Ask the Experts - Nutrition

Answers from Andrew Hamilton:

Q. I am a coach and I am coaching and developing a great 12-year old runner who is constantly improving every year at 800m and 1500m. I would like some nutritional tips to help her recover faster and perform better; at the end of the summer it seems as though she starts to wear down and doesn't look as strong as she did at the beginning of the season even though her times show she is getting faster. I would like to get her 800m-time under 2:20 and her 1500m-time at 4:30 or faster (her present PBs are 2:28 and 4:59). What should be done to ensure that she continues to improve the times all the way until she is 18?

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Assuming her coaching and training is correctly matched to her goals and abilities (from what you say, it certainly looks that way so far!), it’s true that her nutrition is the next most important thing to attend to. In broad-brush terms, there are three main priorities.

The first is to ensure that her diet contains plenty of high quality carbohydrate to enable her to undergo the high quality ‘anaerobic type’ training required for this type of event. This is because much of the energy expended during high-intensity training is derived from muscle glycogen, which in turn is synthesised in the body from dietary carbohydrate. In practice, this means her day to day diet should emphasise whole grain breads and cereals, whole grain pasta and rice, starchy vegetables like potatoes, beans and lentil and of course plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. As a rough guide, around 60% of her calories should be derived from these foods.

The second priority is to ensure that she is recovering as fully and as rapidly as possible from bouts of training and competition. This can be achieved by ensuring she consumes a carbohydrate-rich meal or snacks within 30 minutes of training, together with plenty of fluid and some high-quality protein. If this is difficult for her (for example if she lives a long way away from the training venue), she may benefit from the use of a post-exercise carbohydrate/protein recovery drink. However, some caution is needed here; young impressionable athletes need to know that good nutrition comes from good food, and not necessarily from a bottle or tub!

Finally, you also need to think about her longer-term health, which will help her maintain a consistent training routine and keep injuries and illness at bay. While treats such as cakes, biscuits, sweets and fast food are OK in moderation, it’s important that the bulk of her diet comes from whole, unprocessed foods containing ample amounts of the important vitamins and minerals her body needs to grow and develop healthily. Young female athletes need to keep a particularly close eye on their mineral status, especially iron, calcium, magnesium and zinc; iron is case in point as research shows that even marginally low iron intakes are detrimental to aerobic performance, yet many young exercising women have sub-optimum tissue iron, a problem exacerbated once menstruation begins, particularly in those who abstain from meat and perform lots of pounding exercise like running.