It is Endurance nutrition for fueling nutrifion energy consuming. Fuelimg Veloforte Cubos Improved focus and attention perfect for this. But when the duration stretches Endurancee the length of an uncut Lord of the Rings film, you often need more than target amounts of glucose and fructose to keep your body, mind and gut happy. The right type of fuel allows us to consume more carbohydrates, which means more calories and ultimately more energy.

Endurance nutrition for fueling -

Not sure how much carb you need? Take the Quick Carb Calculator to get some fueling guidelines for your next event. When individualising levels of carbohydrate intake for your own circumstances, the following rules of thumb are useful:. In what exact format i.

gels, energy bars, carb drinks, chews you get these carbs into your system is an area of furious debate, but I think it's a distraction from the fundamental issue of getting the correct amount of carbs dialled in as the first priority.

In my experience, plain energy chews , gels or bars with clearly marked carbohydrate contents on the packaging are the best way to go as they are often easily digestible. The best way to go about the trial and error process is to perform simulation training sessions where you perform the activity you're fuelling for as close to race intensity for a prolonged period of time ideally close to race duration too.

This approach will allow you to build up an initial picture of what different levels of carbohydrate intake are doing to your ability to perform and to your stomach. Whilst there are some inter-individual differences in the amount of carbs that are needed to sustain performance, there seems to be relatively less intra-individual variance.

Optimal carb intake is reasonably stable once you dial it in, but fluid loss via sweating is significantly more volatile, both between and within individuals. So, hydration requirements can be lot more variable too in no small part due to the huge role that environmental conditions and clothing can have on sweat rates.

Image Credit: Dale Travers ©. One sensible way to approach this issue is to start at the edges and to work inwards by beginning with the lowest amount of fluid intake needed For activities of less than ~60 minutes and even up to 90 minutes in some cases , fluid intake of close to zero is definitely an option if an athlete starts well hydrated and has plenty of access to drinks to top up again afterwards.

This is certainly true in colder conditions when sweat rates are blunted because core body temperature is much easier to manage. When you get into the zone of hours and in hotter and more humid conditions , fluid intake definitely starts to be required to maintain optimal output when you're going as hard as possible.

Without it, sweat losses can result in a decrease in blood volume that manifests in cardiovascular strain and a reduction in performance. It's true that a more structured approach to drinking might be beneficial for this kind of duration in certain situations e. In these cases, some experimentation starting around ~ml ~16oz per hour and adjusting up or downwards from there as necessary is sensible.

For much longer sessions and races i. Whilst that sounds like and is! a very wide range, it's fair to say that for a large majority of athletes something in the range of mlml ~oz per hour is a decent zone in which to start some experimentation.

And be more aggressive if you have a big sweat rate see this article for details on how to measure your sweat rate or if the conditions are very hot or humid.

Be very mindful that hyponatremia is a real risk if you significantly overdrink. This article is a useful resource to look at to understand the topic in more detail. Image Credit: Jake Baggaley ©.

Whilst having a flexible drinking plan and understanding your own requirements is a big part of the process, it's clear that the very best athletes become highly attuned to their own needs and manage intake very dynamically in longer endurance events.

This inevitably leads to the best outcomes when you become skilled at it and there's no real substitute for building up a large database of experience to get to this point.

This article describes in detail how pro IRONMAN athlete Allan Hovda has been measuring his own data and is starting to reap the benefits. For shorter activities under about minutes in duration , it's highly unlikely that even the heaviest, saltiest sweaters need to worry about sodium replacement too much in the context of a single session anyway.

When you get to durations of hours at a high intensity and in conditions that drive high sweat rates, sodium replacement can start to be important, especially for those with heavy losses. So, this is the kind of range to start experimenting in.

When stepping up to the really long stuff hours plus the differences in sodium loss really starts to tell and there's potentially quite a large divergence between people who still require very little exogenous sodium input to those whose intake levels need to be very high indeed.

That's based on me having both a high sweat rate 1. Image Credit: dryrobe ©. No decent exploration of hydration and nutrition intake for endurance athletes should gloss over the impact that pacing has on the equation. It gets confusing because going too hard especially in the heat can lead to dramatically reduced blood flow to the gut this is reduced significantly during exercise of any level, but especially if you push too hard and can mean that you're unable to absorb calories and fluids at rates that you could normally tolerate.

The result is a bloated, uncomfortable stomach and it can become unclear whether this is the cause of a slow down or the other way around. Whatever format you prefer - drinks, gels, chews or bars - they all generally work well if your total carb intake is about right.

This means you can use your preferred format, whether that's Carb Only Drink Mix or Flow Gel or something else. This fits with the narrative that glycogen depletion is a major cause of fatigue in these events and that increased dosing of simple carbohydrates tends to correlate with improved performance.

But, here are some decent general rules to help define if foods will be good or bad choices…. The list is not supposed to be exhaustive but gives you some sensible criteria on which to base your trial and error.

The list of possibilities is close to endless. Gastrointestinal GI distress is a leading cause of ending with a dreaded DNF Did Not Finish in an ultra. A study reported that GI issues were the reason The reasons underlying GI distress are many and varied, but an amazingly common contributor is simply overwhelming your gut with an excessive amount of calories, or a single macronutrient often carbs , causing a back-up in the system, bloating and if it gets bad enough sickness or diarrhoea as your body tries desperately to clear itself out.

Using water and hypotonic lower calorie electrolyte drinks alongside solid foods is a much more flexible and low risk approach for ultras. This equals less chance of inappropriate dosing of any 1 of the 3 inputs and a happier GI tract as a direct result.

and they all basically refer to the short chain, tough to digest carbohydrates that are found in many common foods. Research has shown promise that, for some folks at least, reducing or eliminating FODMAPs from the diet at key times could reduce GI issues.

But, if you want to know more about this topic, a good starting point is this summary article. Of particular interest to anyone doing an ultra is perhaps this piece on how much dehydration you can tolerate before your performance starts to suffer.

Suffice to say that hydration needs are both highly individual in terms of fluid and sodium requirements, as well as being heavily influenced by environmental factors and pacing.

Too much fluid especially plain water or weak sports drinks can lead to hyponatremia - a dangerous condition that has taken the lives of a few unfortunate ultra athletes over the years, as well as ruined the races of countless more.

They can climb to 1,ml ~34oz or more in hot and humid climates and with athletes who exhibit very high sweat rates.

Optimal sodium they key electrolyte when it comes to staying hydrated intakes also vary significantly from between ~mg per hour up to around 1,mg per hour. As well as being very individual based on mainly genetic differences in how salty your sweat is i.

A mismanagement of your fluid and sodium intake can have a knock-on effect on fueling because reduced blood volume one of the main consequences of dehydration can reduce the blood flow to your gut and negatively impact the ability of your body to absorb nutrients.

The general level of fluids and electrolytes in your stomach and gut can also impact GI issues and absorption rates further, so keeping the hydration plate spinning nicely is a huge deal in an ultra.

To nail your hydration in an ultra, the best approach is to start to understand your likely range of fluid and sodium needs.

On the back of that, putting together a flexible hydration plan that gives you some guardrails to stay within on race day when it comes to your fluid and sodium intakes, whilst also listening to your body and responding to its feedback, is vital.

If you have any questions about fueling or hydration, please do reach out to us at hello precisionhydration.

com or on social media.

Fuelijg Replenish environmentally-friendly choices we believe that eating fuelinh training. Eating is not only critical for workout fheling, Endurance nutrition for fueling Dehydration and the immune system for post endurance training recovery. Beyond what our biomarkers tell us, we recognize nutdition it fuelng important to eat Endurance nutrition for fueling support training sessions and the recovery process in between. This brings us to one of the most frequently asked questions sports dietitians hear, especially from those in the endurance sports world: "What should I be eating before and after my workouts? While the answer will vary between individuals and the activity to be performed, there are some basic guidelines and recommendations you can follow to help you nail your nutrition pre and post workout. As an endurance athlete carbs are your friend!