How to fuel your training

The topic of what to eat before training is greatly debated in the world of endurance sport. This question is asked by almost everyone I coach and there seems to be great confusion about what is best to do. So, in a bid to give more clarity, this article goes into detail about how what you eat effects your training. This should hopefully enable you to make more informed choices about what to eat before training sessions and get more from them.

 Before we go into detail, I want to make it clear that I am not advocating any one particular diet here. What we eat is our diet and anyone that tells you that there is a best diet is wrong. We are all different and we all respond differently to different diets. However, there are well established principles that have been proven through sound scientific research. When I say sound scientific research, I mean well designed independent studies that don’t have any bias. There are plenty bad studies out there and a lot of bad science Netflix documentaries albeit there is some good stuff within all the nonsense.   

 Your approach to what to eat before training should be very simple, you don’t do the same training every day, or at least you shouldn’t be, so why would you eat the same thing every day. Here are some questions to ask yourself when deciding what to eat:

 ·     What is the aim of the session?

·     Is it going to be hard or easy? 

·     What is my training going to be tomorrow? 

 What we eat will have a significant effect on what we metabolise and what our body uses as fuel. So, we need to eat the right things before training so that we give ourselves the appropriate fuel to enable us to execute the aim or targets of the session. This means there is no ‘best’ thing to eat as the choice should be determined by what type of food is required to fuel the session appropriately. There will be an abundance of choice when it comes to choosing a food source that fits the requirements of the session. This means, generally speaking, you can eat what you like and you don’t have to think lots of foods are taboo.

 How to choose what to eat?

 For easy sessions or long and slow:

 Easy sessions, by their name, should be easy; and long slow sessions should be done slowly (relative to your pace). From a technical perspective, these sessions are designed to be aerobic effort sessions. This means that energy is being metabolised in the presence of oxygen. This is what builds endurance and gives us the ability to perform exercise over long durations. It’s very easy to do these sessions too hard and then not get the right adaptations or benefits from the session. 

 Ideally, we want to be working at an intensity that means we can metabolise fat for energy. We are generally poor at metabolising fat as humans but the benefits of being efficient fat burners are significant. We have about 90mins worth of carbohydrate stored in the body as glycogen but we can have in excess of 80,000kcals of fat stored in our bodies! Training our bodies to become more efficient at metabolising fat can drastically improve our ability to sustain higher intensities for longer periods of time and prevent us from bonking. Doing these sessions at the right intensity will help increase fat metabolism but eating specific foods before training can also help increase our efficiency. 

Some people will try and do easier or slower sessions fasted. This is ok if you’re tight for time and you’re doing something like an easy 30min run before work. This will help improve your ability to metabolise fat but there is a more beneficial way to improve fat metabolism. Ideally, you should eat a higher fat meal before doing a session of this nature. Eating a high fat meal will prime your body to metabolise fat and spare muscle glycogen. I would normally use eggs as the base of a high fat meal but something like avocado would also be perfect. Another popular choice is using MCT (medium-chain triglycerides) oil. . It is well documented that MCT oils are very effective in promoting fat metabolism. This oil can be added to smoothies or even coffee. It is best to make sure the MCT oil you get is from pure coconut oil and not from palm oil. 

 So, there are multiple ways in how you can make up a high fat meal and make it work in any form of diet. Try using higher fat meals before your easier or slower training and you may find that you develop better endurance and don’t experience as many fluctuations in energy levels. This can be particularly beneficial before doing long bike rides and long runs. However, I would recommend that you start to consume food and take on additional energy during your longer sessions after the first hour as that is necessary in order to get your body used to absorbing carbohydrates for racing. 

 One final note on this type of fuelling is that many people try this and find that they experience some stomach discomfort. This is pretty normal as getting your body comfortable training after eating food is a skill and takes time to develop. We need to be able to cope with food in our stomach while exercising, especially over longer distances. So, be aware that this may be the case and slowly build up how you do this. 

 For faster or higher intensity sessions:

 I would define these sessions as when you are working considerably above threshold. This will vary for each athlete but examples of this would be work that’s done at over 85-90% FTP on the bike and above 5-10km pace on the run. These sessions by nature should be hard and should hurt if they’re done correctly. Everyone will probably look at their training each week and pick out a couple of sessions that they think look ‘horrible’ or wonder if they’ll have the legs to complete it. These sessions are a vital component of a well-balanced training plan and executing them well relies on multiple factors. These can range from how well rested the athlete is to how motivated they are to complete it. One significant factor that effects our ability to perform these sessions well though is muscle glycogen stores and carbohydrate availability.

 Performing high intensity effort in any sport requires good carbohydrate availability. Eating a high fat meal before a VO2 session on the bike will blunt your ability to sustain the level of effort required to work the right energy systems in the appropriate way. Additionally, not eating anything before this type of session may have a similar effect. Especially if you are doing a hard session early in the morning. Breaking down carbohydrate produces more energy than fat and it produces it faster. Therefore, for these types of sessions, we want to fuel them with carbohydrate. 

 There are multiple ways to do this. Ideally eating a meal rich in carbohydrate is best. Again, you should eat what you like and what you are comfortable with- just make sure it’s high in carbs. Something like porridge with honey and blueberries or banana would work well. This should be consumed about 60-90mins before the session in a perfect world. However, as many of us are time pressured, we sometimes need to eat closer to the session than this. I go back to the point made earlier about getting your body used to training on a full stomach. It is possible to eat a high carb meal about 20-30mins before a session and be comfortable. This is very important if you’re doing more than one session in a day. Eating a high carb diet can result in glycogen stores being significantly replenished within 4 hours. It’s possible to do 2 hard sessions in one day if they are spaced out appropriately and the right fuel is taken on between sessions. 

 Other ways of fuelling high intensity sessions are by taking something like an energy bar or gel just before the session. A high carb drink could also work well. Some of this does again come down to personal preference and what you like the taste of. This is sometimes essential and these products can be very effective but I would say that you need to make sure you’re eating as many nutrient dense foods as possible. Energy products have absolutely no benefit for us apart from giving us carbohydrate for a session. 

 These harder sessions require planning and preparation. You need to give your body the fuel to execute them correctly. Think back to sessions that haven’t gone so well and how that may have been affected by what you ate in the lead up to the session. There’s a lot of elements in our lives that we have no control over but making sure we eat something 45-60mins before a hard session should be achievable for everyone. 

 Hydration:

 The other factor to consider for every training session is hydration. Again, there are lots of conflicting arguments about the effect of dehydration and the optimal way to hydrate. It’s pretty simple, being hydrated will remove the risk of any dehydration having a negative effect on performance, so make sure you’ve drunk some fluid before you train. Around 200-400ml would be suitable for most. If you sweat a lot, taking on some additional sodium in this drink may help improve your performance. Precision Hydration make electrolyte tablets with different amounts of sodium. This means you can tailor your drink to meet your needs. 

 Conclusion:

 Hopefully this gives you a better understanding of how what you eat can affect your training and what you should be thinking about doing. Getting a good plan and completing it is only half the battle. Additionally, just completing a plan should never be the goal. We are pushing our bodies and we are committing an enormous amount of time to achieve our goals. Food is one element that is within our control and making smarter choices around what we eat can make sure we’re getting the return we deserve from the effort we put it. 

 There is no magic bullet and there is no best diet. What I am describing here doesn’t even have a name. It’s just practicing sound scientific principles and fuelling the body in the way it needs. It does take time to think about this and routines are always hard to change but I can guarantee you that adopting these rules will help you get more from your training. The simple takeaways are making the hard training hard and the easy training easy. Then eat the fuel you need so that you can meet the aims of the session. 

 Please comment if you have any further questions.