Thursday, August 13, 2009

hungry?

so my brother has his first 8-hour solo mountain bike race in a couple weeks and was asking if i had any tips. since i have no experience with any endurance events, i figured you yahoos might have some advice on things to eat, things to avoid, or whatever. i know it's not the same thing as a 100-miler or an ironman, but that's closer than track and 5k's

11 comments:

Andrew Jaffe said...

i <3 little debbies Oatmeal Cream Pies...My buddy who does a lot of 80+ mile road races swears by them.

brennan said...

Did he try CHEESE?

///MM said...

Donuts and Red Bull.

///MM said...

For the first 2 hours or so, he should eat whatever he normally would for a long running race like gels, water and gatorade. Beyond that he'll need to start replacing protein in his body and make sure he gets enough sodium. Something around 200cal/hr. If he can unwrap and chew things while mountain biking there are lots of energy bars that have protein- I stick to the more raw/natural ones like Clif/Hammer. Otherwise look to a drink like Perpeteum or one of the Cytomaxes has protein. The only challenge with the drinks is keeping them cold. If possible, keep them in powder form and add cold water at a rest stop or they'll go sour. Also, Ryan, Stanford and I think Alyssa have these electrolyte caplets that you drop in water and they get fizzy and have a nice light citrus flavor to make sure you get enough sodium etc. I forget what they're called. One of those an hour if your sweating normally should be good or 2+ if it's real hot.
Or just search for bike nutrition or triathlon nutrition and you'll get about a million results. The Hammer Nutrition has a lot of good reading too.

RM said...

Ha, I think I'M the only one that actually HAS them, and just dole them out as necessary on rides ;)

brennan said...

From my sister who represented a Falls Road singlet at the DC National Marathon in March and occassionally follows the blog (but is not able to post/comment, so she e-mailed me to have me post)...

"During the IM last year, I had an 'uncrustables' PB&J sandwich and pringles. The pringles are great because u can put them in a baggie, and they won’t get too crushed and taste amazing! Enduralyte caplets are good for replacing the sodium/electrolytes, too. You can just take them with water and swallow ‘em."

-Erin Feldhausen

cheese said...

thanks, i sent him the link

Collin said...

I've experimented around quite a bit during long runs and races and I think I finally nailed a perfect nutritional plan in my 50 miler the weekend before last (which lasted 9 hours), so what I recommend is based on what has worked really well for me.

Based on the relatively low intensity he'll have to be riding at if he's riding all 8 hours, a large percentage of calories will come from fat storage, so it's not really necessary to replace all calories during the ride (in fact, it's better not to because it'll keep his stomach from getting upset). I would recommend getting some calories out of the way via what he drinks. I personally find it best to switch off between water and HEED (which has never upset my stomach) and you get 100-200 calories per bottle of HEED depending on how concentrated it is. The next staple is going to be gels. The one thing that it's important to consider is that no matter how much you like one flavor of gel before the race, you will hate it after 8 hours if it's the only flavor you take, so make sure there's some variety. It sounds really trivial, but it's a pretty big deal to me when I'm racing. Try to get 25 mg of caffiene in every 3rd gel or so. PBJ quarters are a really good way to add lots of calories quickly and increase satiety. As for the protein thing, in actual studies, no-one has really shown a legitimate difference in athletic performance based on taking protein while exercising. Your body can't really repair itself with protein while it's still going hard, but the one benefit to protein is that it dramatically improves satiety and it makes you feel better. I don't know if //MM has tried Perpetuem or Cytomax, but I have and I absolutely hate both of those. They're REALLY hard on my stomach and it's rare that I can get through more than a bottle of either without wanting to throw up. Just looking at Perpetuem makes me sick; if you mix it to the recommended concentration, it won't all go into solution, so you get this gross crap floating on the top. Pardon my French, but it basically looks like you're drinking diarrhea and doesn't taste much off from that. If you really feel the need to get protein via a drink, I'd personally recommend a chocolate milk or a BOOST. Just make sure if he drinks chocolate milk to take it easy for 5 minutes or so to let it settle. One thing that I've found to be a good upper when I start feeling like crap during a really long race is a cup of Mountain Dew. The sugar gives you a pretty immediate boost and the caffeine will last a little while. The last thing to consider is electrolytes. The thing that //MM is talking about that Alyssa takes is called NUUN. I've used them and they work well, but I personally prefer Succeed! S-Caps since they don't add weird flavors to my drinks; you just take 2 pills and you're done. If it's not going to be super hot, 2 per hour should be about right.

As for specific calorie intake, 200/hour or 1600 total in 8 hours is considerably too light from my experience. If his effort level is similar to my effort level when running for about that much time, I would think that he would need at least 2500 calories during the race, so at least 300/hour. I had about 2500 calories in 9 hours at the Mt Disappointment 50 and I felt that I was probably just a hair shy of what I should've had. I felt like my energy levels were good for most of the race but I got a little bit lower than I would've liked a few times and probably should've eaten a couple more gels. So yeah, I would say he should aim for that 2500 mark.

RM said...

Holy shit dude learn how to use paragraphs

Collin said...

Paragraphs are boring.

///MM said...

1. The body need protein as fuel in longer efforts, not to repair itself during a race. This is documented in many places (including the Badwater website, http://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/scni29a5.htm, http://www.emaxhealth.com/14/1218.html).
2. You should not even come close to replenishing the amount of calories you burn during a race.
3. Perpeteum is 100% soluble in water. As in it can be mixed in any concentration from lighter to drink than Gatorade to the consistency of a gel. If it's chunky, you didn't shake it enough.
4. Perpeteum can taste like ass but that's because it has no preservatives and will sour in heat. If it doesn't taste like a creamsicle or smells funny it went bad.
5. Ideally, weight should decrease during an endurance event, but only in the 1-3% range. Eating too much can cause as many problems as eating too little.