Nutrition

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One of the most important aspects of training and eventually racing, is getting your head around your nutrition. Understanding what does and what doesn't work for you is vitally important in achieving your goals and can make the events a lot more enjoyable.

 

However, knowing what to do and actually doing it when the time comes is an entirely different proposition. 

 

It still amazes me the amount of gels, bars and drinks that get carried around an entire training ride or even worse the event you have been training months for, but never get consumed.  

 

We all know consumables are expensive, but apart from resistance training, you’re not doing yourself any favours by leaving those gels in your pocket, or hitting that last five km to the finish with a full water bottle sitting in the cage.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have done this myself.  Call it red mist, or adrenaline overload, I just call it the "Dumbarse" factor and it especially hurts when doing an event.

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You eventually finish and end up cursing the fact that despite the amount of effort put in during training, it just didn’t come together on the day.

 

That’s when the debrief and self-examination starts….  if only I had held on over that last climb, or if only I managed to close that gap to the bunch that dropped me with 10 km to go.

 

You can eliminate some of the “ifs” just by being smarter about your nutrition consumption. I’m not saying you are going to miraculously all of a sudden start leading the bunch sprint, but if those mildly successful lads at team Sky have taught us anything, there is a lot to be said for marginal gains  

 

Planning is key and to plan properly you need to practice, preferably before an event.