Stijn Amundsen :: Blog :: Fuel for your training

I've been experimenting with my diet and training last week, and I think I've figured out the hard way that not eating enough when training intensively is a bad combination.

I'm trying to get down to my ideal weight and was stuck at my current weight for the last couple weeks, so I thought I'd try doing a morning swim before breakfast. The only problem was that I was swimming very hard for 1-2 miles and using up every last bit of glycogen stored in my body and then not catching back up during the day to meet my needs.

After a week of this it left me totally weak and tired out on my Saturday ride. Esp since I rode with the A group today that leaves at 7am, which was too early for me to eat breakfast. So it was a double whammy today and I was left limping back on the 2nd half of the ride. I did have some on bike nutrition but it didn't help, it just kept my bonk from getting worse.

Oh well you never learn if you don't make mistakes. So my plan now to do things different, either swim slower in these pre-breakfast swim sessions to where I'm going slow and using fat as fuel vs. stored glycogen and not training myself into the ground. Or if I'm going to do my fast all out swims in the morning do it after breakfast so that I'm not incinerating myself to the point where I can't eat enough in a day to catch back up.

Also I'm going to time my diet around which phase of training I'm in, so on weeks where it's an accumlation week where I'm constantly fatigued, I will eat until my heart content esp. of complex carbs etc. and sugars during and immeditaly after sessions. Then on easier rest weeks I'll cut back on caloies a bit and focus on smaller high quality meals with no sugars and less carbs.

So the more intense the training the more complex and simple carbs you need to fuel your hard efforts, and on recovery weeks you can slow the diet down so you don't put on any unnessary body fat.