STORY #1
I was part of a three person co-ed team, getting ready for a 72 hour race in Virginia that was slated to start at midnight. As usual with these things the entire day had been spent on race preparation. That included gear inspections (stations to present and get signed off on mandatory emergency gear, mtn biking gear, climbing gear, orienteering gear, paddling gear and general race gear), skills tests, race meetings, map and race passport handouts, and plotting and laying out the course for the race. It sounds tedious and it was. It sounds intense and (looking back) it was. You always told yourself that you would take a nap at some point during the day, but that never seemed to happen, and by the time the race started you had already been up for 18 hours and were running on adrenalin.
It was late in the evening. Gear inspections, skills tests, race briefs, and course plotting had all been done. Looking at the map my team-mates and I reviewed the course, strategized, taking in what this race was actually going to look like on the ground, and we were finally able to pack our pack now that we knew which order events were taking place.
As I was packing I looked around the convention center hall. The room was filled with racers all doing the same thing. All focused, looking at maps, choosing which gear went into the bottom of their pack and what would be kept most accessible. For this race the only official Transition Area was a bike pickup (meaning all other gear for the race we had to carry with us for the entire race). All racers were easily wandering around in final race prep and in barely contained excitement. I knew what they were thinking because I was thinking the same thing – OK – let’s just get this show on the road.
Close to my team table was a four person co-ed team. Three guys and one woman representing Annapolis. As I was still messing around with gear packing I looked over at this team. They were young, focused, disciplined, in excellent physical shape the way you would expect midshipmen to be. I looked at the girl and truly……...was a little jealous. I remember thinking that I didn’t look that good even when I was that age. And now here I was more than 20 years older than these kids. Sigh.
I then turned my attention to one of the young guys on the team. He was kneeling on the floor and in front of him were military-straight and organized rows of food. Nothing but Cliff Bars and Power Bars. All in neat straight lines and he was meticulously counting them. I knew what he was doing. He and I both knew that racers should take in about 200 calories per hour. Enough to top off energy stores, but not so much that it would make you sick to your stomach while staying on the move. The race was 72 hours, and was unsupported so we therefore had to carry all the food we needed for the race with us. There was always the possibility that we would pass through a town during the race and be able to grab something hot – but my experience from previous races told me that more often than not we would be passing through tiny mountain and rural towns in the middle of the night and nothing would be open. And so we had to carry all the food we needed to get us through the race.
This young midshipman knew all that as well. Knew how many calories he needed. Knew that slowly digested complex-carb foods would keep him satisfied longer and would provide slow release energy over a longer period of time. What he didn’t know (that I and other experienced adventure racers knew), was that you couldn’t eat Cliff Bars and Power Bars for 72 hours straight under intense race conditions. About six hours in and you were done. You couldn’t stomach them any longer than that and your body would start screaming for simple carbs. Easy to digest carbs. Comfort food carbs. Variation in texture carbs. As this disciplined, young, highly trained team continued to pack and as this young midshipman continued to count his Power Bars, I knew that very likely they would not finish the race. They didn’t. We did.
STORY #2
I had completed my first (8 hour) race in NC and was spending the day training with a woman who would be my team-mate for an 18 hour race up in Ohio a few weeks later. We met at Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee and the plan was to spend the day trail running and mountain biking. It was a very hot day and by early afternoon I realized that I had neither eaten nor drunk enough throughout the morning while on foot, and was starting to feel run down.
As we mountain biked I consciously tried to drink more water but it was very hot and I struggled with increasing nausea. As the nausea increased I could feel the strength draining out of me, and I struggled to keep up with this much more experienced racer, not wanting her to see me struggling. As the nausea and weakness increased (and as the heat and humidity of the afternoon continued to increase) it became almost impossible to eat. I had a Pop Tart in a sandwich bag in the front pouch of my day pack. Pop Tarts had been my go-to while training alone, but on this day I took a bite and it refused to go down. Chewing it (and chewing it and chewing it) the one bite of Pop Tart refused to go down until 10 minutes later I took a drink of water in desperation and finally succeeded in swallowing the entire mix.
I tried something different – a Teddy Graham cookie. Same thing – chew and chew and chew, take a drink, swallow it all down. By that time I was in a severe nutrition and hydration deficit and was overheated – all resulting from lack of attention to these issues all morning. By mid afternoon we were pushing our bikes (in between periods of rest – which meant me sitting on rocks and logs on the side of the trail feeling queasy, light headed, disoriented and shaky) because I was now too weak to ride. Instead of focusing on training, both me and my new team-mate focused on trying to get me healthy enough again to be able to make it back to our vehicles which were miles away. It took a couple of hours of choking down bites of food and choking down sips of water until I finally had enough strength to be able to slowly ride my way back to the start point. But I felt awful the entire ride back.
STORY #3
When I first met LC (my now husband) he came over to my house, and we planned to mountain bike together at a local trail. At that time I was completely dedicated to training and adventure racing, and used to joke that I worked strictly to “pay my mortgage and finance my growing adventure racing addiction” - which was only partially a joke. I had an entire bedroom filled with racing gear, another closet filled with gear, a kayak and canoe on palettes sitting in the back yard, and a road bike and mountain bike both chained to a post under the car port.
As we were getting geared up to head out to the trail I asked LC to reach into the closet and grab the box labeled “Race Food”. As he pulled the lid off he looked at the contents of the box and then looked up at me in surprise. He had expected Power Bars and Clif Bars and there WERE those things (as well as other types of nutrition bars). But in addition to those, LC found snack size chocolate bars, candy of every kind, prepackaged cookies, home made trail mix, cheese and crackers, jerkey, fruit snacks, fruit roll ups, salami and cheese sticks, potato chips, mini raisin boxes and more. It looked like a candy store had exploded inside that plastic tub. And LC quickly learned that Little Debbie was a close personal friend.
Every one of those things had been eaten in training and in races and I knew how my body responded to them. I knew that if all else failed and I could stomach NOTHING else, I could always stomach fruit snacks and raisins. That bananas were usually safe as well. That I wanted and needed different kinds of sweetness with different kinds of textures over the first few days of non-stop movement. That the chocolate of winter would be traded for the tootsie rolls of summer. That I wanted sweets for the first couple of days of racing, but after that I wanted more cheese, tuna, salmon, salami sticks and jerkey and less sugar beyond day two. That by day three it was a continual effort to eat and would stay that way for the duration. By that time I needed to eat but couldn’t stomach eating, so consuming enough was always an effort.
Different food worked for different racers. Some gnawed on boiled eggs for hours at a time while on the trail (yuk). Others grazed on sandwich bags filled with boiled potatoes or salmon or sliced green peppers. Some brought a frozen burger or burrito with them and grazed it it for a few hours when it defrosted. And of course the ever present variations of items commonly thought of as “junk food”. Transition Areas were always places to reach for protein – roast chicken, ham, turkey, canned ravioli, cheese, a burger if your support crew had time to make a stop in a small town before meeting with you to help you get geared up for the next stage of the race. Always a delicate balance of what your body could stomach and how much your body could stomach while you were continually on the move.
TAKE AWAYS:
I could write nutrition and hydration stories all day long. I’ve bonked a couple of times during races and training (where the energy stored in your muscles has been completely depleted). Those stories are always ugly stories of feeling terrible, disoriented, exhausted, sick to your stomach, and generally really really……...bad. During very long periods of activity the entire point of eating small amounts regularly is to top off those energy stores, use easily accessed energy instead of those stores as much as possible for as long as possible, and it’s important to figure out what works for you to keep you going.
There are many trains of thought on food while on the go for extended periods. Some take-aways from my own experiences:
1. It’s important to eat well and with sound nutrition most of the time. Generally I maintained a healthy and varied diet during my “everyday life”. But during races all bets were off and sound nutrition was NOT my primary consideration. Calories was the only consideration. Calories that provided quick energy, tasted good, were light to carry, and that did not upset my stomach. There is also a lot to be said for eating comfort food – you cannot put a high enough price tag on a Snickers Bar in the middle of the freezing mountains in the middle of the night on the third straight day of racing.
2. What you THINK will work for you doesn’t always work for you out in the field. I munched on pop tarts for a few months during training when I first started racing. It took one bonk at Fall Creek Falls State Park to teach me that when I feel totally rotten, pop tarts just do not work. I was in such a poor state during that training that the only way I could swallow food was to chew a bite for 5-10 minutes and then force it down with water. Experiment with different foods during different times of year and during different length outings to really figure out what works for you.
3. Eat about 200 calories every hour while on the move, and drink at least one ounce of water every 10 minutes while on the move. A general rule. The important issue is to eat consistently and drink consistently. I’ve learned along the way that I drink more while carrying a water bladder than I do while carrying bottles. I’ve also learned along the way to keep Gatorade in a cage water bottle while biking for additional calories and electrolyte replacement (but to water the Gatorade down ½ and ½ so it is easier to digest, and to alternate sips of Gatorade from bottle and water from bladder).
4. Pay VERY close attention to your physical well being while on the move for extended periods of time:
* Pay attention to your feet (not nutrition related but always Rule #1).
* Eat a little, often.
* Drink a little, often.
* Don’t take new things (untested things) on extended trips – everything from your new hand-held gps to your new sleeping bag to your new Montrail hiking shoes to the food you eat – should all be tested, familiar and things you know for sure you can count on to work well for you out in the field.
* What works for you may not work for someone else. Field test everything (everything) on short trips before going long
* Your buddys’ food will almost always look tastier than the food you’re carrying. Don’t be afraid to swap or share.
Finally - don't ever let anyone tell you that Little Debbie cannot be a close personal friend.
I was part of a three person co-ed team, getting ready for a 72 hour race in Virginia that was slated to start at midnight. As usual with these things the entire day had been spent on race preparation. That included gear inspections (stations to present and get signed off on mandatory emergency gear, mtn biking gear, climbing gear, orienteering gear, paddling gear and general race gear), skills tests, race meetings, map and race passport handouts, and plotting and laying out the course for the race. It sounds tedious and it was. It sounds intense and (looking back) it was. You always told yourself that you would take a nap at some point during the day, but that never seemed to happen, and by the time the race started you had already been up for 18 hours and were running on adrenalin.
It was late in the evening. Gear inspections, skills tests, race briefs, and course plotting had all been done. Looking at the map my team-mates and I reviewed the course, strategized, taking in what this race was actually going to look like on the ground, and we were finally able to pack our pack now that we knew which order events were taking place.
As I was packing I looked around the convention center hall. The room was filled with racers all doing the same thing. All focused, looking at maps, choosing which gear went into the bottom of their pack and what would be kept most accessible. For this race the only official Transition Area was a bike pickup (meaning all other gear for the race we had to carry with us for the entire race). All racers were easily wandering around in final race prep and in barely contained excitement. I knew what they were thinking because I was thinking the same thing – OK – let’s just get this show on the road.
Close to my team table was a four person co-ed team. Three guys and one woman representing Annapolis. As I was still messing around with gear packing I looked over at this team. They were young, focused, disciplined, in excellent physical shape the way you would expect midshipmen to be. I looked at the girl and truly……...was a little jealous. I remember thinking that I didn’t look that good even when I was that age. And now here I was more than 20 years older than these kids. Sigh.
I then turned my attention to one of the young guys on the team. He was kneeling on the floor and in front of him were military-straight and organized rows of food. Nothing but Cliff Bars and Power Bars. All in neat straight lines and he was meticulously counting them. I knew what he was doing. He and I both knew that racers should take in about 200 calories per hour. Enough to top off energy stores, but not so much that it would make you sick to your stomach while staying on the move. The race was 72 hours, and was unsupported so we therefore had to carry all the food we needed for the race with us. There was always the possibility that we would pass through a town during the race and be able to grab something hot – but my experience from previous races told me that more often than not we would be passing through tiny mountain and rural towns in the middle of the night and nothing would be open. And so we had to carry all the food we needed to get us through the race.
This young midshipman knew all that as well. Knew how many calories he needed. Knew that slowly digested complex-carb foods would keep him satisfied longer and would provide slow release energy over a longer period of time. What he didn’t know (that I and other experienced adventure racers knew), was that you couldn’t eat Cliff Bars and Power Bars for 72 hours straight under intense race conditions. About six hours in and you were done. You couldn’t stomach them any longer than that and your body would start screaming for simple carbs. Easy to digest carbs. Comfort food carbs. Variation in texture carbs. As this disciplined, young, highly trained team continued to pack and as this young midshipman continued to count his Power Bars, I knew that very likely they would not finish the race. They didn’t. We did.
STORY #2
I had completed my first (8 hour) race in NC and was spending the day training with a woman who would be my team-mate for an 18 hour race up in Ohio a few weeks later. We met at Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee and the plan was to spend the day trail running and mountain biking. It was a very hot day and by early afternoon I realized that I had neither eaten nor drunk enough throughout the morning while on foot, and was starting to feel run down.
As we mountain biked I consciously tried to drink more water but it was very hot and I struggled with increasing nausea. As the nausea increased I could feel the strength draining out of me, and I struggled to keep up with this much more experienced racer, not wanting her to see me struggling. As the nausea and weakness increased (and as the heat and humidity of the afternoon continued to increase) it became almost impossible to eat. I had a Pop Tart in a sandwich bag in the front pouch of my day pack. Pop Tarts had been my go-to while training alone, but on this day I took a bite and it refused to go down. Chewing it (and chewing it and chewing it) the one bite of Pop Tart refused to go down until 10 minutes later I took a drink of water in desperation and finally succeeded in swallowing the entire mix.
I tried something different – a Teddy Graham cookie. Same thing – chew and chew and chew, take a drink, swallow it all down. By that time I was in a severe nutrition and hydration deficit and was overheated – all resulting from lack of attention to these issues all morning. By mid afternoon we were pushing our bikes (in between periods of rest – which meant me sitting on rocks and logs on the side of the trail feeling queasy, light headed, disoriented and shaky) because I was now too weak to ride. Instead of focusing on training, both me and my new team-mate focused on trying to get me healthy enough again to be able to make it back to our vehicles which were miles away. It took a couple of hours of choking down bites of food and choking down sips of water until I finally had enough strength to be able to slowly ride my way back to the start point. But I felt awful the entire ride back.
STORY #3
When I first met LC (my now husband) he came over to my house, and we planned to mountain bike together at a local trail. At that time I was completely dedicated to training and adventure racing, and used to joke that I worked strictly to “pay my mortgage and finance my growing adventure racing addiction” - which was only partially a joke. I had an entire bedroom filled with racing gear, another closet filled with gear, a kayak and canoe on palettes sitting in the back yard, and a road bike and mountain bike both chained to a post under the car port.
As we were getting geared up to head out to the trail I asked LC to reach into the closet and grab the box labeled “Race Food”. As he pulled the lid off he looked at the contents of the box and then looked up at me in surprise. He had expected Power Bars and Clif Bars and there WERE those things (as well as other types of nutrition bars). But in addition to those, LC found snack size chocolate bars, candy of every kind, prepackaged cookies, home made trail mix, cheese and crackers, jerkey, fruit snacks, fruit roll ups, salami and cheese sticks, potato chips, mini raisin boxes and more. It looked like a candy store had exploded inside that plastic tub. And LC quickly learned that Little Debbie was a close personal friend.
Every one of those things had been eaten in training and in races and I knew how my body responded to them. I knew that if all else failed and I could stomach NOTHING else, I could always stomach fruit snacks and raisins. That bananas were usually safe as well. That I wanted and needed different kinds of sweetness with different kinds of textures over the first few days of non-stop movement. That the chocolate of winter would be traded for the tootsie rolls of summer. That I wanted sweets for the first couple of days of racing, but after that I wanted more cheese, tuna, salmon, salami sticks and jerkey and less sugar beyond day two. That by day three it was a continual effort to eat and would stay that way for the duration. By that time I needed to eat but couldn’t stomach eating, so consuming enough was always an effort.
Different food worked for different racers. Some gnawed on boiled eggs for hours at a time while on the trail (yuk). Others grazed on sandwich bags filled with boiled potatoes or salmon or sliced green peppers. Some brought a frozen burger or burrito with them and grazed it it for a few hours when it defrosted. And of course the ever present variations of items commonly thought of as “junk food”. Transition Areas were always places to reach for protein – roast chicken, ham, turkey, canned ravioli, cheese, a burger if your support crew had time to make a stop in a small town before meeting with you to help you get geared up for the next stage of the race. Always a delicate balance of what your body could stomach and how much your body could stomach while you were continually on the move.
TAKE AWAYS:
I could write nutrition and hydration stories all day long. I’ve bonked a couple of times during races and training (where the energy stored in your muscles has been completely depleted). Those stories are always ugly stories of feeling terrible, disoriented, exhausted, sick to your stomach, and generally really really……...bad. During very long periods of activity the entire point of eating small amounts regularly is to top off those energy stores, use easily accessed energy instead of those stores as much as possible for as long as possible, and it’s important to figure out what works for you to keep you going.
There are many trains of thought on food while on the go for extended periods. Some take-aways from my own experiences:
1. It’s important to eat well and with sound nutrition most of the time. Generally I maintained a healthy and varied diet during my “everyday life”. But during races all bets were off and sound nutrition was NOT my primary consideration. Calories was the only consideration. Calories that provided quick energy, tasted good, were light to carry, and that did not upset my stomach. There is also a lot to be said for eating comfort food – you cannot put a high enough price tag on a Snickers Bar in the middle of the freezing mountains in the middle of the night on the third straight day of racing.
2. What you THINK will work for you doesn’t always work for you out in the field. I munched on pop tarts for a few months during training when I first started racing. It took one bonk at Fall Creek Falls State Park to teach me that when I feel totally rotten, pop tarts just do not work. I was in such a poor state during that training that the only way I could swallow food was to chew a bite for 5-10 minutes and then force it down with water. Experiment with different foods during different times of year and during different length outings to really figure out what works for you.
3. Eat about 200 calories every hour while on the move, and drink at least one ounce of water every 10 minutes while on the move. A general rule. The important issue is to eat consistently and drink consistently. I’ve learned along the way that I drink more while carrying a water bladder than I do while carrying bottles. I’ve also learned along the way to keep Gatorade in a cage water bottle while biking for additional calories and electrolyte replacement (but to water the Gatorade down ½ and ½ so it is easier to digest, and to alternate sips of Gatorade from bottle and water from bladder).
4. Pay VERY close attention to your physical well being while on the move for extended periods of time:
* Pay attention to your feet (not nutrition related but always Rule #1).
* Eat a little, often.
* Drink a little, often.
* Don’t take new things (untested things) on extended trips – everything from your new hand-held gps to your new sleeping bag to your new Montrail hiking shoes to the food you eat – should all be tested, familiar and things you know for sure you can count on to work well for you out in the field.
* What works for you may not work for someone else. Field test everything (everything) on short trips before going long
* Your buddys’ food will almost always look tastier than the food you’re carrying. Don’t be afraid to swap or share.
Finally - don't ever let anyone tell you that Little Debbie cannot be a close personal friend.