Fueling

One of the most common training errors I see athletes make is under-fueling. That means not fueling enough before, during and/or after workouts. If your body is under-fueled the quality of your workout will be adversely affected and your recovery will be longer than ideal. 

If your long ride or run is over 90 minutes you need to supplement during but you also need to prepare beforehand and be ready to consume right after. Too often we're only focused on the workout activity itself as the way we get fitter. In reality our workout is a call to our physiology to build us stronger using the nutrients supplied by our nutrition.

When you do workouts over 90 minutes I recommend supplementing with carbohydrate during the workout, starting from the 45' mark onwards. This will improve performance and speed your recovery. The starting point for experimentation is 1 gram of carbohydrate per KG of body weight per hour. So, if you're 70kg, start by trying to consume 70g or carb per hour. That might not be easy to do at first and at a duration of just 90 minutes. That said, work on it. The body learns to absorb carbohydrate with practice. The better it gets, the better your performance will be. When your workout is two hours or longer you'll be thankful for that extra fuel.

You don't need to consume sports nutrition products until later in the training cycle, real food is fine. Closer to your event you want to make sure your gut can process the products that are available on the course. Make sure you know what they are and include them in your workouts over the last month before your key event. 

Whatever you consume, track it. List what you ate, how many grams of carb the item has, and add your grams per hour rate. Of course, this will also take planning in advance of long workouts. Through the process you'll learn what foods work and how much. Having a record of this is invaluable.

One final word on the topic. Once January comes and training volumes start to build I do not recommend focusing on any fat loss goals. Your body will need fuel and if it's not there the quality of your training will suffer. Focus on increasing QUALITY not decreasing intake.

Some Background Science

We hopefully start a workout or race with a full energy tank. This means glycogen (stored carbohydrate) is ready for us in the muscles and liver. In addition to that, of course, we have massive amounts of fat to burn but always remember that fat breaks down more slowly and requires more oxygen resources while doing so. We need to make sure we carbs in our system to give us the efficient, quick burning fuel to ensure performance levels. By doing so we spare some of the stored glycogen and fat stores creating a more balanced fuel system. 

Here are some additional important points to remember:

• Our stored glycogen will typically last between 90 and 120 minutes of moderate to intense exercise. If we don't supplement, our performance level may decrease rapidly after that time. At a more extreme level this means we 'bonk'; our body drastically raises the level of perceived exertion to force us to slow in order to preserve what glycogen is left for essential functions like that of the brain.

• By starting to supplement at the 45 minute mark we preserve stored glycogen for later in the effort meaning a longer, quality performance.

• You don't 'need' high levels of carbohydrate (ie >60g) for a two hour workout but by doing so we allow our gut to become accustomed to absorbing the nutrients which helps when we move over two or three hours and really do need the higher intake.