The Carb Question

As an endurance athlete, I'm always experimenting with what/when/how much should I eat before, during, and after exercise. It's nice to see some quantitative data that helps this decision-making process. Here's an interesting article on carbohydrate consumption during exercise that seems to peg the optimum carb ingestion at about 70 - 80 g per hour.

While I typically eat a primal/paleo diet most of the time, I do use Infinit as my carb drink of choice on extended (>1.5 hour) bikes and runs. The nice thing about Infinit is that you can personally adjust the amount of carbs, electrolytes, protein, and even flavor to your own specifications and taste. For me, a person who sweats very little (so needs less salt and electrolytes and even less fluid), this is very important. I can increase the density of my drink mix, while dialing down the amount of flavor so that I can get the right amount of carbs and electrolytes while not drowning in fluids that my body simply won't sweat out (there's nothing like that sloshing sound of extra fluids in your stomach while running).

Using my personal formula, I know that I took in exactly 130g of carbohydrates during my 2 hour bike ride yesterday, for a rate of about 65 per hour. I might try upping this with my next batch of Infinit and see if it works better.

If you're going long in your races this year, it's a good idea to start thinking about nutrition now, practicing it on long rides and runs, dialing it in until on race day there are no surprises and no problems. I credit my dozens of nutritional trial runs last year with seeing me through an Ironman on a stomach that was still reeling from the bout of food poisoning earlier in the week. I don't think I could've finished the race if my nutrition hadn't been spot on.

This week on Philosophy In Action, Dr. Diana Hsieh will be interviewing Nell Stephenson on the subject of "Paleo for the Endurance Athlete". I'll be interested to hear if she has any good info for training (other than eat more yams and bananas!).

Ironman Race Day Nutrition: Gluten and Dairy Free

I'm probably not the only athlete who responded with a resounding "Huh?" to Ironman's news that they were going with "Bonk Breaker" bars for their race day nutrition at Ironman races this year. I mean, everyone's heard of Powerbars, but Bonk Breakers, what are those? Imagine my little Paleo-ized heart a-flutter when I visit their site and find out that they are gluten and dairy free! Since I haven't eaten gluten in so long and since the last time I did, it did not play nice with my intestinal tract, I was worried about either having problems with the on-course nutrition, or having to pack all of my own along, looking like some overstuffed dromedary with nutrition hanging out of every available pocket.

Even better, unlike many popular bars, they are also free of hydrolized soy protein, or soy protein isolates. As someone with half a thyroid gland, I avoid soy like the plague and thus there's a lot of bars I won't touch including the aforementioned Powerbars.

Now, I am going to hustle my self down to REI tomorrow, apparently the only place in town that carries these things, and buy a few to try, maybe the Fig, Almond Butter and Honey, and Espresso Chip varieties. For those who are strict Paleo, they won't cut the mustard. They contain oats and other ingredients like rice syrup. But as I've noted before, I'm having to be a bit less strict with my in-training nutrition and there's no way I'm doing a totally Paleo thing in the Ironman. I think that would spell Gastric Distress for sure. When going the distance, there's something to be said for highly refined sugars and easily digestible ingredients.

Baby Food... The New Paleo Gu??

Anyone who has done a serious distance event has probably suffered from Gel Overload: a syndrome in which you never want to look at a little foil packet of flavored sugary goop again. Ever. They fall into the category of a necessary evil, even for those of us who try to eat Paleo most of the time, there's no way to really get around the fact that our paleolithic ancestors did not go out and try to Swim, Bike, and Run for twelve straight hours at the outer limits of their stamina and abilities. Especially not in stupidly hot, windy, or miserable conditions. They would probably laugh at the notion. Get too hot? Sit down in the shade for awhile. Tired? Take a nap. Hungry? eat real food. Foolish endurance athletes.

But if you're going to subject your body to an Endurance Torture Session (aka Ironman), you have to replace the glycogen that you're burning with some very simple, easy-to-digest sugary crap. Even the Paleo Diet for Athletes says so. However, assuming that you're not training at quite the same intensity that you race at, there's no reason to use that nasty little packaged sugar glop for every training session. And as someone who would prefer to fuel up with real food, I'd rather turn elsewhere for my calories.

Enter baby food.

Say Whhhhaattttt? Well, good quality (organic) baby food is real food in its simplest and most digestible form, right? And now instead of being in those little glass jars (they are just SO 1960s), it comes in little foil squeezable pouches, just made for clumsy little toddler's hands (or the shaking hands of someone about to bonk on a long bike ride).

Don't get me wrong. I like being all Laura Ingalls Wilder. I like to crockpot up my own homemade applesauce as much as the next gingham-clad barefoot HouseFrau. But have you ever tried to take a mason jar of applesauce on a long bike ride? Not so easy to fit in your back jersey pocket, is it? So enter the squeezable baby food packet. Now I'm not talking about mashed peas and carrots, mind you. The good ones are like mango-apple-banana, or peach-apple. They're pretty yummy, very transportable, and they go down fast. Just like a Gu, but without that nasty sticky gross texture and flavor.

Of course, when it comes closer to racing, I'm going to put the fructose on the back shelf. Real fruit (mashed or otherwise) is simply harder on your digestive system and more difficult to digest and utilize than pure unadulterated sucrose, glucose, and dextrose. Yes, I'll be using the gels when it comes to race preparation and racing itself. But in the meantime, I can do my palate and my body a favor and fuel with real food. Conveniently packaged. Hey, at least it doesn't have round-faced Gerber babies on the packaging anymore, so us athletes can buy them without shame, even without a toddler in tow.

Countdown to Ironman: Week 45: The Paleo Ironman

Everyone knows what endurance athletes eat: bagels, pasta, bread, gatorade, and Gu. Right? Isn't this necessary? Any endurance website or forum will tell you this much, it's an accepted fact. And if you're going to do an Ironman, better buy stock in the wheat farming industry, because according to many experts, it's "foolish" to eat otherwise than a heavy dose of grain-based carbs.

So what the heck am I thinking? I started eating Paleo when I was doing more intensive and less endurance-based training (Crossfit and Karate as opposed to Ironman). But I feel so darned good, I don't want to give up the benefits and go back to eating grain, sugars, etc.. For one thing, all of those niggling little joint pains I used to have? Gone. The creaking knees, the arthritis starting in my knuckles? Gone. Muscle aches and pains after a hard workout? Gone baby gone. Still think I'm nuts? Read 10 Reasons to go Grain-Free and get back to me on that one.

So that leaves me with the Great Unknown, which is how to train for an endurance event on a diet that doesn't give you a whole lot of carbohydrate replacement easily. I mean really, just how many yams and bananas can I be expected to eat? The guy over on the Castle Grok blog can answer that (he's transitioned from Paleo to a high-carb fruit-based diet that involves way more bananas than I will ever be able to stomach) but I don't think I'm cut out to be a fruitarian. Still, I know that as I ramp up my endurance workouts, my body suddenly gets this very intense carb craving, and I'm tuned in enough to my body to tell the difference between OMG get me a Cinnabon NOW and I really need some healthy carbs or my muscles are going to feel dead tomorrow.

So part of this new Ironman journey for me will be figuring out how to do it without the 80,000 boxes of cereal, bagels, and bowls of pasta I consumed last time. As my general guide, the book The Paleo Diet for Athletes will come in handy, although I think it didn't really go far enough in explaining what to eat during workouts. The book covered eating Paleo pretty handily for meals, and essentially says that during racing you need to revert to simple sugars like gels and sports drinks, but it doesn't really say much about how to eat during training, so I may be forging my own path in that direction.

Still, although the Ironman is a huge goal in anyone's life, my real aim is this journey to strive for ultimate health and fitness in all aspects of life. Finding a way to merge my desire to train for ultra-endurance and my need to eat in a way that fuels my body healthily is just part of the challenge.