[NCtrailX]

I know there are a ton of nutrition related questions posted and I've gone back and reread many of the responses.

I'm looking for specific race setup info for nutrition plus how you carry or stage it and when to consume. Looking for feedback on what you would take to a 6-8 hour lap race. Laps are all single track with only short sections of straightish trail.

-What would you eat and drink before the race start at 10 am?
-If laps are around an hour per lap, what would you take with you on the bike and what would you grab when you come through the pits?
-Would you eat more on different laps ( eat solid every 2 laps)?
-How many of you would run on liquids for 6 hours and what would you use?
-Exactly what would you consume each lap?

Thanks in advance!

 

[quax]

-What would you eat and drink before the race start at 10 am?

Within 1 hr before start 1 L drink (1 g carbohydrate / kg bw: maltodextrin+honey+lemon juice+NaCl mix)

-If laps are around an hour per lap, what would you take with you on the bike and what would you grab when you come through the pits?

Depends on weather. Under normal condition one bottle 0.75 L with 1 g carbohydrate / kg bw: maltodextrin+honey+lemon juice+NaCl mix.

-Would you eat more on different laps ( eat solid every 2 laps)?

No. Maximum carbodydrate use rate is limited by uptake in the intestine (depending on carb mix ~ 0.8-1g/kg bw). Useless to eat more.

-How many of you would run on liquids for 6 hours and what would you use?

I can't eat solid food during racing. I can tolerate "liquid food" very well. To figure this out you have to go through some races. You can never push you so far in training.

-Exactly what would you consume each lap?

see above.

 

[alphajaguars]

Do you have the full recipe for that mix?

 

[quax]

for a drinking bottle: 80 - 100 g carbs / litre; 50% from maltodextrin and 50% from honey (honey has about 80 g carbs/ 100g), 1-2 g regular cooking salt; juice according to your liking

for a 200 ml soft flask (my liquid gel) is would use about the same amounts but with only less water.

sometimes I add protein powder (~20 g/L) but haven't really noticed a difference to not using it

 

[alphajaguars]

Thanks!

 

[febikes]

This past Saturday I raced the six hour curse of the crab. It is a small race at a local park with mountain bike trails.

Eating in racing that is often hard for me. This particular race was fast singletrack so it was really hard to eat or even drink. The course was 5 mile laps. I filled four bottles with Gatoraid in a fairly strong concentration and had a few clif bars.

I made sure that I had a good meal one hour before the race. Not too big but not too small. For me this was a peanut butter sandwich and some fruit.

I ate one cliff bar and drank about 20 ounces of gatoraid about 5 minutes before the race start. I think it is critical to start races with full hydration especially if the first few laps will be done at a hard pace on single track.

The first three laps were crazy fast so no eating and really not much drinking. On lap four I made a point to drink as much as I could stand and eat one cliff bar. On lap seven I ate another half of a cliff bar. In total for the six hours I consumed 1.5 cliff bars and 3 double style bottles of gatoraid.

For me this worked pretty well. I managed to keep my lap times consistent (11 laps all in the range of 29 to 35 minutes). I did not bonk or feel blocked by too much food. It is a hard balance to strike.

If it had been hotter I would have drunk more and likely would have run a lower concentration. If the race was longer I might have added one more cliff bar and/or some gels.

For me keeping the liquids in bottles on the bike makes sense. I don't like camel backs. The cliff bars are also good as are other bar styles and you can cram some in your mouth then put the rest in a pocket.

Eating and drinking is very personal but I figured I would share what worked for me. This was one of my better races and the approach worked well.

 

[kosmo]

200 calories and 20 ounces (for really small guys) to 400 calories and 30 ounces (for really big guys) per hour in a drink mix.

I prefer a 1:1:1 mix of Gatorade, Heed, and Perpetuem, but most products work fine for me in a pinch. I do like to mix flavors around through the season, in hopes of extending the inevitable date when I take a sip of drink mix and realize that I'm done with this stuff until next year.

Drink mix supplemented by gel and VERY occasionally a Hammer Bar if/when I get that feeling of needing food. Solid food only at the top of a long descent, so there is at least some hope of digestion.

Bottles strongly preferred, but for fast single track courses, I suck it up and use a Camelbak to make sure I can drink easily at full-tilt-boogy speeds. Though I dislike packs, in a race setting, it becomes irrelevant because, well, I'm racing.

If you train HARD, I think you can fine tune this stuff while training, but as noted above, racing is always harder, and the real proof.

 

[johnlh]

...I prefer a 1:1:1 mix of Gatorade, Heed, and Perpetuem, but most products work fine for me in a pinch...

I would be careful mixing the maltodextine-based Hammer products with the dextrose in Gatorade. You might not feel any negative consequences, but it can cause terrible stomach distress for some people.

 

[kosmo]

I would be careful mixing the maltodextine-based Hammer products with the dextrose in Gatorade. You might not feel any negative consequences, but it can cause terrible stomach distress for some people.

My wife and I have both arrived at this ratio as our preferred mix, and have been using it successfully for a decade.

As far as stomach problems, while I have a kind of "iron stomach" she has the opposite, and it took a lot of experimenting to conclude that instead of stomach trouble, this mix is foolproof for her while riding hard.

 

[8iking VIIking]

I make my own drink mix with 1 hammer endurolyte tablet, 1 tablespoon of dextrose and 1 tablespoon of table sugar per bottle. Tastes great and doesn't leave that sticky feeling in my mouth like some drinks do. For longer rides I supplement with one GU gel per hour

 

[RojoRacing53]

If its a lap race then its easy for me, even better if the laps are around an hour or less.

So let's assume 8 hr race with 1hr laps, so that's 7-9 laps depending on how well you race and if the finish is at 8hrs or you just need to start your last lap by 8hrs. What I do is prepare 9 bottles of sport mix ahead of time. I personally use accelerade and two scoops per bottle which I think is 200 calories and toss them all in a cooler for easy access each lap. I also include in my cooler a few cokes for if and when any depression sets in or my stomach starts to feel funny. The other thing I set out is a small plate with some kind of electrolyte tablets, get them out of the bottle and into something more open and easier to access. I set out one of those cheap plastic 2'x4' tables with tools, spares, accessories and electrolyte tablets on top and the cooler sits underneath.

I make sure I finish my bottle every lap even if that means chugging it down in that last quarter mile before pitting, this forces me to remember to drink more often during the lap and ensures I don't fall behind on nutrition. This is very important if you don't want to suffer in the final hours. Also depending on how hot it use you may want to include a second bottle with plain water to increase you hydration and as a bonus clean water tastes good sometimes.

As I roll up to pit I just stop and straddle the bike, I then toss my empty bottle into a bucket and grab a new bottle from the cooler. I then grab a electrolyte tab toss it in my mouth and ride off once I'm rolling I wash down the tab. The whole process takes less then 10 secs which will keep you from wasting a bunch of time to moving. In my last 12hr race I had a total non moving time of 6 mins, 3 of which was switching to my lighting setup.

If I start to think negative thoughts such as I'm loosing positions, I don't know if I can finish, I'm getting really sleepy or if my stomach starts to show any signs of acting up I take a few good gulps of coke at my next pit stop. The flavor in coke is strong and will revitalize your pallet, the caffeine with sharpen you senses, and the carbonation with help you belch out the gases in you stomach that are root of your GI distress.

For 12hrs of less I don't eat any solid food but for 24hr races I'll make several PB&J sandwiches which I cut in half. I'll eat one half every 4-6 hrs with a little coke to wash it down. This is on top of the one bottle of accelerade each lap.

In the morning before the race around 3 hrs before the start ill drink an all fruit and yogurt smoothie of my own making. It's actually my recovery drink for after the race but I always drink about 12-16 oz of it in the morning because I always make 40oz at a time.
Its 1 cup mango juice
1 cup Greek non fat plain yogurt(has the least sugar and most protein)
1 banana
5-6 strawberries
1/2 cup of blackberries
1/2 cup of blueberries
2 serving of whey protein powder.

If you skeptical on going only liquids and electrolyte caps for 8hrs, I have completed three 100 mile ultra marathon running races ranging from 22-27 hrs on only accelerade, coke and caps. I didn't even eat a single salted cracker in the 27 hrs. I was always a little hungry but never felt like I was starving it's that slight hunger to get when you feel light and athletic right before the start of a race. For some reason my stomach doesn't like any solid foods while running but at the same time running is a more engaging activity so I don't seem to ever think about hunger. In MTBing I tend to get bored quick easily and when I get bored I tend to get hungry, it's the same as when most of us were kids.

 

[johnlh]

My wife and I have both arrived at this ratio as our preferred mix, and have been using it successfully for a decade.

As far as stomach problems, while I have a kind of "iron stomach" she has the opposite, and it took a lot of experimenting to conclude that instead of stomach trouble, this mix is foolproof for her while riding hard.

I tend to have an iron gut as well, but HEED has always given me a little stomach discomfort when I have it mixed with anything other than maltodextrine-based products.

 

[westin]

No focus on protein past the 2 hour point?

 

[RojoRacing53]

No focus on protein past the 2 hour point?

Accelerade has mostly whey with a touch of soy protein so I'm set from the start. I just did 6 hours strait out at Boggs today on a 10oz of fruit smoothie and 6x22oz bottles of accelerade, never got hungry at all but judging from my urine color after the ride I probably could have used another 5-10 oz per hours.