Hydrate and refuel before-during-after your race

Make your Hydration count!

No matter if you training for several hours or doing a 10km race your body loses water, electrolytes and sodium from your sweat. As well as burning up precious calories, from burning carbohydrates stored in your muscles and liver.

When these reserve’s of stored glycogen are done, game over! So in order to not allow this to happen, performance and lasting you continuously need top up and replenish what you losing.

Nutrition should be geared and based on replacing what ultimately your loss would be, this is all based around your event, duration, intensity or extent of your activity. Key to this would also be climate and time of year.

Take a look at your training session or event and plan before hand so you make sure you “top up” your reserves before, take enough to fuel correctly during, and smartly top up within the first 45minutes after finishing.

*30-90min training session:

Shorter training sessions, make sure you hydrate with a carbohydrate drink the night before, and again add another 300ml at least 90min before the above session. Food is unnecessary for this length of training, but fluid intake with carbohydrates in essential.
Durning the session, drink to thirst, on a run less water will be consumed then a bike ride. Around half the amount to avoid that dreaded stitch.
After your session within a 45min window period, you need to replace lost carbohydrates, so continue drinking your fluids slowly.
Add a protein shake or small meal that is easily digestible.
Reason for preloading the night before-helps reduce your need to drink excess amounts during your activity. Don’t get me wrong you still have to drink this will just aid in replenishing before hand.

*90min-4hrs training session:

Carbohydrate fluid the night before + 60min before your start.
Morning before race or long training: Aim for 100-150 grams of easy-to-digest, low fiber carbohydrate in the 90min to 2hrs hours leading up to your start.
During your activity 60g of carbohydrates per 1hr for the first 2hrs.
2-4hrs in – increase to 90g of carbohydrates + include protein into your food intake. Try choose food that can be digested easily.
Using gels – 1 per hour. Once you start gels you need to continue hourly for whole event.

Gels or bars are necessary on longer events or in training if you only have water to drink. Remember too factor in more sodium and carbohydrates when racing or pushing hard in hot conditions. Essential to top up your sodium loss.

How you recover, fuel up and rehydrate after your activity will determine how you feel and preform the following day, which is essential if you have another session the next day or if you doing a Multi day race.

*These are broad duration guidelines. With more years and experience your body will adapt differently and you will be bale to cope with less for longer.

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