Pancakes, berries and maple syrup are another staple, especially before a race, when I will also cut back the fibre and leave out the salad to ensure I never risk a cramp.<\/p>\n
We have also worked on some additional tweaks. I do a 16 to 18-hour food \u201cfast\u201d from about 6:30pm on a Tuesday until around 12:30pm on a Wednesday, when I have only an eight-mile recovery run early in the morning and is the first of two days of relatively easier sessions. That is a grind, even if I will have a coffee before and a protein shake after. It encourages the body to utilise fats during that easy run and also just helps to keep me lean.<\/p>\n
It can be hard when we go out and people are ordering ice cream, but I know how my body reacts to those foods and it is not of benefit to me. I don\u2019t intend to retire with any regrets and not eating processed food or sugar actually cuts out any cravings.<\/p>\n
Timing is also crucial, so I usually have a box of food with me wherever I go in case I get held up anywhere. We push carbs super hard going into the Friday, Sunday and Tuesday sessions. We also hit protein particularly hard on Tuesday afternoons and evenings to maximise recovery from that sequence of hard sessions every 48 hours in the six days before. The high-carb days are mostly rice, manioc, pasta and noodles and I love sweet potato on a lower carb day.<\/p>\n
We also do an eight-day coffee fast before races. A coffee about three hours before the race should then have more impact. Regular blood-work informs whether any supplements are recommended by Dr Kyle. Supplements that I might have at different times of the year include vitamin D, omega-3 or beta-alanine.<\/p>\n
Like most runners now in almost every distance and endurance sport, I will also take sodium bicarbonate before a race, but I never bother in training. Sodium bicarbonate is essentially baking soda and has long been known to buffer hydrogen ions and thus delay muscle fatigue. Its usage, however, has increased over recent years after it was produced in a gel that helps to bypass the gut and thus reduce the risk of gastro issues. There can be a lot of hype about supplements, but they are just that; a supplement to what is the foundation of getting your nutrition right. And it is with my diet \u2013 and specifically more whole, unprocessed foods \u2013 where I have had the big gains during these peak years of my career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pancakes, berries and maple syrup are another staple, especially before a race, when I will also cut back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98726,5654,64,63,7781,137,532,588,345969,75002],"class_list":["post-757375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-1500m","tag-athletics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-comment","tag-health","tag-nutrition","tag-sport","tag-uk-athletics","tag-world-athletics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}