The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
What To Eat and Drink To Fuel Your Best Training Days, with Stephanie Howe, PhD (#243)
OVERVIEW
Stephanie Howe, PhD is our go-to source for no-nonsense, evidence-based nutrition guidance. She doesn't abide fads or pseudoscience and has no allegiances to sports nutrition or supplement companies. An elite ultramarathon runner who won Western States, CTS Coach, and the provider for CTS Nutrition Coaching services, Stephanie works with cyclists, runners, triathletes, and more. In Episode 243 of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast", Stephanie and Coach Adam Pulford discuss the fundamentals of sports nutrition for training, misconceptions about eating sugar, how the recent "max carbohydrate" trends apply to Time-Crunched Athletes, and more.
TOPICS COVERED
- Why athletes shouldn't be afraid of consuming sugar during exercise
- Ingredients to look for in sports nutrition products
- Adjusting calorie/carbohydrate intake by exercise intensity
- Nutrition for endurance days vs. interval/competition days
- Gut training: what it is, why it's good, how to do it
- What to eat in the 24 hours before important training/competition
- Hydration recommendations for training/competition
- Why you should carry both water and sport drink
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LINKS/RESOURCES
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance, even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now onto our show.
Speaker 1:Fueling your body is essential for high performance and going the distance. Happily, I don't think anyone would contend that these days, now that we've moved away from training tactics and other silly things of the past. But there's still a ton of confusion in endurance sport when it comes to nutrition and hydration. How high should you carb? Is all the sugar that we're pumping into your body a bad thing? And how do you actually figure out what's going to work for you on race day? All this and more is what we're going to talk on today's podcast. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and here to help me answer these questions, and more is what we're going to talk on today's podcast. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and here to help me answer these questions and more is professional ultra runner, winner of Western States 100, bandero 100K, lake Sonoma 50, and Chianti 120K. Phd in both nutrition and exercise physiology, and mother to her son, julian, cts Pro Coach Stephanie Howe. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks, adam, great to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is quite the introduction. By the way, there's a lot going on there of which people will learn more about here, but you've got some street cred and I just really want to say thanks for taking time on your busy schedule to talk to us today. Yeah, happy to yeah. So I'm guessing the cycling side of our audience may not know you from the running world, but clearly you're a thing there. Could you please tell us a bit more about yourself, some of the highlights and maybe where you're potting from today?
Speaker 2:I've been in the endurance space for the last 15 years and I've been a runner myself, just trail runner. I've been sponsored by the North Face for the last decade and also have a PhD in nutrition and exercise science, so really have a blend of the two. So the book by the book, in academia and then also in application, because I'm an athlete myself and I've bounced around a bit in where I've lived. I was in Bend, oregon, for about a decade, and now I'm coming to you today from Chamonix, france, which is right in the middle of the French Alps. It's a fantastic place to be a trail runner and I'm really happy to call this place home.
Speaker 1:It sure is a very beautiful place and very, very low, but bend is nothing to shake a stick at either.
Speaker 2:It wasn't so bad either. It was like I traded a good for better. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, cool. Well, thanks again for taking time in for for everyone listening, you're in for a real treat, not only because Stephanie is a superstar, but because this is a. This is part one in a two part series where we'll discuss everything that you need to know to create a solid fueling plan for race day. But to get there, we need to do it in training first. So in part one, which is today, we'll focus on the training and lifestyle side of things, which will cue us up for part two, where we focus on the race plan. So one thing I respect about Stephanie and her approach is how she always encourages us coaches, as well as her athletes, to remember the basics. So let's start there. When it comes to fueling, stephanie, could you remind our audience of the three macronutrients and how our body uses them and when it uses them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great place to start. So there are three macronutrients carbohydrate, fat and protein and they're all equally important for our body in different ways. When we're training or racing, we primarily use carbohydrate and fat, and we'll probably go into how we use each one, but it kind of depends on the duration and the intensity. And then protein isn't necessarily used as a source of fuel, but it's used a lot for the rebuilding after a training session. It's also used in the body as like a signaling mechanism and for a lot of other physiological reasons in the body.
Speaker 2:And when we think about eating, we want to eat all three macronutrients, and so diets that cut out one or really limit one aren't necessarily sustainable or healthy for the long term. And so when we think about like eating as an endurance athlete, we also want to go back to like what does our body need for like optimal health as well, and it does include all three macronutrients. So we start there. And then when we talk about fueling during a training or during a race, we look at again the type of activity, so cycling versus running a little bit different. We look at the duration and we look at the intensity.
Speaker 1:And I think it's. It's so important to start there in, really, because there's there's a lot of science as well as art that goes into fueling plans and for for all of our listeners, cause everybody's getting the high carb message now, right, yeah, which is awesome, but it's super important to know that all of the time you are using all of the macronutrients, and that goes from like sleeping to training, and it just you think about dials right. As you dial up intensity, you're dialing up carbohydrate need or burn rate right, and as you go a little bit longer, you dial down the intensity. As we're exercising, you need a little bit more, or you're burning more fat, and then, at rest and in repair, that's where the protein comes in, but we always need all of the things.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that being said, a really good way to think of it is not like a light switch, like an on off, but actually like dials, like you just said, because even when you're maximally using fat, for example, you're still using some carbohydrate.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. So I think the main message there is uh don't restrict any of them, because once you do, you'll start to uh create some problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's talk about how food works. In one of our recent continuing educations from CTS, you talked about the need of, like, fast fuel and then the need of slow fuel. So, fast fuel during training, slow fuel a little bit more like during life, right, yeah? So let's talk, like just in general, when we turn up the dial of intensity and we need fast fuel. What is that fast fuel? Probably carbohydrates, right, but like, what does that look like? Just in general terms, and then we'll talk about how to dial it in for training sessions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a really um big point of confusion right now, because I think in a lot of athletes' minds they're blurring the two. They're blurring when they sit down to eat a meal versus when they're fueling on the bike or on a run, and when you can think of those as like two separate occasions. Like one is actually, they're different metabolically how they work. So one you actually want something that takes a long time to break down and get into the body and is full of, like micronutrients and fiber and all that kind of stuff. The other, when you're training or racing, you want something to be really quick. The whole reason that you fuel in the first place is to get energy to your muscles so that you can keep doing what you want to do.
Speaker 2:And you don't want something that's going to sit in your stomach and take a long time to break down. So that's going to sit in your stomach and take a long time to break down. So that's where the simple sugars come in, and we don't need to be afraid of those simple sugars because we're not eating them for like a meal. Like if you came over to my house and I served you a gel for dinner, that would be. Really that's not what we want to do. We want to have like a mixed meal, but when you're on the bike you actually want that quick sugar because you want it to get into your body quickly so that you can use it. So those are two very distinctly different eating occasions or fueling occasions. No-transcript to some of that. Like there is a, there is a use case for real food, but for the most part you actually want that simple carbohydrate because you're going to use it.
Speaker 1:Completely agree. But one quick thing is how long are some of your ultra run races?
Speaker 2:Anywhere between like five hours to 30 hours ish, and some of them are like up to 60. So you can be out there for a couple of days.
Speaker 1:That's a long time. I, I, I really don't want to do anything for 30 hours in my whole life. So for a lot of people, for a lot of people listening, you know they they are doing events where you know it's five, six, 12 hours, that kind of stuff, and we're and if we're throwing in a gel or two every hour, that's a lot of sugar. A lot of people they're getting the message on Instagram and influencers and Tik TOK and all this crap about how bad sugar is. Do we need to worry about that sugar? I mean two gels an hour, all the sugar pumping in when we're actually exercising. Is that something to be scared of?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. So if you back it up, zoom out and look at the amount of time you're spending during those activities versus how much time you're actually eating real food throughout the year, it's a very small percentage for most people, right? Even if you're including it every week in your training rides, it's still a very small percentage. So when you can kind of like see that, it's like oh yeah, that's not the majority of my diet, right? And then the other thing is, when we take in a gel, it's not going to our entire body and being digested and absorbed. It's going right to the working muscles. And the reason we know that is that for carbohydrate glucose to be absorbed or to be taken up by the cells, there has to be, like, either an insulin response to cause the receptors to go on the surface of the cell or a muscle contraction. So we know when you're riding your bike that glucose is going to your working muscles to be used as a fuel, not to your entire body, and metabolize and store it and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:The other thing to consider is the end fate of a tablespoon of sugar or a gel or something simple like that, versus like a piece of kale or a banana or a sweet potato is the exact same thing. It's glucose, and so we're just kind of like taking that digestion piece out of it so that our bodies can use it quicker. So we don't need to be worried about sugar, we don't. We can just kind of like put on um earmuffs when we're when those uh things come through on social media, because it's not the same. And, like I said, if we were having gels for dinner, that's kind of a problem, but that's not what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I always like to say like, so long as you're moving, so long as you're exercising and a lot of our listeners you know they're doing races, they're high performance oriented you need to worry about fueling your body. The problem with sugar is when you just don't move. You know, when you're sedentary and you bathe yourself in sugar, that begins to be a problem. But that's excess of calories, that's lack of movement and there's other things that go on because you're not actually using that fuel and you create a lot of metabolic issues when you don't move. So I think, like, simply put you, dial up those intensities. You keep your body moving, you're going to need to nourish it in carbohydrates and simple sugars. It's fuel, man, it's not. It's not harmful.
Speaker 2:Yep Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, uh, in order to figure out what works for you and what doesn't, um, I always like to say start with science, use trial and error and figure it out. Is that about what you do with your athletes, too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and especially with nutrition, because it is a science but it's applied as an art and no two people are the same even the same person over two different races. Depending on, like, the temperature or their fitness or the time of year, it's going to vary a little bit. So, yeah, we absolutely start with the science. We have this framework and then we fill it in with the individual specifics that the person needs. So most of the time I will kind of do a brief like physiology one-on-one or metabolism one-on-one, to like just teach the athlete a little bit about why they want those simple sugars, kind of what we just went through. And then when they see like aha, okay, I get it, then we start with like okay, what are the products available that you could try Identify like two to three. We don't want to identify like 10, because that's overwhelming right. Then there's like choice fatigue, so we find a couple to work with and have the athlete try them out in training.
Speaker 2:And so normally, like you said, it's really popular to be high carb right now, which is great. I'd rather have that be the issue than like fasted training or just like trying to bonk. Like that doesn't sound fun. But the other issue to consider is not everybody needs to be super high carb, because one of the primary reasons for DNF in ultra running is GI upset, and I'm sure it's similar in cycling as well. So we want to find that sweet spot where we're getting the athlete enough carbohydrate but we're not going too high, because although Tour de France cyclists might need 120 grams per hour, you might not need that, adam. You might not need 120 grams. That might be too much for your stomach. So we're going to try that out training to see what you tolerate and what feels best.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let's go there. I mean, whether it is the framework that you use with starting out with an athlete, or do we just kind of like start in on carbs per hour, like what is Stephanie Howe's framework of where to begin with somebody to figure this out in training?
Speaker 2:in training, yeah, so the first thing is just getting to know the athlete and their goals a little bit, because that's going to depend or determine, like, what they need. But for most people they're trying to perform right. So we're going to emphasize nutrition that's going to support that goal. And so I usually start with 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour because that's like that's enough to fuel the activity. We can always go up from there. I don't like my athletes to be too much lower than that because then that starts to limit performance. So usually 60 grams per hour, it's realistic, it's like two gels per hour. So we'll start there and then, if that works, I usually go up in like 10 to 15 gram per hour trials.
Speaker 2:So 60 is good, We'll go up to 75. 75 is tolerated Well, we'll go up to 90. And at that point then I consider the athlete because we could try more. But for a lot of people they're not going to be using more than 90 grams per hour. So it's like high risk, low reward for elite athletes that are really high intensity. Perhaps we could try a hundred, maybe a little bit more, but for most people somewhere between that 60 to 90 gram is going to be that sweet spot and it's really just trial and error and seeing what you tolerate, um, and trying different combinations of the form of carbohydrate, and then also maybe the brand and the flavor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one thing I'll throw out. There is one of the ways that I identify how high can we go in that grams of carbohydrate is exactly how you laid it out there. I start with around 60 and then scale up from there. How you laid it out there, I start with around 60 and then scale up from there. But in order to educate my athletes as well as identify how high can we go, I basically have two kind of two categories of of our fueling, and that's aerobic riding or running, and performance training.
Speaker 1:And so for the intake for aerobic riding, I'll aim for 20 to 33-ish percent intake of output, and that output is measured in kilojoules from the power meter. That's how I do it, and what that works out to is right around like 25 up to around 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour. For the performance riding, though, I'll start around that 33% and go up to 50% intake of output. So let's just use a super high number for a big power output a thousand calories per hour, right, a thousand kilojoules per hour. You take 50% of that, that's 500 calories, and divide by four, that's just over a hundred grams of carbohydrate per hour, and I've used that for years in the way of the aerobic and then the performance to measure out and just confirm that I'm on track with the intake and output side of things and I don't know if that makes sense to you, stephanie, but it's a verification of everything that you just laid out there, especially like on the cycling side of things where we have power meters.
Speaker 2:Right, I was just going to say that's a brilliant way to measure it and it's nice. In cycling, you can quantify it a little bit better than you can in running, and I think that's a great way to do it and to outline it into those two different categories, because you don't always need to fuel maximally, right, you don't always need to be setting your body up and like I I like to use the word like baby it a little bit, like, give it everything it needs. If it's asking for this, give it to it. Um, sometimes it's okay to stress it a little bit. So that's like what you were saying. With, like, the aerobic rides of like, yeah, you're not going to fully compensate for what you're expending in terms of like, how much you could take in, but that's okay. But then you do rides where you are going to more replicate what you would try to do race day, because that's important too. So I think that's a great way to think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think to our conversation just a few minutes ago. Here is like on those aerobic rides we're dialing up the fat burning needs because we're seeing more aerobic on the performance rides. We're dialing up the carbohydrate needs, so we need to dial up the carbohydrate intake, and that's simply put kind of how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly One thing we didn't mention is you know how long of a ride do you need to do before you start fueling, and that's something to think about too. And I use the cut point of usually two hours for running, for cycling, it's probably you could, you could probably push that up a little bit, but somewhere between the two ish hour is when I think it's important to start fueling, because we have enough stored fuel for about 90 minutes to two hours.
Speaker 2:Now if you're doing a really hard session and you want to like maximize it, I would recommend fueling. So you're going to do like some sort of hard intervals and it's like overall 90 minute workout, um, I would still take in some sports drink or some gels during that session, just so you are able to get as much out of it as you can. But for, like you're just endurance efforts, you can use two hours generally as the rule of thumb for when you need to start fueling.
Speaker 1:Yep, completely agree with that. And um, and in that performance training side of things too, you start throwing in intervals, you start to throw in um, you know maximum efforts. You definitely need to start fueling there. Um, so let's go back to kind of uh, back to our framework a little bit. Do you use uh calories per hour or grams per hour of carbohydrate?
Speaker 2:So I use grams per hour usually as like a minimum and um, uh, for a few reasons. One is the gels are so easy to like, keep track of in sports fuel, but for races, where it's going to get like longer and we're going to be including real food, sometimes we talk about overall calories per hour because that is going to include some mixed meals and it's really hard to track, like the grams of carbohydrate in your peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So in that case we start to use like okay, so we're trying to get around like let's say, 90 grams an hour of carbohydrate, but let's have that be somewhere around like 300 ish calories per hour, 300 to 400 calories. But I think the carbohydrate is mostly what we're interested in. So I tend to gravitate towards that as a way to count intake for the hour. But you can use them somewhat interchangeably. Knowing that it's about 200 to 300 calories per hour is going to translate into the right amount of carbohydrate.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And I'd like to educate my athletes and just say look, there's four calories per gram of carbohydrate. So all we're going to do simple math when we're doing our planning right. So 60 grams of carbohydrate 60 times four, 240 calories per hour. Okay, and then you just go back and forth and get super good with doing that. Divide by four or multiply by four, Just remember four. And the general recommendation is we want to eat most of our calories from carbohydrate. So, just like Stephanie said, if you plow down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or probably like half of it or something like that, you don't need to worry too much about the protein and fat. Um, I think you've called it just like extra sustenance on those long rides.
Speaker 2:Right, Exactly, you hit a key point there with in your planning. You do the math, because sometimes we know that math goes awry when you're racing.
Speaker 1:I have had some athletes that say they love to do math while they're riding, racing, whatever. When I've heard that I'm like what? Because I'll be doing some hill climb or something and I'll try to do math in my head and it never works well.
Speaker 2:Never works.
Speaker 1:well I'm not that equipped. Yeah, okay, well, glad we talked about that. Um, so we're talking about grams per hour, we're talking about calories per hour. What's a good starting point, like how do you identify what a good product even is to start using? And and as you know, stephanie, we're brand neutral here, so anything goes. How do we what is a good brand and type of gel or sport drink Sport drink is huge and heavy in cycling and how do we?
Speaker 2:know it's actually good. Yeah, we've got great science on this. So this is one of the things where, like, we can really just kind of apply the science. There's not a lot of artsy room here and basically there are different receptors in the gut that process sugar, carbohydrate, and the majority process glucose. But then there are other receptors that process fructose and we know from almost a decade of science looking at this that if we combine those two sugars, glucose and fructose, in different ratios, it's going to get into the body, will get a little bit more into the body quicker and it's not going to cause GI upset. So we can kind of geek out on looking at products that one use that science to formulate their products.
Speaker 2:And then two, when you read the ingredients list, you want to see either glucose or multidextrin it's the same thing or sucrose and then fructose as a secondary sugar, and then not a whole lot else. You don't want to put a lot else in your body. Sometimes there's other, like small things in sports products, and generally they don't hurt, but sometimes, just because it doesn't hurt, you don't necessarily want to put that in your body. So I look for a few ingredients and the brands that I recommend are purely based off of that, and there's a bunch of them out there right now, which is really cool because we've got choices. So if you are trying to do this yourself, just look at the product, look at the ingredients list and see what that first and second sugar ingredient are in the product and if there's something else that might make you want to question what that product is trying to do.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times we see things that are trying to like market to that health conscious, like oh it's, you know it's a natural sugar. I'm like what the heck does that mean? Like sugar sugar or you know, it's like something like there's like superfoods or buzzwords, that's all kind of Deptogenes, yeah, so we look for those simple sugars as the first couple ingredients in a product. I mean. The brands that I really like to recommend are Morton, never, second, precision, scratch Labs, sis, beta Carbs Gel. Those are kind of the heavy hitters of what's popular right now and you can do a mix of form factors. So in running it's a little bit easier sometimes to eat like blocks and bars or stroopwafels, Whereas in cycling I know a lot of my cyclists rely primarily on gels and sports drink, and that's fine, it's just kind of what's going to be the best in terms of like, the ease of use and what you like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're starting to get that picture or the framework of what our training sessions should look like. I think, um, the way I do this is I kind of follow the the Oscar Jukin group kind of model of sorts, where I identify hard training days and I basically just think of that as a gut training day, um, where we put to practice uh, high carb, uh, you carb, high fueling strategies on that training day to train our gut as well. Could you tell our audience what a gut training day is and why we would want to do that on a hard training day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically, your gut is like a muscle, like it can adapt to what you stress it with, and so putting in a lot of carbohydrate on harder or longer sessions is a good way to, one, train the gut so that you upregulate the receptors so it's better able to process those sugars when you're training and racing. And then, two, you learn a lot about your flavor and form factor preferences. So sessions that are great to try this are, of course, your long sessions, but those are easy because you're going at a lower intensity generally. But I really like to recommend athletes try it on some sort of hard intensity session Could be like tempo intervals.
Speaker 2:It could be like a steady state where you're pushing a bit. Be like tempo intervals. It could be like a steady state where you're pushing a bit Um, because when you, when you try to get something in during um, that intensity, you're going to learn like what works pretty quickly and it's also going to put more stress in your gut and so that's a great time to really dial it in and and train your gut. And it is, uh, generally an acute adaptation. Like you, you know you can't train your gut like six months ago and then like roll into a race and be like well, in December I was training really well. It's like no. Actually, the closer you get to your race, the more you should be dialing that in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So those gut training days, I mean it's it's high kilojoule days, it's it's high output days, um, hard hilly days, group rides even. And I think, on the cycling side of things, doing this on a group ride where there's other people all around you, sometimes bumping into you intermittent high intensity and trying to figure out how to get the gel, how to get the drink into your mouth, and stick to that 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, that's the best way to do it. For for a lot of um, like our audience listening, who are doing races with start line and finish lines and and, um, you know, curious about how to maximize their fueling performance, yeah, anything you can do to simulate a race environment is going to be useful to simulate a race environment is going to be useful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent. So we've talked a lot about carbohydrate grams per hour and calories. What about fluid intake, and how do you separate your fluid intake goals from your caloric intake goals?
Speaker 2:That's a good question and it's a little bit less concrete than the carbohydrate grams per hour because everyone is different. The best way to find out about your hydration needs is to do a sweat rate test, so different than a sweat sodium test. A sweat rate test is really simple to do and the best way to do it is to pick like a one hour endurance ride and to weigh yourself pre and post, subtract any fluids that you consume and you get your sweat rate for that hour ride. So your hourly rate Keeping in mind that is your sweat rate for those conditions, right, those environmental conditions. It will change in hot and humid conditions. It will change actually as your fitness changes. So it's a good one to repeat on occasion so you can get your number kind of dialed in for different temperature ranges.
Speaker 2:In running we like to separate hydration and calories because sometimes it's hard to match your caloric need to your hydration need.
Speaker 2:Now, that's a little bit individual.
Speaker 2:If you're not like a really heavy sweater and it's not super hot, it's easy to kind of accommodate both.
Speaker 2:But what I recommend is if you want to use a sports drink with calories in it, that you also use water because you want to be able to drink when you need to. And sometimes a sports drink is too concentrated for the environmental conditions. So if it's super hot and you're sweating a lot and you're trying to replace all of that hydration with a sports drink, you can overwhelm your gut. So it's kind of like doing a little bit of thinking, a little bit of preparation ahead of time and kind of identifying if you want to do a sports drink, making sure that's going to be appropriate and that you're not going to over consume your calories. And that's easy to figure out, because if you know, like okay, I'm losing a liter an hour, which would be kind of on the mid to lower end of the range, then you want to make sure that your sports drink isn't going to be so concentrated that you're taking in, let's say, 800 calories in that hour, because that's going to be too much for your gut drink and a bottle of water.
Speaker 1:in that water, not only does it help to dilute the gut and help with hydration and keeping it kind of like cleared out, but it also like washes the sugar off your mouth, to like it keeps your palate more happy. Am I right in that? Is that a thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean sometimes you just want plain water because you get palate fatigue from all the sweet gels and sports products, and so I do the exact same thing. I do a bottle of scratch, a bottle of water, and the water can sometimes be a savior when you're just like I just need something neutral to drink.
Speaker 1:So true. And on top of that, uh, I used to do all these uh Leadville, uh race day planning talks and and planning talks and I incorporated this message into it and it wasn't mine, it was actually Daniel Matheny kind of came up with this lingo and what he said was the best nutrition plan won't work on a dehydrated gut.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Meaning get your hydration right. Otherwise, all the high carb and everything it's going to go sideways. It's a your hydration right. Otherwise, all this, like all the high carb and everything it's it's not, it's going to go sideways. It's GI issue right.
Speaker 2:Totally, you gotta. You gotta think about the lowest hanging fruit first and once you are, you're like taking care of that, then you can go to the next step. If you're just going up to like the carbohydrate grams per hour and ignoring your hydration needs, yeah, it's not going to work, yeah.
Speaker 1:So my general broad recommendation is 20 to 40 fluid ounces per hour should cover most people, most often without doing a sweat test or a sweat rate test. Would you agree with that and does everybody listening? Would you recommend that at some point they do a sweat rate test? Yeah, I agree with that and does everybody listening? Would you recommend that at some point they do a sweat rate test?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that and I think that's a good general range. You can also like to some extent, use thirst as your guide. That's not the best way to start a plan, but within that framework, if you have some numbers that you're working within, yeah, you can like, if you're thirsty, drink. If you're not thirsty, you know, just make sure you're you're getting the baseline. I don't think it's necessary to always do a sweat rate test, because most people have an idea if they're heavy sweater or if they're, if they're not, and if you, if you are a heavy sweater, you generally know that and you probably want to be at the higher end of the range and kind of a crude way you can. You can determine that is actually by the color of your urine, which again isn't the most scientific and shouldn't be where you start, but it's like it can confirm that you're within the range. So I do think that's a good starting point and then, within that range, just dial it into your specific individual needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And lastly, you know, don't overthink it too. On hotter days you're going to sweat more, so drink more fluid.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I'm a big fan of not overcomplicating it too much.
Speaker 1:It's just like yeah. And if you're feeling thirsty and you think, and you think oh, I didn't do my sweat rate test for 92 degrees in humidity, what should I do? Just drink more? You don't need to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just drink some water, eat some things, drink some water, ride your bike.
Speaker 1:Yes, but Stephanie and I are stressing out and nerding out about this framework to help everyone have a good starting point and then not sweat the details, the small details, to make it punny about how to adjust on the fly. So hopefully this is starting to shape that up and before we close out this podcast, I do want to ask about pre pre-training fueling. So I'm going to talk about like 24, 36 hour pre-fueling in one to two hour pre-fueling, primarily because our bodies are storage tanks for glycogen, right, and it's also storage tanks for liquid plasma that helps us to sweat and cool us. So, stephanie, how important is that 24 to 36 hour window? Uh, pre race or pre workout, if you've got a big thing coming the next day, and what do you tell your athletes to do in that 24 to 36 hours to prepare for the big thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Um, that that is a really important thing to try out before you get to that big event, because it can make a difference. We obviously want to have our glycogen supplies topped off, and you know, so we're starting our event with a full tank, if you will. And when we think about how to do that, when I'm working with an athlete, generally I try to have them eating well, like well. It would be nice months leading in, but at least the week leading in, so that they don't put pressure on the day before to carbo load. Generally nobody feels good when you carbo load, and so we want to make sure we have enough carbohydrate but you can't super compensate. So what that looks like is going back to all three macronutrients, right, Carbohydrate, fat and protein. But I do think it's important to think about the type in the 24 to 30 hours before and generally lower fiber. So not as many, like you know, colorful leafy greens and vegetables and that sort of thing Save that for like after the race or, you know, like earlier in the week. So sometimes I don't eat any vegetables the day before race, just depending on the duration, because I want to wake up and not have my stomach just be like sloshing and gurgling and have to go to the bathroom a million times. So keep it simple, eat enough.
Speaker 2:I think a good way again we don't want to overthink it of like trying to do math and like calculate out our needs. Just don't let yourself get hungry, Like you don't have to overstuff yourself, but the day before, like eat three meals and if you're still feeling a little bit hungry, have a snack. And, generally speaking, that should be like a simpler carbohydrate. So rice, potatoes, corn tortillas, pasta depending on how polarizing that is rice I don't know if I already said that those are good, easy to digest carbohydrates. Pair them with a high quality protein. So eggs, chicken, fish, beans, lentils and then some fat like avocado or olive oil. That's a really great combination of foods that'll sit well and then not be a problem in the morning. And then, if we think about the morning of, this is when you really want to dial in during training so that when you go to the event it's like you've done it a million times. You're super comfortable.
Speaker 2:I eat my oatmeal with my peanut butter and then I go ride my bike. So, again, it doesn't have to be a large meal. We don't need to overstuff ourselves, but somewhere between usually like 200 to 500 calories, depending on the duration and the individual, of mostly simple carbohydrates. So, again, oatmeal, toast, yogurt and then a little bit of fat and protein. That's going to help keep you full. So nut butter is a great one here.
Speaker 2:An egg or two avocado, something like that generally sits pretty well and is going to give you the carbohydrate you need. Because, again, we're topping off glycogen stores, because when you go to bed at night, your body doesn't just turn off, it's still using glycogen during the night. So we top it off and then you don't want to have to digest a lot of food, you don't want it to sit in your stomach. So, keeping it on the lighter side and on the lower fiber and lower overall fat and protein side. So that's something that is somewhat individual. So try it out in training and also think about where you're going to be during an event. So, if you're traveling somewhere, what's an easy-to-replicate breakfast? Because if you're really specific about making this smoothie with 10 different things in it, that may not be something you can do like on the road. So that's an important consideration as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why is that smoothie with a million ingredients so popular right now?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Um, but uh, all all jesting aside, how to do this is, for most of us listening here, saturdays is our long ride. You know, sundays may be the long ride, whatever. When you, when you're practicing this and you're leading up to say, the unbound or the Treco or Leadville or your long, you know race planning sort of thing, but you're doing it in training right now and you got the five hour ride on Saturday. Start to eat really well, high carbohydrate, and don't let yourself get hungry Thursday night going through Friday and then you lead into that race.
Speaker 1:Have a normal breakfast away, you go. That's a very good pre-training fueling habit to get into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll get more of those sessions as well.
Speaker 1:For sure, for sure. So we'll leave it there for now, because all this is going to lead into how to put this together for race day planning. Okay, but that's our next podcast, so, uh, we'll leave it there for today. Be sure to come back next week to hear more from Stephanie about how to put this all together for race day planning. Stephanie, thank you again for joining us here on the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week, you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me.
