouthfuls on the hour. Look for the blog written about hydration and working out your fluid needs.
Now that you can see the benefit for fueling every 30mins, it is wise to experiment with this in order to see how your stomach handles it. PLEASE DON’T LEAVE IT UNTIL A WEEK BEFORE YOUR RACE!
For those of you doing half and full Ironman events and ultra distance runs, this gets even more important. You will have to be comfortable with consuming carbs across many hours. With regards to your Gut Training, I would suggest fueling for your harder training sessions every 20-30 mins starting early (after 15 mins). Try to aim for 70-90g/hour.
Another technique that is useful is to consume all your HOURLY hydration and carb intake all at once during a mid week harder effort or intervals. This can be rotten on the stomach but it will give that feeling of fullness which is basically training your gut for difficult scenarios, e.g race day.
Another idea is to go out on harder efforts with a full stomach! Again, it’s not nice but is often the feeling you have in a full IM situation.
When it comes to training sessions, aim to push towards the higher end of fueling, i.e 90g/hour so that you and your stomach will be very comfortable with 70g/hour on race day.
I’ll leave it there for today with my main message for the endurance heads, don’t wait until it’s too late, both in terms of gut training and fueling during your event.
