Race Nutrition
Ultra-trail Snowdonia is just behind the corner with less than 8 days to go. Learning from my past mistakes I’ve done a research on a race nutrition, documenting everything in the Wiki. The race nutrition approach boils down to the same best practices one would apply during training - do what you have tried and tested and what works for you. The same way you wouldn’t line up for a 100km race in a new shoes you don’t want to change your diet the week before the race. A few notes the summarize what I’ve learned:
- Eat what you are used to and don’t change that too much before the race
- 2-3 days before the start, cut out fiber. Fiber slows down digestion which is desired in regular regime but you don’t want to feel full during the race and what you eat needs to be absorbed fast.
- Avoid fats, while their are great source of energy they take a lot of time to process.
- The day before the race, don’t over-eat. You want to feel slightly hungry and start the race with relatively empty stomach.
- During the race, the rule of thumb is to eat something small every 45 minutes to 1 hour. Your body can absorb 150-300 kCal per hour which is far below the 600-1000 kCal you will be burning (for a reference, one 40g gel is around 100 kCal). Deficit is unavoidable so don’t try to sutff yourself and upset your stomach.
- In long races, you want to have a protein intake as well. The recommendation being 2.5g to 10g per hour which helps with the onset of muscle breakdown.
Theory sorted, now let’s see if I can put this to practice and finally have a race where stomach issues won’t be the limitting factor for performance.