Nutrition for Endurance Athletes
Words by Noémi Shuey. Photos by Noémi and Dave Shuey.
After a seventeen mile day, we stumble happily into camp at dusk. The last few hours have been spent more or less jogging downhill, at a pace of about four miles an hour, so that we can reach camp before dark. In these final moments of daylight, we quickly filter water at the adjacent creek while munching handfuls of trail mix to appease our grumbling tummies. Donning headlamps, Dave sets off to construct our comfy sleeping cocoon, while I boil water for the hearty and filling hot meal that will sooth our minds and bodies, and replenish our energy levels overnight.
When it comes to getting through these long days, the fuel you put into your body is just as important as your fitness level. However, nutrition isn’t just something to think about as you set off for a through-hike or cross country cycling trip, but in the many months of preparation before your big objective. Nutritional planning during training will help you travel farther and push harder on every training adventure, and rebuild your muscles and immune system after strenuous activity. Your mind and body will become accustomed to the healthy foods they need to obtain peak performance. Not only will you have the energy to succeed in your workout, but also whatever other activities your day may hold. You will feel healthier and stronger every day as you come closer to meeting your goals as a kick-ass adventurer!
Endurance training, defined as lasting over three hours, requires different demands on an athlete’s body than someone who exercises at shorter intervals. This article briefly outlines the nutritional tools you will need to succeed in training for your next long distance, endurance activity. First let’s take a look at the three biggest components of nutrition: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. An athlete’s caloric intake during training should consist of around 60% carbohydrates, 15% protein, and 25% fat.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are probably the most important aspect of an athlete’s nutrition program. They are an incredibly efficient source of fuel that your body doesn’t have to work very hard to utilize. They provide essential energy for performance, facilitate muscle recovery and reduce the risk of injury while training.
Your digestive system breaks down all carbohydrates into glucose, which feeds your brain, nervous system and muscles. The excess glucose that isn’t utilized is stored as glycogen in your liver and muscles for energy use later. Glycogen is the primary fuel for your muscles while exercising at a higher-intensity. However, your body can only store so much glycogen, and it is rather quickly depleted. This is one reason why carbohydrate intake is so important, to replenish these stores that feed your brain and nervous system and provide you with essential energy during workouts.
If you’ve ever bonked hard mid-workout, you probably didn’t consume enough carbohydrates. Dave pokes fun at me for my insatiable obsession with snacks, but it is extremely important to replenish these energy levels during long workouts. When your body burns through its carbohydrates and glycogen stores, your muscle fibers no longer have the energy they need to keep moving at the pace you want them to. Without energy moving to your brain and muscles, your pace will drastically slow and you will lose your focus and attentiveness, making your workout difficult if not impossible.
Consistently consuming carbohydrate loaded snacks—like energy bars, crackers and dried fruit—will help replenish these stores and keep your energy levels up for extended periods of time. Also, make sure you are eating often enough; don’t wait until you’re already hungry and bonking, or it may take longer than you want for your glycogen stores to reach maximum efficiency. Try to eat small amounts of carb-loaded snacks regularly, around 100 calories an hour, to maintain your pace and strength.
Carbohydrates are equally important after a workout, and should be consumed quickly to maximize recovery. Your muscles are most receptive to replacing glycogen within the first hour after exercise. Shoot for at least 50 grams of carbs within 15-30 minutes after exercise, and a full meal within two hours. Also, it takes at least 20 hours of refueling with carbohydrates for your glycogen levels to replenish, so it is important to begin this process as quickly as possible for your next training excursion.
Protein
Everyone knows that protein intake is essential for muscle growth and recovery, but endurance training in particular greatly increases an athlete’s need for protein. Once glycogen stores are expended during prolonged exercise, your body will begin breaking down muscle protein to get the energy it needs to keep moving. (Another reason why it is so important to replenish with carbohydrates while exercising.) Consuming ample amounts of protein throughout the day will help to rebuild the muscle damage that inevitably occurs during long and difficult training sessions. The goal while training is to build and maintain lean muscle mass, not to lose it by neglecting your nutritional planning.
How much protein should you be consuming while training for an objective? For the average person, the Dietary Reference Intake recommends 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight per day. However, this number is not adequate for athletes. Endurance training requires between 1.2 and 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day (House, 276). That means that an athlete who weighs 150 pounds should be getting between 82 and 95 grams of protein each day.
Fat
Although often avoided for fear of weight gain, fat plays an essential role in a healthy, active lifestyle. Fat provides essential fatty acids, which help maintain cell membranes and aid in the growth and reproduction of skin tissue. It also helps the transport and absorption of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K in the body. Finally, having some fat in your meals will help to make them more filling and satisfying, causing you to fill up quickly and eat less often. For athletes, it is important to replace the fat stored in muscles for fuel, especially on long training sessions.
Fat is incredibly important for endurance athletes, because it can be burned as fuel in low to moderate-intensity, longer duration workouts. By frequently completing long and hard training exercises, you can actually train your muscles to burn fat instead of carbohydrates, saving your glycogen stores for when you need a quick burst of energy (see Aerobic vs Anaerobic below).
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should just eat a stick of butter and call it a day. There is a great difference in types of fat, mainly saturated vs unsaturated. Saturated fats are found in foods such as animal products, cheese, butter, and shortening. These should be limited to 10 percent or less of your caloric intake to prevent heart disease and various forms of cancer. One should also avoid manmade fatty acids, also known as trans-fats. If it says “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” on the nutrition label in reference to an oil, these are trans-fats and you are best choosing something else. Most highly processed items with long shelf lives will contain trans-fats. Unsaturated fats, in contrast, can actually help lower cholesterol if used in place of saturated fats. They typically come from plant sources, such as olives, nuts and seeds. Foods like avocados, peanuts and olive oil are great sources of healthy fats.
What to Eat and When
Ideally, you want to eat a big breakfast 2-4 hours before your workout, with plenty of calories and a proper balance of carbs, protein and fat. Your glycogen levels are not only depleted during workouts, but also while you were sleeping the night before, which makes breakfast especially important for athletes. If you don’t have a few hours before your workout, opt for a smaller meal, rich in easy to digest carbohydrates, that will provide you with sufficient energy without overeating.
During your workout, eat small snacks throughout the day in order to keep your glycogen levels up and speed your recovery. Shoot for at least 100 calories per hour for training periods lasting at least two hours. During low to moderate-intensity, long duration workouts, consume a mixture of carbohydrates, protein and fat. However, if your workout is higher-intensity, you should rely solely on easily digested carbs for fuel. If you are having difficulty consuming enough calories during a workout, consider utilizing sports drinks or fruit juices, which provide simple carbohydrates, are quick and easy to digest, and sometimes easier to consume while your appetite is diminished. Also, the longer your workout, the more your body can rely on burning fats for fuel. You will not need to consume as many carbohydrates if you can keep your workout at a low-intensity for a long period of time.
Immediately upon finishing your workout, refuel with mainly carbohydrates, protein and liquids. Remember that carbs are just as important as protein when it comes to muscle recovery. Eat a full meal rich in carbohydrates, protein and fat within two hours of finishing your workout, in order to speed recovery and replenish muscle glycogen levels.
So, How Many Grams of Each Should I be Consuming?
As an example, let’s take a look at my good friend, Joe Trekalot. Joe is a 150 pound male who is getting ready to through-hike the PCT. His training days feature 10+ mile hikes over several hours, often on back-to-back days. Let’s also assume Mr. Trekalot takes in about 3,500 calories each day while training.
As stated earlier, the daily caloric intake of an athlete during training should be made up of about 60% carbs, 15% protein and 25% fat. For a 3,500 calorie diet, this means 2,100 calories should come from carbs, 525 calories from protein and 875 from fat. But Joe is still confused. In order to convert these numbers into the grams that he finds on a nutritional label, Joe needs to know that carbohydrates and protein each contain 4 calories per gram, while fat has 9 calories per gram. Now Joe can divide the number of calories by 4 for carbs and protein, and by 9 for fat. This means that each day, Joe will take in about 525g of carbohydrates, 131g of protein and 97g of fat to get big and strong and succeed on his through-hike.
On a typical day that Joe goes hiking, he enjoys a bowl of oatmeal with a banana, some granola and glass of orange juice for breakfast; an apple and two fruit and nut energy bars during his workout; a whole-grain peanut butter and jelly sandwich at the summit; a protein shake and a bagel with 1/2 an avocado post workout; some hummus, crackers and baby carrots as an afternoon snack; fettuccine noodles with feta cheese, tomatoes, red bell pepper and spinach for dinner; and a greek yogurt with blueberries for dessert. When he adds everything up, Joe finds that he is consuming 3,468 calories, 527g of carbs, 132g of protein and 101g of fat. He just took in about 59% of his calories from carbs, 15% from protein, and 26% from fat. Joe is spot on for his percentages while training. This gives you an idea of how easy it is to reach your caloric goals. Thanks Joe!
A Quick Note on Aerobic vs Anaerobic Training
When training for endurance activities, the development of your aerobic threshold is extremely important, and can also affect the way your body burns fuel and the types of foods that will most benefit you. In Training for the New Alpinism, Steve House and Scott Johnston make aerobic threshold the main focus of their training plan for alpinists. In essence, aerobic refers to low to moderate-intensity exercise that you can maintain for extended periods of time, with a relatively low heart-rate. Anaerobic exercise occurs when your heart rate is greatly raised, and your muscles are working to their maximum potential. This is a very powerful form of exercise, but as you can imagine, one that cannot be sustained for very long.
To succeed in alpinism (or endurance sports in general), you must be able to perform for long periods of time, even many days, at a steady and constant pace. By improving your aerobic capacity, you will be able to train in a consistent manner without becoming too fatigued or lapsing into anaerobic, high-intensity exercise. Your aerobic threshold is an entirely trainable quality that will allow you to comfortably carry out all your endurance activities.
In terms of nutrition, if you can remain in aerobic mode, your body will be able to utilize fats rather than carbohydrates to fuel your workouts. This means that your easily depleted glycogen stores will last longer, you will be less likely to bonk in the middle of your workout, and you won’t have to refuel with massive amounts of simple carbohydrates during your long routines. The training plan featured in this book focuses on extending the amount of time that you can spend working at moderate intensity, which will simultaneously train your body to use fuel more efficiently, and allow you to travel farther and faster without expending too much energy. (This is a rather simplified version of their training plan; I greatly encourage you to read this book and try their techniques, they work wonders for your fitness levels.)
Go Climb That Mountain!
Finally, get out there and experiment! Take all these ideas into consideration and figure out what works for you. See what foods make you feel good while pushing yourself harder and harder every day, doing what you love. I guarantee that the more you focus on nutrition, the better you will feel and perform on all your endeavors. Also, take into consideration the foods that are easy to prepare, with inexpensive and easy to find ingredients, and the meals that you already love which currently make up your diet. If you try too many new and complicated recipes with exotic ingredients, you will be less likely to stay on course with your goals. It is much easier to make small adjustments to what you already know.
You’ve already found your passion in life and fitness, what drives you up the mountain or across the finish line. Now find what fuel will make you stronger and faster than ever before.
References:
Carmichael, Chris. Chris Carmichael’s Food for Fitness: Eat Right to Train Right. New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2004.
Girard Eberle, Suzanne. Endurance Sports Nutrition, 3rd Edition. Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers, 2014.
House, Steve and Johnston, Scott. Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete. Ventura: Patagonia Books, 2014.
Larson-Meyer, Enette. Vegetarian Sports Nutrition. Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers, 2007.
Ryan, Monique. Sports Nutrition For Endurance Athletes, 2nd Edition. Boulder: VeloPress, 2007.
