Fueling - Keeping it simple

There's little argument that fueling athletic efforts, whether it be outings in the mountains or competitive endurance events, has become increasingly simple over the last two decades. When I first started bike racing in the mid '80's, figuring out what to eat to get through a 4 hour race was tricky. In training, I was eating Pop Tarts and Sweet Tarts, the latter being mostly maltodextrin, a good source of complex carbohydrate which, at the time, was gaining some noteriety in endurance nutrition. But using this stuff while racing was not straight forward. Hell, I didn't even know how many calories I needed each hour to keep from bonking. 

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Fueling On The Go

Part of moving quickly in the mountains is maintaining energy levels. Forget to eat and you won't be going anywhere too fast for too long. In a race, this can be devastating but it can also suck on any long tour. Now, if you're the kind of skier that brings along some tasty turkey sandwiches, a big bag of trail mix and a couple of your favorite chocolate bars, well, you might as well stop reading right here. But if you've been experimenting with modern endurance fuels, carbohydrate gels and blocks, and you like what they do for you then read on.

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Feeding the Machine - The Cholesterol Myth

There isn't anyone with a pulse that is not aware of the alleged evils of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat. My generation grew up during the formative years of the whole anti-cholesterol/anti-saturated fat campaign. It is such an integral part of food marketing now that few of us really even notice or, for that matter, question the validity of such claims. Low fat and low cholesterol have been dietary buzz phrases for as long as I can remember.

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Riding the High-Carb Wave

No new science in this post. Just some musing about my run of good form. If you have read the previous two posts then you know that I have been rebounding from a bout of apparent under-nourishment. Not sure if my increased feeding is responsible for my recent winning ways but it may be so I'm going to continue eating nearly everything. I'll get to last weekend's competitive outing in a bit.

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Feeding the Machine - Navigating the Maize

In an effort to make these sub-topic posts on nutrition more digestible (ahem, sorry for that), I want to break them down sufficiently enough so that your interest does not wane in the middle of reading one. Any post about carbs and sports could get out of control long if I'm not careful. 

From a performance standpoint, I don't think anyone will argue the fact that we need to ingest carbohydrate to continue to train and race in endurance activities. We've covered this before in these pages. Let's recap the salient points as a segue to this post's topic. First of all, training and racing is supported primarily by glycogen which is stored in a limited capacity in the liver and muscle cells. At race intensity, we can last between 90 and 120 minutes before this supply is exhausted. By ingesting carbohydrate (which is converted to glycogen) during exercise we can stave off exhaustion almost indefinitely. We seem to be able to process about 300 kcal/hour. Yes, I know, fat is part of this energy equation, too, but I want to keep things simple here for the sake of discussion. Some athletes use fat for energy better than others but glycogen and, thus, glucose is still the main player for most of us. Bottom line is carbs are are both good and necessary for athletes.

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