Category: Training

TO EAT OR NOT TO EAT?

Today was a typical Thursday morning session usually an early morning ride with some of my fellow athletes out in the countryside. It is that time of the year where getting outdoors is pure soul food especially when its out of the city and in the farmlands.
My wake up call at the moment is around 4:30am until we hit later summer when we can leave earlier. I grab a serving of my favorite TrueStart Coffee or a green tea, get dressed and head out the door. Training will start around 5:30am and then usually last anywhere from 2.5-3hrs. Today was a little longer due to some strong head winds over the last 30km’s and we only finished around 8:30am.

My fuel on the bike = NONE. Just a zero calorie 32Gi Hydrate electrolyte tablet in a single bottle of water. Post ride its a shower, get changed and then off to eat a recovery meal. Today’s was at around 9am and that was my first meal of the day. Scrambled eggs, salmon and avocado.
It was 14hrs since I last ate, with a 3hr training session in-between and a challenging bike course with lots of climbing and wind.

The reason for giving you insight into my morning routine is to throw some light on fasted training which I do constantly. In actual fact a week ago I went out on a 100km ride and about 5km’s into my ride I realized I had left my water bottle at home. I just kept riding, the temperature was cool enough where I realized my sweat rate would be lower and I could get through it no problem and I did. Just rehydrate when I finish.

Its quite a debatable subject and for many a mental challenge which is difficult to even comprehend.
I decided to take a look at my average HR (Heart Rate), Speed and Distance over the past few weeks of my fasted training sessions to give you some more insight into exactly what is going on, on a physiological level.

On my longer training cycling sessions around 2.5-4hrs my ave HR is around 120-129BPM, Speed Ave:28-32km/h Climbing: 700-1000m Max HR around 174BPM of course in a hotter climate like I was in a few weeks ago average HR could go to around 136BPM.
On my shorter 40-80min sessions which are more quality sessions (Intervals, Pace etc) ave HR between 135-147BPM Max HR 181BPM

The purpose of the above data is to really demonstrate the reason why a fasted training session is completely doable. If you take a look at the average HR over a period of time especially on my longer sessions you will notice that I completely control my effort. I don’t go into a glycogen depletion state and I mainly access my fat fuel tank meaning I burn off a load of fat for fuel. This is especially true on the longer sessions where my average HR sits mainly in Z1-Z3 maximum and even then for short periods of time. While my shorter quality sessions do of course use a higher rate of glycogen as a fuel source but taking into account the time of intensity it will by no means deplete it.
Understanding the human fuel tanks to support your training effort is critical to understanding the fuel sources you will be using during your training session and if you understand what your body is capable of then you will have complete confidence in using natural energy stores to support you sessions. I recorded a video with animation recently explaining the human fuel tanks and how they operate during exercise, you can CLICK HERE if you want to watch to get an idea of how they work.

So how is it that someone like me can ride or run 3-4hrs without any fuel but then someone else comes along and just hits the wall and completely fades even if the person is plunging a load of carbohydrates into their body to prevent it. Its quite simple. There are 3 factors that need to be taken into account here and I will explain further.

Fat adaption takes time – Your body needs to learn how to change and become fat adapted. Think about this your body is used to maybe a pre-training meal and fuel during a training session. Your mitochondria which are there to create ATP (to fire up those muscles) are like your little community that you feed and they move around in concentrations dependent on where they are needed the most. Its like someone moving cities for employment ;-). When a muscle is worked over and over it will over time build up a stronger community or force of mitochondria which are used to create energy for that muscle. Stop hiring ie: the muscle doesn’t work and the community will shrink and look for work elsewhere. Just as exercise especially intense exercise can increase concentrations of mitochondria. We need to look at the fuelling process as well. The mitochondria in the muscles become more efficient at burning fat stored within the muscles (intramuscular triglycerides). This makes the body about 25% more efficient at burning fat. Most fat is stored in the form of adipose tissue and should be mobilized and transported into the muscle cells for energy conversion. When a person constantly uses carbohydrates which cause a rise rise in blood glucose the ability to allow the body to use more fat for fuel is lowered significantly. Eating carbs before and during exercise will not make you a fat burning machine by any means. In actual fact when I train with athletes who load themselves constantly with carbs but don’t run the engine to the extent they require them I mostly see roller coaster rides and complete energy fatigue.
Pacing is key – Make sure you don’t over cook yourself. Train within yourself and by this I will use the following analogy. You have a box of matches with around 15 matches in lets say. Those are your glycogen rockets. Each time you push your pace very hard you burn a match or two. If you use up all 15 matches before the end of the your session you are going to hit the wall. Keep your ego in your pocket exercise within the correct zone and you will spare your fuel that much longer.
Loading with Carbohydrates mitigates a higher rate of fat burn and over time glycogen depletion takes quicker than a more fat efficient athlete. Glycogen might be required for some efforts but if you can use more fat to spare glycogen as opposed to sugar well you are in a far better space you will spare it for longer and have more rocket fuel when needed.

It sounds quite simple in theory but in practice it will take time. I usually suggest getting used to fasted training by doing it on shorter sessions and only over a long period of time attempt longer sessions. Remember you are educating your body, training it and the usual energy pathways you were used to in the past are not going to be the same going forwards and this process does take some time transition. In endurance sport being a fat adapted athlete means a far more efficient and powerful energy system over time. Burning more fat at higher intensities than the average Joe or sugar freaks is a major advantage especially in long endurance events. If you are a sugar burning athlete your stores will deplete far quicker than mine.

I will definitely touch more on this subject over time as I am sure many questions will come from it. However from a health perspective remember our bodies are made to burn fat in a normal metabolic state and this is why weight gain and disease is so prevalent in our world today. Sugar is over consumed and never justified. So my answer to the question to eat or not to eat is eat correctly and when its needed, but to ruin a great training session? No chance, absolutely burn that fat.

All the best

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Nutrition Recovery Training

RECOVERY IS THE TRUE MEASURE

Post author By Mark Wolff
Post date September 27, 2017
No Comments on RECOVERY IS THE TRUE MEASURE

My training gear is always prepared the night before so that in the morning I just up and go. I keep it simple and keep it routine so that I get up, get in my green tea and or coffee fix and head out the door. I am a creature of habit, routine and focus.

I switch on my sleep monitor which I have utilized to analyze my last 12 000 hours of sleep and set the alarm for 4:30am. Eyes close its time to sleep. I know that some days an early wake up can cause the loss of that final critical deep sleep cycle where hormonal release is crucial to body restoration and this morning I felt it. Alarm goes off, a light automatically shines from my phone for me take my heart rate immediately otherwise I go blind from it. Rest Heart Rate appears normal but I just feel like I need to recover some more. I close my eyes and go back to sleep.

I am sure every single day people across the globe battle with an early morning training session. I actually do not. Oh you thought I couldn’t get out of bed?
Actually the opposite I very much could but decided not to. I decided that I would push my training session to the late afternoon early evening to give myself an additional 12hrs of recovery meaning 36hr recovery from the previous session. Knowing your body intimately well and understanding when you should and should not train takes time and effort but its something many just don’t do.

When it comes to nutrition I am a freak of analytics. I am the kind of nightmare that walks into a Kauai and reconstructs their menu to suite my immediate needs. I once made them make me scrambled eggs with avocado and asked them drizzle macadamia nut but over it. Another time I told them to make me half the normal rolled oats portion (as the normal portion was for a giant) reinforce it with a serving of pea protein isolate after it was cooked, but made sure they cooked the chia and gojis in the oats not to throw them over afterwards ensuring I got maximum nutrient absorption. I then asked them for a small tub of blueberries on the side. They know me well now they even have names for my meals like Wolff’s Power Oats or Marks Egg Special but that comes with the territory I don’t just accept I do whats good for my own engine. The way I am with nutrition is the exact same way I approach my training. I holistically look at an entire week and shape rest and nutrition around the workouts to ensure maximum recovery to ensure maximum strength and health gains. Its not something I was an expert at when I was younger actually the opposite. In our youth we all want to be hit with hard suffering sessions day after day. However with time you learn that it weakens you and doesn’t strengthen you. Recovery is the true measure of patience and a patient person will reap the amazing benefits from recovering well between workouts.

I often get questions from athletes such as I want you to kill me this week, or please throw a hurt-box week at me and I sit back and laugh thinking just how the concept of proper recovery is the furthest item from their minds. While most people think about their training sessions I am thinking about my recovery sessions. Pick your battles never go into war with a weakness only go in with strength or you will face a losing battle.

I always tell athletes that a rest day doesn’t mean you are not training it means you are recovering. It takes a special kind of person to recover properly. On a rest day you still train your gut by including proper nutrition to ensure proper recovery, immune system strength and health. It also might mean a toned down training session where your max HR is limited and yes you might feel like you doing nothing intense but active recovery is crucial at times.

I cant stress enough how if you focus on recovery and nutrition more than you do only on training you will start to reap the rewards of the patience game which you never thought were possible. Prepare yourself for renewed strength, energy, speed, and of course immunity and health and you will never look back. Recovery is always the true measure.

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Health Training

MASTER YOUR EMOTIONS

I wasn’t sure what to write about today but the past few weeks I have been dealing with many athletes who have had either illness or injury and I noticed a very real trend. Possibly you have experienced this as well.

Around 6 weeks ago while overseas and I decided to go on my first bike ride outdoors in months. A hot summers day and an awesome ride and with just 200 meters from the finish line, BANG. I hit an oil slick while coming through a traffic circle and face planted badly. I also had the bad luck of breaking my baby finger on my left hand. Oh and Murphy’s law would dictate that I am also left handed.

I have to admit I was in a lot of pain and a little disorientated from the quick fall. A car stopped and asked me if I needed help. I looked at my bike reconnected the chain, spun the pedal around, did a quick check that all my bike mechanics were working correctly and said “Yeah, I think I am fine”. I got on and started to ride the back, she was of course shocked to the core. I was just in lets get this resolved as quickly as possible. A self check, showed bumps bruises a torn kit and a broken finger. I got away quite lucky and realized I could keep on training.

The next morning I got up early, went out for a beautiful 20km run and really enjoyed it. I felt a mild stiffness from the day before but nothing like I thought I would. I resumed my training as normal and kept up the cycling and running. However in the background something was lurking and it all happened one morning when I woke for a short comfortable run. About 7km into it I started an ascent up a hill I had run many times before however on this particular one I felt a tightness in my left calve muscle. I stopped immediately and walked a few meters then started to run slowly again but it pulled again. I knew immediately. Calve muscle grade 1 tear. I had to walk around 75 minutes to get back home as the route I chose was not an out and back and I was stuck on the other side of a hill.

I got back home and immediately went into rehab mode. Ice and Heat, Elevation and complete rest for 72hrs. Immediately after I started a series of eccentric loading exercises as well as placed a mild heal raise in my shoes to limit the calve stretch. I eventually managed to get back on the bike and ride lightly as this did not aggravate the area at all but helped speed up the healing. Usually I would call my sports physician and immediately get a platelet injection. I find PRP therapy works amazingly with soft tissue and dense muscle fiber. However I didn’t have access. It was great that I was getting back into the swing of things. However the underlying cause was not being resolved. The main issue was of course misalignment. The impact of my bike fall had thrown out my body alignment quite severely. My left leg according to running analysis was doing around 3% – 4% more work than the right let. That was enough to cause the strain. So some chiropractic manipulation some shock wave and I was back to running again.

A process like this doesn’t happen overnight it happens over time and age and lifestyle can determine the time it will take to heal. Experience has taught me never to get emotional. I understand the physiology intimately and under any circumstances I go into a complete understanding that the body has messaged me in a harsh way. I sit up, I listen and I initiate a plan of action.

The biggest issue I see with health and endurance junkies these days is that they are very emotional. Training and racing is everything and they only think about the objective but not about where they are at this current moment in time. You absolutely cannot get emotional about injury or illness you need to accept it and plan your recovery.
Never set a time frame for recovery based on a particular goal. The goal needs to be set aside it only creates brain fog and you will lack the focus needed to recover properly. Many athletes sit for days thinking their injury will just disappear over time. That just does not happen. It might ease up but if the root cause isn’t dealt with it will come back to haunt you far worse the next time around.

Master your emotions and follow put your recovery plan into action. This should consist of consulting with an expert who understands the injury or illness. It should consist of researching the kind of exercises you can and can’t do. Very often when a runner cant run due to injury they are devastated. I can think of a hundred things they can do, its just you need to think out of the box and work within the framework of your recovery plan. Another thing you can do is absolutely focus on your nutrition, because injury or illness can be attacked nicely through nutrition and it can speed up the healing process if done properly. If you have a lower limb injury like I had there is no chance you can afford to gain extra weight as this will place more stress on the injury. Reducing the weight, reduces the force on the injury and helps with a faster recovery. However many eat themselves into weight gain due to emotional collapse and this just makes the healing process that much longer and more frustrating.

A race or particular training goal will always be there you might just have to shift the goal posts a little and get over the hurdle before getting back on the road. Don’t let the pressure of friends, peers, goals or sponsors push you into the emotional hurdle of your ailment miraculously disappearing. It wont.
Master your emotions and you will master your own journey of health and fitness.

All the best

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Health Nutrition Performance Training

PREPARE TO PERFORM

No matter what sport you participate in from gym goers to endurance junkie’s preparation for a session require not just a wake up and go but an actual strategy for how you are going to fuel yourself before during and after your session.

I often get asked the question of what and it ultimately depends on a few factors which need to be seriously taken into consideration.

These are:

What time are you training?

How long are you training for?

What intensity are you training at?

When are you training again?

Without clearly understanding the objectives of your workout how can you possible achieve the desired outcome. Secondly, what is your main goal?

Weight loss?

More lean muscle mass and a better physique?

Better fitness and endurance?

More muscle mass?

Less body fat?

Health?

Did you know that just training without the proper nutrition around it is just a complete waste of time? You really need to take this into consideration if you want to achieve your goals especially from a health point of view.

I have often used the analogy of comparing a human body to a vehicle. So, you want the body of a Ferrari which is awesome. But instead of having high performance fuel you use a very low-grade petrol and oil. You don’t take care of the engine yet you expect the “Ferrari” to perform. That is ridiculous. You think you can treat your engine like a VW beetle and perform like a Ferrari. Sorry friend it isn’t going to happen. If you look at it from a health perspective imagine placing really bad fuel into the engine and then trying to get it to accelerate to an extremely high speed, with barely any water in the engine. Yes, that’s you, the athlete or lifter who thinks they can eat KFC in moderation and then push out huge weights or high wattage. Eventually the pipe will burst, the engine will blow something will have to give and it always does. Maybe not immediately but certainly over time. If you have a high-performance vehicle you will go out of your way to make sure that the best fuel, oil and tires are used. Same with your own body, if you treat it with high performance fuel and give it the best, you can only expect it to perform at its best.

Do you know what the advantage of being human is?

We might not look like a high performing vehicle or have that lean muscular or fast physique, but one thing we have which a vehicle doesn’t is we can change our shape. We can completely reshape ourselves inside and out and that all boils down to the fuel we place in our engines. It should be the best. I am not talking about illegal substances and quick fixes which impact your health. I am speaking about proper nutrition which will keep you on the journey from a health and performance perspective to reach your goal.

I often hear people saying everything in moderation. What rubbish. If I ate everything I enjoyed in moderation it would be disastrous. Imagine I drank wine, coke and beer in moderation, ate pizza in moderation and the followed that up with some chocolate in moderation. My eating week would be hell. Moderation is an absolute excuse for the lazy to sacrifice their health and goals for emotional attempts at making their serotonin levels rise to fill their minds with awesomeness. In the end it’s a losing battle. You are what you eat and it couldn’t be more accurate than that.

Now with all this in mind I have completely drifted away from the discussion of actual fueling and now that we know how important nutrition is let’s go back to that awesome topic of where to start.

Today we are going to focus on the pre-workout nutrition. It’s going to be critical when trying to achieve a certain training goal.

I asked many questions above? Let’s review them and decide how to tackle our pre-training nutrition.

Time of the training session:

This is crucial as if you are waking up at the crack of dawn and going straight out on an exercise session do you really feel like eating so early on. Is it absolutely necessary to consume something at 4am. Well the truth is it depends on the next question.

How long and how intense is your workout going to be.

Only 60-90minutes long or maybe up to 2hrs or longer. This will certainly make a difference.

Now look at the objective. Weight gain weight loss, body fat burn, fat efficiency for endurance. These all play a part of the puzzle.

Considering the above scenarios, I would suggest any workout lasting up to 90min does not need much fuel at all. The human body has natural energy stores which can keep you going at a high intensity for that period and you can pretty much do a fasted training session.

Check out my video explaining the Fuel Tanks of the Human Body https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3egjhBpfo0&t=2s this will explain clearly how your own natural energy stores work.

Training fasted will allow you to burn off body fat quite early on depending on the session you are doing and simultaneously allow you to become a fat efficient athlete. Many people battle mentally with this. They don’t feel so great and this is only because of habit and what I call the brain train. You have trained your body in a certain way, and its adapted to that. Attempting this is confusing and a shock to the system and so it takes shorter sessions over time building up to longer sessions to become better at it.

If you ever do a fasted training session you must know how to recover properly from it. Without proper recovery you will battle to make the gains you need and if there was a second session later that day you will be fatigued to turn out another quality workout.

I often get asked about muscle catabolism as opposed to anabolism with fasted training. My answer to that is for a session this short you certainly won’t catabolize your own muscle you have plenty of other fuel to work with. If you are a body builder and require a minimum daily protein intake which is much higher than an endurance athlete then a protein is most likely required at wake up and again later after for recovery however that is a different topic completely.

So, I threw a spanner in the works now telling you to train fasted. I am not saying it’s a must. As I do advise athletes on pre-workout nutrition prep to increase fat burn, naturally of course, make the brain happier and provide far better mental focus. There are many meal ideas and natural supplements which can be used to enhance the workout and allow you to perform very well while being rewarded with the same benefits.

I bet your next question is what are these and what I will do is give you a little insight into how I fuel my sessions to explain it a little further.

Not many people know but I did come from a weight lifting background into endurance sport, I once weight 112kg now only 66kg. So, I understand both worlds quite intimately, and how the body suffers in both. Each is unique. I train for endurance but I also do strength and both have their challenges.

At wake up my primary objective is to ensure I am alert and focused. Early morning sessions often sacrifice the final sleeping hours of major hormonal release and final deep sleep cycles. I won’t get into discussing the science of sleep now, however I can say this. Waking up in a deep sleep cycle can leave you feeling fatigued and tired. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

What are my goals as an endurance athlete?

Maintain a lean healthy muscle mass
Keep my immune system strong
Make sure I am a fat burning machine (fat efficiency is an endurance athlete’s best friend)
Ensure my energy levels are consistent

Wow what a list you might say
They are in no order of preference. Each of these are important to overall health strength and speed.

So, I will tell you how I do it.

It’s quite Simple. Firstly, for any athlete, the mental aspect plays a critical role. Strength of mind can get us through almost anything. However, this requires mental focus. This is where my favorite friend caffeine comes into play. This doesn’t mean any caffeine it means measurable caffeine. I use TrueStart performance coffee for this. It carries an accurate 95mg of caffeine per a serving and it’s a natural caffeine releasing for close to 6hrs which completely covers my workout. The best thing is its completely natural and as anyone knows I hate synthetic products.

I know per a kilogram of bodyweight how much caffeine I need before a workout and how long it will last me in order to provide me the right amount of focus to cover my session. TrueStart Coffee does the trick. What else does caffeine do? I free up more free fatty-acids which allow me more access to free energy floating around my body in simple terms more fat for fuel. I also like to load myself with green tea in the mornings. Research has shown that green tea can assist in decreasing fat storage and assisting with fat burn BUT to achieve this quite a fair amount needs to be consumed. I can drink anywhere from 6-20 cups a day depending on my mood. One cup is not going to do the trick but I love waking up to it. I like the taste and use it as a form of hydration.

Generally a session of up to 90-120min for me will be covered by the above due to my fat efficiency. However on slightly longer sessions. I make a little energy bomb and generally this is concoction of pure MCT oil, caffeine, nut butter and vanilla powder. Oh its s a BOMB and a tablespoon kickstarts my engine rapidly, of course I could add some BCAA’s and Beta Alinine to add more fuel to the fire, BUT that’s again for another discussion. I keep it simple depending on my goal. If I don’t feel like eating then I just add pure vanilla flavoured MCT oil or MCT oil with Vanilla powder to my TrueStart Coffee and that’s enough fire to get me going from the mug.

Another product I use when I am on the go is the 32Gi G-Shot, 60mg of caffeine per a serving in a simple snap sachet and easy to stack in my wallet, makes it a very convenient carry and use.

This type of pre-workout ensures I can churn out a quality session with-out compromising what I need. It is so effective you won’t believe the results after a few weeks. I often get asked what about carbs before your workout? Why?

I have natural carbohydrates stores in my body 2000 calories worth and they will easily see me for up to 2hrs of a high intensity exercise (Check out my video link I mentioned earlier) I use what I have no need to douse my flames. Raising my blood glucose levels before a session will just mitigate my fat burning ability so if my goal is to burn more fat why would I start my session off on the wrong foot? It doesn’t make sense. If workouts are much longer then that’s a completely different story and we will get to that in another blog. As for strength training the above would work just as well. So, weight lifters go crazy.

This is just a small share into my morning routine before a session, I will cover more topics of longer endurance sessions, fueling during and post exercise recovery. But for now, keep training hard, sleep well and eat even harder 😉

The Fitness Freak

P.S. I FORGOT

If you are keen on TrueStart Coffee there is a great deal at the moment Just Click Here

32Gi’s GShot is available online at the 32Gi Store Just Click Here

As far as MCT oil go there are a few, but Battle Brew and Natures Choice are two I have used which are awesome Dis-Chem stock Natures Choice and Chrome Battle Brew. Natures choice has a Vanilla flavour which is pretty decent.

As far as my nut butter bomb goes well I will certainly be giving you a recipe in the near future as I make it all myself 😉

Health Nutrition Training

MCT’s for Energy

MCT’s (Medium Chain Triglyceride’s) has been of quite a large debate lately.I assisted Pedro van Gaalen editor of Fitness Magazine to put this informative article together for the publication. It will hopefully provide you all some clarity in understanding MCT’s. Fitness Mag is an excellent publication so do yourself a favour and next time you see the magazine in store take a copy home with you the topics are usually quite interesting and diverse 🙂

Click on the link below to open or download the PDF

MCT Article – Pedro van Gaalen & Mark Wolff

Nutrition Training

Burn the Fat for better Endurance & Health

Post author By Mark Wolff
Post date April 7, 2015
9 Comments on Burn the Fat for better Endurance & Health

Sunday morning 7:30am my alarm goes off and that signals my time for a long training run. Today’s goal is around 2.5hrs which should give me around 33-34km’s at a comfortable pace. An easy no complicated morning preparation involving a nice hot cup of green tea, running shoes on and off I go. Around 11am my session is complete a comfortable 33km run and feeling good. Only now is it time for my first meal of the day.

“Wait a minute” I get asked. “How do you get up so late, don’t eat anything at all then run that distance at that pace comfortably without any need for fuelling before or during???” My short answer is that I am fat adapted. I am predominantly in a fat burn mode, meaning I can go a lot further on less. Whether it’s a 42km training run or a 180km training ride, at the right pace one can go for hours on his natural fat stores if properly trained. If you think about it in terms of motor vehicles, some vehicles require huge amounts of fuel to power them over distance while others are so fuel efficient they pretty much reach the same destination at the same time just on much less.

Over the past 20 years a huge legacy of massive carbohydrate fuelling has been entrenched in the latest generation of performance athletes. However more and more this is being shown to be less of an importance to making the body more fat efficient to be able to maximize the use of natural fat stores for fuel and rely less on carbohydrate intake in order to gain a massive performance benefit in a long endurance event. I often use the Kenyan or Ethiopian marathon runner as an example of this. A predominantly high carbohydrate diet, topped up glycogen stores and a 20km/h average speed for a marathon is all in order, for a 2hr performance that is.
Then we take a look at something like a Two Oceans Ultra Marathon where course record money is up for grabs and the Kenyan & Ethiopian runners appear with force to match their speeds against the Lesotho, Zimbabwean and South African ultra-runners. They just don’t stand a chance at least for now. The ultra-distance runners are so much more adapted to running at a higher pace on less. Yes, far more fat efficient athletes who spare glycogen on fat fuelling and go further on less.

As performance requirements demand more time so does your energy system need to be completely adapted to that time. Topped up glycogen stores are completely limited even if slightly spared with carbohydrate intake so yes smashing out a very high pace for a short space of time is perfect when it comes to carbohydrate fuelling. However the longer the event the fact is the more the fat efficient athlete will have an advantage. Let me just clarify that this doesn’t mean no fuelling on carbohydrates, by all means yes you should be, the brain will function far better on carbohydrate fuelling when the body is under stress and this will make a huge difference in performance however being fat efficient means you will require less than the average carbohydrate dependent Joe.

The Comrades Marathon which is a 90km Ultra run each year in South Africa has incredible winning times of around 5h30 roughly a 3:40min/km pace for this time over a course with huge elevation changes and lots of climbing. I have had the pleasure of working with some of the gold medalists (top 10) in nutrition advisory and on route seconding them. All race fuel is ready and prepped in various forms from liquid feed to food solids, gels and protein. Each year I measure intake of athletes on route in the form of carbohydrates, protein and fat as its being consumed along the route. What is quite amazing to see is that the elite runners actually consume anywhere between 20-40grams of carbs per an hour yet they still perform at an incredible pace. Most people I speak to are convinced these runners are consuming anywhere from 60-90grams of carbs per an hour, however this couldn’t be further from the truth. These runners run on their own natural fat stores and they are so fat adapted they are able to perform at a fairly high intensity with fat being their primary fuel source.

The next question is how do you become a fat burning machine of an athlete?
There are quite a few steps that need to be taken however most importantly is that it doesn’t happen overnight it takes time to become fat efficient and it takes effort and commitment but in the end you will reap the rewards.

Before we go into how to become an athlete that burns more fat for energy, let’s understand what it actually means. There are various physiological structures in the human body which can be “trained” to increase the amount of fat that is utilized for energy. Lipolysis is the process of breaking down subcutaneous fat and converting it into triglycerides which will ultimately be converted to energy and used by the muscles. This process takes time and there are other areas of fat which are more quickly accessible. Upregulating Beta Oxidation, so that you can convert as much fat as possible and at the highest intensity as possible into Acetyl-CoA which of course is introduced into the Krebs cycle to allow for ATP production and fuelling of the muscles is one way. Also by increasing the amount of fat available to the body, to be utilized for energy not just in the form of ketones but in the form of intramuscular triglycerides is another way. In actual fact athletes can derive around 20% of energy from IMTG (intramuscular triaglycerol) depending on diet of course. Women generally have a higher IMTG than men and utilize more during exercise which begs the question are women generally more fat efficient athletes than men? Based on my experiences with female athletes I would tend to favor that opinion.

Increasing ketone levels is another way of providing internal fat fuel sources. However instead of worrying about being in a state of ketosis to make yourself a “fuel efficient” athlete, more steps should be taken to train the mitochondria to utilize more fat as fuel and this can be done in a non-ketogenic state. The focus should be training the body to convert fat to glucose to be used as energy internally without relying too much on external glucose sources. Many athletes try to shift into the LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) dieting phase to try to become fat adapted, however I don’t firmly believe this is where to begin. It’s a very difficult place to start if you are an athlete that suddenly wants to make this switch. I also get many people insisting on going into a state of ketosis without actually really understanding their own body’s requirements before doing such a thing and in many cases it’s not required.

Becoming a fat adapted athlete does require a key focus on nutrition. This is critical to any athletes performance however to make yourself a fat adapted athlete you need to start with your diet. There are some key points when selecting appropriate food types to make you more fat adapted and these are:

To Burn Fat you need to Eat Fat
This is a very important point. The general population fear eating fat, but in actual fact by eliminating fat from your diet you are limiting your body’s ability to be a fat burning machine. Introducing healthy natural fats into your diet is important to become more fat adapted. You don’t have to make huge changes overnight, but definitely have no fear of eating fat as it is critical to fuelling a fat adapted engine. Introduce a higher amount of fats into your diet in order to benefit from them. Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT’s) are an excellent example of quickly accessible fuel in the form of fat which can be immediately utilized by the mitochondria as an energy source.

Carbohydrate intake needs to be Monitored
Fat adaption doesn’t mean cutting carbs it means being selective of the carbohydrates you take in. Dropping carbohydrates to under 50grams a day for most individuals will be an extremely difficult thing to do. I would suggest selecting carbs from more fibrous, low GI and vegetable based options as opposed to grains, breads and starches. It’s all about insulin management and by keeping insulin response very low you can be assured your ability to burn fat will be a lot higher.

Train the Brain
One of the biggest issue with carbohydrate limitation is that most people have a sweet tooth and are sugar dependent or tweaked to crave sugary foods. That’s one of the reasons why I am against “natural” forms of sweet such as honey. Yes, honey is natural however it is completely sugar and breaks down into glucose and fructose which means your brain is still trained to crave sweet and you are still playing with insulin. The same with sweeteners in coffee or tea or diet cold drinks, they might be low calorie but they are training the brain to stick with sweet.

Carbohydrate Timing
The timing and volume of carbohydrate intake is critical. If you wake up in the mornings and take in a higher carbohydrate meal, and then go and train you have completely mitigated your ability to maximize fat burn as you have already raised the blood glucose in your system which will be utilized as a source of energy before the body resorts to fat utilization. If the higher percentage of your daily carbohydrate intake is taken post exercise after a long or hard session due to the low insulin response you will again maximize your body’s ability to remain in a fat burn zone.

Over and above nutrition requirements there are other considerations that you should take into account when it comes to being a more fat adapted athlete.

Fasted Training
Training in a fasted state as mentioned earlier will definitely engage your body to utilize more fat as a source of fuel. By not providing any external sources of fuel, the body will have to adapt to relying on its internal sources primarily being glycogen and fat. Many people I deal with fear going on a session without an energy drink but if the session is 2hrs or under you will manage perfectly on water. If you are still very nervous to attempt it then take a sports drink with you and delay the consumption of it for the first hour in order to kick start the burn in that fasted state. The other option is to take a sports drink which does not cause a big rise in blood glucose so that you can still derive benefit for fat burn.

Training Intensity & Time
Something I need to stress is that training at an extremely high intensity can mitigate fat burn due to the fact that oxygen is required to convert fat ultimately for use as energy. In this case glycogen will mainly be depleted. However, training at a high intensity in a fasted state with shorter workouts and slowly building up will help train the body to utilize a higher percentage of fat at higher intensities and this has been shown in many fat adapted elite athletes. If you can talk while training then no need for high calorie drinks, sufficient oxygen is getting into your system to burn fat assuming you haven’t spiked your blood sugar. If you cannot talk at all during training and are puffing and panting then this is more your glycogen depletion state and these workouts should be kept to under 90min in a fasted stated and you can slowly build on them with time.

So with all this in mind what about racing? Yes we do race on carbohydrates, we definitely feel a great benefit from carbohydrate consumption even in lower amounts than the average person who is completely carbohydrate dependent. If our glycogen stores do deplete at some point in a long endurance event, for us fat efficient athletes it’s a transparent transition from glycogen to fat usage where no major pain or slowing is felt just a gear adjustment needed and the game goes on.

I could go on and on about the benefits of becoming a fat adapted athlete, it really doesn’t take much major effort just some healthy lifestyle, nutrition and training modifications and the benefits will be rewarded long term.

Nutrition Performance Training

Comrades Marathon 2014 – The Nutrition Factors (Post Mortem)

Post author By Mark Wolff
Post date June 5, 2014
4 Comments on Comrades Marathon 2014 – The Nutrition Factors (Post Mortem)

Comrades Marathon Post Mortem

Comrades Marathon this past Sunday as usual did not disappoint. The elite men’s race was exciting from beginning to end and in the ladies the twins 11 year domination came to an abrupt halt with Eli Greenwood completing an amazing final 10km split one of the fastest on the day. Many viewers looked at the twins walking for the first time and initial comments were that they are past their prime, they are too old and their days are numbered. I also heard many stories of nausea and cramping.

I was supposed to run Comrades 2014 but due to a chest infection and a prolonged course of antibiotics I had to unfortunately withdraw, remember health always comes first no matter what. However my day was incredibly good. I did what I do best, I got into the official Nedbank seconding vehicle with Nick Bester and made sure our athletes were fed & hydrated from start to finish. I work with Mr. Price Maxed Elite and some of the Toyota athletes as well and I supported and advised all that I could on the tough 90km route. I often get asked what did the elite athletes use, how did they feed and what did they hydrate on. It’s always a very interesting discussion, and in previous years when I have seconded them I have measured fluid and carbohydrate intake along the route to see exactly what goes into a gold medalist’s body. The day itself was an extremely difficult one for most and I will expand in more detail on the pitfalls and reasons many saw nausea, dizziness and cramping on the route.

Let’s first start with the main rule of thumb. If you train a certain way then you race exactly the same. You never ever attempt to try new tactics or nutrition on race day. If you do you only have yourself to blame when falling ill. Not only is race day nutrition critical, BUT the entire week leading up to the event. Eat what you would normally eat, don’t suddenly decide a few days before or the morning of to try a new food or drink that you have never tried before you are truly asking for trouble. Since Comrades I have spoken to 5 athletes who had a very hard first half during the marathon and all 5 had one thing in common, their pre-race meal was not something they had done before. In actual fact it was severely impacting they tried a new beverage or meal on race day. When you prepare so hard and long for a race and in 5 minutes completely throw it out the window it just doesn’t make sense. Train how you would race I cannot emphasize this enough.

What else went wrong on Comrades day?
Race day fuelling was a big factor. Many athletes take in a whopping load of sugar during the first half only to succumb to it later on. I have always said this and will continue to stand by it. Comrades Race is a slower paced race, meaning you will predominantly use your fat stores for energy. There is no need to over consume blood glucose spiking products such as gels early on, if you do well then you are just asking for trouble. In my buildup to the race, my 38-40km runs were done purely on water. I would wake up have a cup of green tea and go out. I would only have some water if I felt like it. There was no need for taking on major fuel, my pace was around 4:45/km – 5:00/km way slower than my marathon pace of 3:45 – 4:10. This only can mean one thing fat is king glycogen is spared :-).

For many however the biggest factor of the day was actually the temperature and humidity factor. I stood at the city hall in Pietermaritzburg at the start of the race knowing this was the warmest race start temperatures I have ever felt. I hate the cold and I recall 2010 while seconding at Ashburton where it was so cold I had 3 layers on, a beanie, gloves, wind proofs and I couldn’t keep warm no matter what. Aside from that my volunteers who were injured sub 6hr Comrades runners were also dressed in thick clothing and running up and down the road just to stay warm. We were all in agreement it was a really cold day.
At 2010 Comrades Marathon the average temperature in Durban was 19ºC (min 14ºC; max 24ºC) with 63% humidity and 3 km/h wind speed. In 2012 the temperatures were around 23ºC with a humidity of around 38%.

On Sunday I stood in a t-shirt with a thin long sleeved top and I was perfect and that was Pietermaritzburg where the temperatures were 8 degrees. Immediately I advised the elite athletes I managed to chat with on the morning to really focus on their fluid intake and drink to thirst not more, because core body temperatures were going to rise and so would the temptation for major fluid intake. Most novices and even some pro’s land up drinking excessively to try to keep cool, however all this does is overload the system with fluid and can lead to over hydration or hyponatremia. By midday the temperature in Durban had soared to a peak measurement of 33ºC with the humidity increasing from 38% – 76% to Comrades cut off. (see below)

From the onset I knew today was the day people would complain of bad water on route, cramping and nutrition used. Basically pointing the finger at anything to try to explain what happened on the day. In the last 20km’s of the race when our elite athletes came through our feeding zone, one in particular was complaining of leg cramping and a little surprised because he never cramps. We assisted him with a quick resolution to try to get him going again and it seemed to work. Post-race analysis showed over consumption of fluid. Bongmusa the Comrades winner took around 30 water sachets in the last 18km’s of the race. However of the 30 water sachets, 28 went over his head only around 2 in the mouth. This was incredibly smart, he was using the water to try to cool his core body temperature from the outside and definitely not on the inside. At that time of day, and taking in excessive fluid, it would have spelled disaster but there was plenty of wisdom in it.

Why should consuming too much fluid cause issues?

Its quite simple, in hot especially more humid conditions a lot of fluid is lost in the form of water and sodium. Taking in excessive fluid at this stage actually starts a process of what is called Hyponatremia which is basically serum sodium concentration of less than 135 mEq/L as a result of an accumulation of total body water greater than the body’s accumulation of electrolytes (sodium + potassium).
In simple terms due to the heat losing a lot of fluid in the form of water and sodium, and then consuming large amounts of water, can lead to low plasma sodium (salt level in the blood)

I was told by one group of athletes that they had been training in hot conditions for the race. However the hot climate they were training in was nowhere near the humid conditions they were racing in and they also succumbed to fluid consumption for core temperature cooling and potentially caused major issues. Another group of runners contacted me stating that with around 30km’s to go they consumed some gels and immediately began vomiting. I had some news for them it wasn’t the gels. With 30km’s to go these runners were in the thick of peak day temperatures and had also landed up over consuming fluid after careful analysis.

The symptoms for over-hydrating are crystal clear:

Nausea
Cramping
Dizziness
Disorientation
Confusion

Generally in athletes nausea and cramping are what is first experienced.

One of the issues with Comrades Marathon is that there are far too many water tables spaced too close to one another. It would be far more beneficial to space them out a little more. When running a marathon or an ultra, one tends to forget about when he consumed last how long ago, and often the mind just goes into a see and grab situation which leads to trouble.
A conversation with the Russian twins afterwards had shown excessive fluid intake. One of them landed up in hospital with close to renal failure symptoms which were declared to be a result of low blood sodium. What’s incredible from the majority of the cases is that at the line they were diagnosed with dehydration, however results later showed this was completely incorrect. Very often dehydration symptoms are confused with hyponatremia symptoms. Athletes can perform dehydrated quite easily, but slightly overhydrate and you are toast.

During a long event such as Comrades Marathon weather conditions play an extremely critical role. The key elements are always drink to thirst, don’t over drink. If you are feeling very hot then cool from the outside not the inside. If you are taking in a lot of fluid try consuming the water with carbs and minerals to maximize the fluid uptake. If you train in cooler climates and then suddenly race in a hotter more humid climate you could potentially look at additional sodium intake to try to mitigate this from happening.

Lastly and this is a topic that completely irritates me to no end. The runners that take NSAID’s with them. Yes you, the ones who carry myprodol, ibuprofen or any other pain killer or anti-inflammatory with them during the run. Its a fact that more athletes that have landed up with renal failure, which also starts with major symptoms of nausea, dizziness etc have been a result of consuming these types of medications during an event. In the words of my running coach “If you need to take a pain killer or anti-inflammatory during Comrades, then you should NOT be doing Comrades”. If this is you then understand you are putting your life at risk and what you are doing is absolutely nothing less than very stupid.

Its always tough on the day especially in 90km’s of running and anything can potentially happen. However the more prepared you are and the better you know your body the less chance there is of having any major issues.

Performance Training

The Pipe Club

I often see runners get asked how can they run?

In the sporting community it usually comes from the cyclists and swimmers, and when these athletes switch to triathlon the one discipline that is sometimes the toughest for them to grasp is the dreaded run.

Pushing hard on the swim, or destroying the bike hoping one has made up enough time to hold the runners back on the run. No chance. The strong runner comes cruising by with ease, leaving you behind wondering what you did wrong. A multisport athlete that comes from a running background is often at a great advantage. I often tell people that a runner can learn to ride a bike but for a cyclist to switch to running is not so easy and it takes a lot of hard work and effort to get to a stage where you feel very comfortable.

I was fortunate to have quite a bit of swimming and running in my school days, but then for many years I let it slip away and switched my focus to weight lifting and then finally coming back to mountain biking, road cycling and then to triathlon.
My bike was always a strong leg and with all that leg power I was very confident to sit on the bike and smash the pedals for long periods of time, but once I neared transition I used to dread that run that lay ahead.
I knew it would be a hard slog and definitely not a cruise. No matter how much time I put into my competitors especially in the longer distance races they would just eat it back and some more leaving me feeling very frustrated.

I would hear a lot of talk from the running community about the runners high and I thought man you guys are smoking some awesome pipes because I could not imagine any such thing. I decided to make a conscious effort and switch all my core focus to running, reducing my cycling and swimming focus and seeing where it would lead me.

Day after day I would pound the tar, searching for something which in my mind was fictitious and only existed in the minds of the “Pipe Smokers”. Months went by and I was still battling through. Muscular legs and a muscular upper body didn’t help my runners frame and the conscious effort of becoming the runner was one of hard physical training, learning proper technique and training the gut with proper nutrition. More months went by and I was convinced that no such thing as the runners high existed and if it did exist why did I not experience it on the bike or the swim, why were these “runners” so special?

I built up speed, I built up distance and my running improved dramatically but that one single thing was still eluding me.

Two years later, on a Sunday morning I was headed out on a 25km training run, and all I could think about was my reasoning for the run was because I had to. I had some races coming up and needed the mileage. Understand one thing, running was still not enjoyable for me even though I was running well and it had improved drastically. I truly dreaded long runs, I found them tedious and boring and couldn’t wait to get to the finish to bank the session. It was in my mind a painful drag.
I headed out with some music to keep me company and at around 10km’s in I was thinking man still another 15km’s of darkness to go. I just kept pushing through, legs one in front of the other and trying to keep my focus on getting to the finish.
At around 15km’s I started to feel pretty okay and then as time went on I started to feel better. I wasn’t so much focused on the finish line anymore but the present.
Then suddenly it hit me, like a molecular nuclear explosion from absolutely nowhere. Extremely heightened senses, shivers in every single part of my body where sweat ran and my mind just completely drifted into a zone where I felt completely superhuman. My pace lifted my legs floated, and my mostly used frowning facial muscles which were always there during a run slowly eased off and put an extremely rare smile on my face, which seemed so ridiculous but there was no ways it was going anywhere it was there to stay. Complete elation and euphoria, the Runners High.

I finally became a member of the “Pipe Club” and never doubted them again. I wondered if this was a once off, or only under certain conditions. There are many articles on the subject and the physiology behind the euphoric conditions have been explained in many ways, but as runners who cares as long as its there we love it. It allows us to contemplate to strategize, to think to dream, to create, to destress and to smile its all encompassing and makes us feel alive.

Ten years later and I can honestly say this I experience the high every single time I run, it does not matter if its track, short or long, at some point in my workout that smile hits my face and every single thing around me disappears while I relish my own little piece of heaven even if it is for a short while.

My advice to anyone taking on running or switching their focus to running, keep turning over those legs, keep persisting and I can guarantee you that the pot of gold will eventually be waiting at the end of your rainbow.

Tags 32Gi, cycling, endurance, Fitness, multisport, Runners High, running, swimming, Track, triathlon

Nutrition Training

“If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”

Post author By Mark Wolff
Post date October 7, 2013
No Comments on “If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”

Recently I have been receiving a lot of questions on training and racing nutrition. My last blog was focused on becoming more fat efficient, keeping your fuel intake to a minimum and adapting the body to using its natural fat stores as a predominant source of fuel in an endurance session. It’s an awesome position to be in when you can just get up and go long and not worry so much about fuelling yourself.

As mentioned previously in sessions under 2 hrs you can perform extremely well at a high intensity on no fuel at all, if you do consume anything it’s purely to make your brain happy and give you that extra mental boost to up your performance. This has been shown in the famous “Carb taste not swallow test” where athletes purely rinsed the drink in their mouths without and a percentage increase in performance was demonstrated (The Effect of Carbohydrate Mouth Rinse Cycle Time Trial Performance-Jeukendrup) It shows that the mind has a lot to do with an athlete’s ability to perform and Prof. Tim Noakes has often presented the central governor theory where the brain is completely in control by the body and understands all physiological feedback mechanisms. It determines based on conditioning and ongoing readings it gets from the body during exercise as to what point it will control your ability to perform or under perform in a means of ensuring you are protected. If you are not trained to go out and race at a particular effort, the central governor will surely tire you with feelings of fatigue under those conditions in order to slow you down and ensure the body is safe. There is of course opposition to this theory, but there is one thing that both sides still agree on and that is the body needs to be trained to perform.

Last week on a whim I decided to run 42km’s to celebrate my 42^nd birthday. Maybe not a normal thing to do, but my running coach said go easy and get it out the system. Even if he said no I think I would have been stubborn enough to do it. With no race pressure, and not the best night’s sleep, I got up early had a cup of strong black coffee, took a waste belt with two 250ml water bottles and headed out with a friend. I ran at a very comfortable and evenly controlled pace, I got back home in 3h19 minutes with a little water to spare and felt great.

The big question I get asked is how you can go and run for that long and not eat anything, and the answer is simple I had all the fuel I needed for that long run inside me BUT more importantly my body was conditioned and gut trained extensively to do that quite comfortably.
That run probably didn’t touch much glycogen at all, it was primarily fuelled on fat. Also the time of running was way less than say some of the rides I do on water only which can go anywhere between 5-6 hours so it wasn’t a worry. The point is the body is trained over a long period of time with proper nutrition consumption to allow for this. The brain and body work together to understand the body’s ability and limitations and with time you will understand as your body gives you constant feedback. (Check out a previous blog “Listen to your messages”)

The big questions I got after that is if this is how I will race? My answer to that is absolutely not. This is where the title of this blog comes into play, “If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail”. It’s very critical to properly prepare for racing conditions as well, and even though I do a lot of water training, I definitely set aside time for what I call racing “nutrition training”. It’s an important area of being able to race at your best. There is no ways any athlete can go into a race not properly prepared for what he has to consume and under which conditions to ensure that he performs at his or her best. Racing is done at a much high pace for a longer period of time than a training session and it requires a different type of fuelling.

It’s not a difficult aspect of training but I need to stress that it’s a critical aspect and something that cannot be left to the last week or two before a race, because you will want to have your race nutrition down packed way before that in order to make sure that you have a plan and you can habitually stick to it.

My recommendation is to choose a day where you test out your race nutrition. This means waking up in the morning eating a pre-training meal as if it was your pre-race meal going out for a few hours at a fairly intensive pace (slightly slower than race pace) and checking the following:

Digestive Comfort
Palatability
Energy Levels
Ability to Perform

I generally do a session like this once every 10 days and know a few elite athletes that will do this once a week. Sessions like this must be planned, well thought out and think about mimicking it close to your race day as possible.

Nutrition of course will vary for each sport discipline and it’s important to understand that what you do on the morning of a 10km race, marathon, triathlon and cycle race can all differ and should be planned, checked and re-tested to ensure you are on track.

If you can finish that session strong and feeling good with all the check marks in the boxes you are definitely on the right track. This does not need to be done too often as you would not want to try and mimic race day efforts too much, but you need to find a winning formula.

If you are doing a stage race it requires even more effort to test your nutrition as you will need to test your day nutrition first, and once happy with it move on to testing your stage racing nutrition. The critical area of stage racing is recovery in order to be able to keep consistent performance’s each day and keeping those energy levels constant. It would be highly recommended to do at least 3 repeat performances each day including pre, during and post racing nutrition which will give you an idea of exactly how you feel day to day and whether your nutrition strategy is working for you.

Each person is unique and what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another so you need to experiment and see what is the best for you.

As a general guideline in deciding what you are going to eat on race day I can suggest the following:

Avoid any Food Consumption that can cause Digestive Issues
There a few foods than entirely ruin a race. You might think they don’t affect you generally so when you are racing they should be fine. However you need to understand that blood i.e.: oxygen is needed to perform digestion. If you are running very fast, oxygen will be diverted away from your stomach to your heart, brain and leg muscles to cater for the exertion. The stomach needs an adequate amount of electrolytes, roughly equal to that of the body tissues outside of the stomach, to perform digestion. If digestion doesn’t occur and the contents of the gastrointestinal tract don’t move, the muscles in the walls of the tract may begin to spasm, bringing on uncomfortable stomach cramps. Triathletes tend to experience more digestive issues than most sport as the positions of 3 disciplines vary. The swim is a lying down position not very conducive to easy digestion and there is buoyancy on top of that, this is usually the setup for cramping that occurs later on during the bike or run. Secondly a triathlete cannot consume during the swim or hydrate so if he or she has consumed something not suitable to that discipline a fair amount of time will pass before the first bit of water can be consumed to try to create some form of balance. In long distance events like Ironman very often consuming a glucose spiking product at the onset will cause GI distress pretty early on. A common mistake that many endurance athletes make.

Running moves the bowels around quite a bit more as the body’s movements gets the organs bouncing and shaking nicely. I am emphasizing that what you eat that’s generally comfortable will still need to be tested during exercise which is what I call digestion under stress.

The main foods to avoid before a race are definitely anything that is high in fiber as this is a certain way of getting your bowels to work nicely and that’s the last thing you need before a race or during it, especially while pre-race nerves are finding their way into every part of your body. Another recommendation I make it to avoid high lactose products. Dairy is a very common cause of digestive problems. Even if you are not lactose intolerant you don’t know what it can do to your body while under stressful conditions. Heavy meats or cheeses are a big no. You want to consume foods that are easy on the digestive system and leave you feeling comfortable.

Size of Meals
Another issue is that many athletes over eat and over hydrate pre-race leaving them feeling bloated heavy and uncomfortable. That is a guaranteed curse under racing or exercise conditions. You need to play with your portion sizes to see what your comfort zone is. I generally recommend a +-300 Calorie food portion pre-race.

Timing and Type of Meals
The timing of your pre-race meal is also critical. I can use a personal example for this one. A few weeks ago, I had a 25km trail race. I made a BIG rookie mistake. I though the start time of the actual race was 7am. There were two races that day and I for some reason just never read the details properly which is not like me, but I was chilled about it nevertheless. I woke up at 4:30am had a nice rolled oats and nut butter meal. I got a lift to the race and on route I get told the race is actually starting at 6am. I was thinking in my mind this is going to be even harder and it was. The timing of my meal to my 7am race was perfect, but to the 6am race it was not. I had to suffer some serious heart burn through the event and I expected to. At least the pain could mentally be bypassed and allow me to come out on top. I am just using this example to stress the importance of meal timing. Preferably minimum 2hrs before the race you want to be done and dusted with your pre-race meal, only requiring some top ups in between. To be honest in this case I shouldn’t have had a pre-racing meal maybe just a small shake or drink before, it wasn’t required at all especially at that time of the morning and I hadn’t run a trail race in years so my nutrition prep was not exactly where it should have been.

I guess this leads into another question. When should I eat a proper pre racing meal and when is it not absolutely necessary. In this case I always look at the type of the event, my pace and expected time. Generally any race for me taking less than 2hrs I won’t eat. I might take a small shake but I certainly don’t require any food. These shorter events as I define them will generally be raced on water. If the pace is extremely high and is closer to the 2hr mark then chances are I will consume some sugary stuff on route to keep my brain a little happier and ensuring a little bit of glycogen sparing on route.

Race Fuel
When events get longer 3hrs or more, you need to understand that at a very high pace you will deplete your glycogen levels and will need to eventually rely on fat as the predominant fuel source. Your body will naturally slow down to cater for the fuel change as fat burning requires oxygen and at too high a pace that’s not going to happen. However this is where fat efficient training plays a massive benefit, because if you have trained your body to adapt to this sort of fuelling it can be trained to do it a slightly higher intensities and this is a great benefit. Also the switch from glycogen to fat caused by glycogen depletion is a shock for some a feeling of fatigue and not being able to move any more. The trained athlete will move through this quite a lot more easily. There is another way around this and that’s to try to pace yourself properly in an endurance event where you won’t burn your glycogen completely and have saved it towards the end where you really need it. In a cycling race it’s sometimes very difficult as the effort or intensity is determined by the bunch and this is where most people get burned, as they are forced to perform at a high intensity to stick with it even if they don’t want to. The wise thing is to try to stick it out in the middle and draft as much as possible to conserve your energy stores. However in an ultra-distance triathlon or long running race you have the ability to determine your own pace and control your intake and predominant energy fuel based on that.

It’s important to remember that if you are going at a controlled pace or intensity consuming a blood glucose spiking product will mitigate you from being able to use your fat stores as energy, so keep fuel intake to lower insulin spiking products which allow for this. When performing under very high intensity conditions you are best suited to taking a blood glucose spiking product as fat is not easily accessible. There of course is a combination of both glycogen and fat being used when doing long events, as pace varies through the event, but fuel intake will ultimately determine this as well, and can upset the balance.

Another point I want to enforce is that endurance fuelling should never be complicated. The simpler you keep it the better. I advocate drip feeding in endurance events. This means smaller more frequently timed feeds as opposed to feeding every hour. It’s easier on the digestive system and it keeps the body and energy levels in a nice equilibrium. I generally will feed every 20-25 minutes in a long endurance event.

Plan and Train the Gut
I was invited to chat to the participants of Ironman 70.3 Western Australia this year as we were event sponsors. The first question I received was shouldn’t we be consuming between 60-90 grams of carbohydrate per an hour of exercise during the event. My immediate response to that was has your gut been trained to consume 60-90 grams of carbohydrates per an hour. The amount of carbohydrate consumption per an hour during exercise is not based on the number of carbs you are consuming, but more importantly how much of those carbohydrates your body is capable of absorbing and using. If your body is only capable of absorbing 50 grams of carbohydrate per an hour because that’s the food you use and that’s what you are used to, then how would your system cope under excessive intake meaning, your gut completely under-trained to deal with the increased consumption. The answer is it won’t. In long endurance events I can easily get away with between 20-50 grams of carbs per an hour in an event. I have never needed to venture into the 60-90 range ever and I don’t feel I would cope in that range either. Another thing that is important to note is the 60-90 gram carb intake is based solely on the fact that you are fuelling with carbs only which means racing at a very high intensity, its doesn’t take into account controlled pace and fat usage. Scientific studies have shown that a combination of specific carbohydrates in unique ratios can maximize the absorption rates however I have witness many an athlete opt for those test results only to be left with severe stomach issues on route. Another thing I don’t agree with is relying on drinking ones calories. I definitely feel that food solids are a far better form of fuelling. Dr Allen Lim well known scientist especially with his involvement in premier Tour de France cycling teams has shown a lot of science behind this and you can view it here.

There are many ways to approach nutrition when it comes to training and racing. It’s something that always needs to be taken into consideration and never left on the side. So the next time you sit down look at your training and racing schedule. Plan your workouts, your swims, cycle and runs, but add another training session into that called nutrition. Train your gut, get on track and make sure you give yourself the best opportunity to perform well and hassle free at your next event.

Keep at it

all the best

Tags athlete, cycling, endurance, marathon, nutrition, racing, running, sports, swimming, training, triathlon, unstoppable

Nutrition Training

“With all thine offerings thy shalt offer salt”

Post author By Mark Wolff
Post date September 15, 2013
6 Comments on “With all thine offerings thy shalt offer salt”

This quote is a famous text straight out of the bible. In biblical times all sacrificial offerings had to include salt. This was a covenant conceived between the Israelite’s and God.

In today’s times the sacrificial salt offerings have reappeared in a huge margin in the sports industry where an athlete feels if he does not consume a certain amount of salt during an event he will become the sacrificial offering along route.

The energy drink providers have certainly ingrained that into the minds of most athletes and today a covenant exists between sports drink manufacturer and athlete where salt is part of the parcel of their products. Any endurance sport newbie I bump into especially triathletes and ultra-marathoners the first bit of advice they seem to be given is to take salt tablets. As far as carbohydrate drinks go I often get questions on why has this drink only got 60mg’s of sodium yet another has 500mg’s of sodium and so the search for salt continues.

Why is it that athletes feel the need to take salt? It’s quite simple they are all looking for that cure for cramping or prevention of cramping. No wants to land up in an event which they have prepared so hard for and then succumb to the dreaded muscle cramp which is debilitating, and often ends ones event.

A few weeks ago I was watching Ironman Mont Tremblant, as one of our awesome athletes Liz Blatchford was doing her 2nd ever Ironman in hoping of qualifying for Kona which by the way she did in style. While watching the race another story was unfolding and that was of Luke Bell who came into T2 with three other well-known athletes Guillaume, Ambrose, Berger. The first 10km’s saw Bell losing time to Guillaume & Ambrose who were running at an incredible pace more like a 10km. He slowly began pulling back time and eventually landed up 1:25 ahead of them and then started to grow a nice gap on the run. Holding this pace would surely see him winning the North American Championship in style. Luke Bell is said to be the most talented Ironman athlete never to win an Ironman however he took his first win in May of this year at Ironman Australia.
It was awesome to see him so comfortable at the front of the race looking for that 2^nd victory and then the trouble started at the 20km mark. Suddenly Luke Bell stopped with a cramp in the leg. He tried to walk it off and then went into a stretch mode to release the cramp. He lost some time during this episode but then eventually carried on running and held a nice pace again. Kilometers later the same thing happened but this time the cramp was worse and he had to stop a little longer, stretching it out and walking a fair amount. In the meantime some top marathoners from behind were starting to gain momentum and slowly ate into Luke Bells gap. The cramps kept reoccurring and at one stage the stop and stretch took such a significant amount of time to release the muscle that even the crowd was beginning to wonder if he would be able to continue.

In the end Luke Bell won the race and in a record time of 8:26:06, an incredible performance. He actually never panicked at all when cramping just handled it like a true professional and worked through it properly.

The story above provides a lot of insight into cramping and we can learn from it.

Where was Luke cramping? In his right leg.

How did he release the cramp? By proper stretching technique and slowly getting back into a running rhythm.

Was the cause of his cramping sodium depletion? Absolutely not.

If an athlete cramps due to loss of electrolytes how would it be possible to stretch out the cramp and continue. Electrolytes don’t get recreated by stretching unless there is some new physiological breakthrough we have not yet been informed of.

The other thing that is worth mentioning is why a single muscle would be targeted if when there is electrolyte depletion it occurs over the entire body. If an athlete had to tell me he was cramping all over from his hands down to his feet I would sit up and take notice. However any athlete I deal with mostly cramps in a localized area and this is certainly not due to sodium depletion as many tend to believe.

It’s a fact that the main cause of cramping is due to an undertrained muscle. It does not mean you have not trained properly but it means you have pushed your muscles passed a threshold which you were comfortable with during your training. I have a simple example which I see all the time. An athlete does an Ironman distance race where usually his pace for a 180km ride would see him finish in say 6 hours, of course terrain and weather dependent. However all of a sudden in a particular race his pace is much higher than in training probably due to competition and ego. It can even be a time difference of 15 minutes faster which his legs are just not used to, and suddenly the dreaded cramps set in.

In the particular example of the Ironman above Luke was pushed beyond his comfort zone by his two competitors at least in the first 10km’s he just could not keep their pace and he had work to do to catch them back. A good chance that the first 20km’s were harder on his legs than what he was expecting and that was also after a tough bike course which Mont Tremblant is known for. So muscle overuse was definitely a major factor in his cramping.

It’s important to understand in any race of any nature what your body is capable of. If you don’t put it through the paces and train the muscles properly to cope with the intensity and time on them you can land up in trouble. I often hear athletes saying you must never race when you train. I cannot agree.
If you you don’t do any race pacing when you train then how can you race? You need to train your muscles to cope at any given pace.

Now let’s take a look at the electrolyte facts which have been scientifically demonstrated through experimentation and research.

The first factual statement is that sweat itself is hypotonic. This simply means that you lose more fluid than sodium when sweating. In actual fact when you sweat your sodium levels become more concentrated triggering the mechanism of thirst. Drink some water dilute the concentration of sodium, thirst disappears and your body is happy.

Your body is an incredibly finely balanced machine, it knows exactly what it needs and when, you just need to learn how to listen to it. In order for a person’s body to have a proper equilibrium the normal blood sodium level should be around 135 – 145 millimoles/liter (mmol/L). If a person’s sodium levels drop towards the 130 zone or under you are at severe risk of hyponatremia.
This is actually quite common in endurance athletes and in common terms it’s what’s classified as over-hydration. Over-hydration has become quite common among athletes who drink not to thirst but who drink an amount per an hour because they have been told to in order to prevent dehydration. Any athlete trying to consume the exact amount of fluid that he is losing to sweat could be a contender in the over-hydration department.

Let me make one thing clear, an athlete that dehydrates can still perform and at a very high level. You will find every elite athlete at the end of a marathon or ultra with fluid loss and slightly dehydrated, that is quite normal. However over consumption of liquid will see your demise and very quickly. It’s easy to resolve a dehydrated state by taking in fluid, but to get rid of fluid when you over drink in an event is not simple and the world of sport has seen a number of deaths related to hyponatremia.

Another thing to take into account is that symptoms for dehydration and over-hydration can be similar and in certain cases athletes have mistaken the symptoms and then over consumed liquid to try to reverse the situation they thought they were in. This only made matters worse and put them into a dangerous situation.

So what does a sports drink that contain fairly high levels of sodium do for me?

Actually it does not do much. The carbohydrates play a role in provisioning energy and helping maximize the absorption rate of the fluid ingested. The sodium simply makes you drink more and will slightly help increase the absorption rate. It will cause that thirst mechanism to be unnatural and remain there for a long period of time causing you to drink more because you think you are thirsty.

A sports drink that has a nice high sodium content will surely prevent dehydration, BUT you still run the risk of over-hydration. Actually more so than just drinking plain water because with drinking water your thirst trigger is accurate, but with salt thrown into the equation it now tricks you and this needs to be monitored carefully. I always recommend a drink with a lower sodium content for an athlete which makes it easier to manage their fluid intake more naturally.

The next question I get asked is surely if I consume sodium in a drink, my sodium levels rise substantially in order to justify additional fluid intake? The answer to that is no. The differential is actually so insignificant it won’t play a role at all.

I did a lot research on the matter a few years ago and two sports scientists I have a lot of respect for are Professor Tim Noakes and Dr Ross Tucker. Professor Noakes has published a book called Waterlogged which is an incredible read for anyone that is fascinated by the subject of hydration. Dr Tucker did extensive research on the causes of cramping, which was documented in 2007 and you can gain a lot of insight at the following link at his “The Science of Sport” website. Over and above my own studying and research into the subject I have worked with many athletes over the past few years and seen their ability to perform while managing fluid intake properly, including myself.

Another issue which sometimes causes athletes to over-drink is heat. It happens often where an athlete will attempt to cool down their body by drinking fluid, especially if it’s cold fluid. Unfortunately this does not work well at all. You not really cooling down your core temperature and you are in a situation where over consumption of liquid can occur. The most efficient way to cool down your core temperature is to actually get cold water or liquid into the lower abdomen or groin area (a future blog ;-)). Throwing over one’s head is not as effective but it’s still better than consuming liquid in an attempt to stay cool.

Another fact I want to mention is that of course training in cool conditions will get your body used to fluid loss under those cool conditions. Suddenly moving to a much hotter more humid climate will of course put you under far more stress during exercise. Fluid loss will increase and you will need to manage it a lot more carefully. Its always good to acclimatize and mimic training conditions to predicted race conditions. I actually have a training partner who when he races in the overseas summer while he is training in our winter does a number of indoor treadmill and bike sessions with heating in the room in order to ready the body for temperature changes.

In conclusion I would like to mention that each and every person is unique in the amount of liquid they require for proper hydration and electrolyte balance. Some athletes can run 30km’s without any water while others cannot go more than 10km’s without a drink. This comes down to getting to know your body and understanding how much fluid consumption is perfect for you. It will of course vary under different conditions as weather will determine our fluid loss in the form of sweat.

The only accurate trigger that we have and it’s a brilliant tool that we are born with is called thirst and if we listen to it properly we cannot go wrong. Remember that water is best or a low sodium drink if you really want your thirst trigger to be hitting the bull’s eye constantly. Lastly the next time your friend suggests he has a cure for cramping please do me a favour and turn to him and just say, yeah we know “just train properly”.

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