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As competition day looms, taper off training to a reduced daily load of 30-60 minutes of low-intensity exercise, while aiming for a high-carbohydrate intake of 500-600g per day. This will encourage your muscles to store over 20% more glycogen. If you have been following a high-carbohydrate training diet throughout the previous months, your muscles should be well stocked up, but this tapering régime will ensure they are maximised.

What you eat on the day of competition depends on the time and length of the race as well as personal issues, such as what you can stomach, and what is convenient. If the race is scheduled for first thing in the morning, it is unlikely that you are going to feel like getting up at 3 or 4 am to eat a carbohydrate-rich meal. Instead, on the evening before eat around 200g of carbohydrate, by basing your meal around pasta or rice. A typical meal could consist of the following:

• 3 cups pasta;
• tomato-based pasta sauce;
• small topping parmesan cheese;
• 1 scoop ice cream;
• 1-2 pieces fresh fruit;
• 500ml sports drink, or fruit juice.

Before going to bed, if you feel peckish, two slices of toast and jam or a cup of hot semi-skim milk with two low fat biscuits, such as Jaffa Cakes, should suffice.

On the morning of competition, the aims of your final feeding are to:

• top up muscle glycogen stores;
• replenish liver glycogen stores that will have dropped overnight;
• keep hunger at bay without causing discomfort;
• promote the use of CHO as a fuel during exercise.

Choose a small snack first thing in the morning that is densely packed with carbohydrates but contains little in the way of fat, protein or fibre. To reduce fibre content, choose ‘white’ carbohydrate sources over ‘brown’. Some ideal breakfast choices include:

• 1 small bowl cereal with semi-skim milk, half a banana and 1 tsp honey;
• 2 slices toast with honey or jam;
• energy bar or drink.

For competitions later in the day, your pre-event meal will contribute to the fuel available during exercise. For prolonged endurance exercise, it should meet the same criteria as the evening meal described above, containing around 200g of carbohydrate. This meal will provide carbohydrates for oxidation during the later stages of the competition, helping you to maintain your pace for longer.

An example of a suitable breakfast is:

• 1 large bowl Fruit’n’Fibre with semi-skim milk and 2 tsp honey;
• 1 medium banana;
• 100ml natural yoghurt;
• 2 slices white toast;
• 2 tsp jam;
• 250ml fruit juice.

You have eaten your high-carbohydrate, low-fat meal four hours before competition, and there is just one hour to go. Do you have a quick sugar fix now? Many athletes believe a high-carbohydrate snack just prior to exercise will lead to reduced exercise performance; this misconception arose from a single study carried out in the 1970s that showed a reduction in performance time following ingestion of glucose 30 minutes before exercise. But this study has not been backed up by any further research, and the theory that a sugary snack immediately prior to exercise will impair performance is not widely accepted today.

The theory was based on the idea that the glucose would raise insulin levels, and therefore reliance on muscle glycogen, during the early stages of exercise. Many subsequent studies do back up this theory, but nevertheless fail to show any detrimental effect on exercise performance, since the effect is short lived. In other words, the pros of an extra supply of carbohydrate just before you begin exercise far outweigh any cons. This last feeding should be a palatable and rapidly-absorbed snack containing around 50g carbohydrate, such as an energy bar, a handful of raisins, a small banana or a sports drink.

The best way to find out what suits you is to experiment during training. Don’t wait until race day to find out the hard way that you can’t cope with fluids 30 minutes beforehand!

Why do you need to ingest carbs during prolonged exercise? You already know the answer if you have ever been in a competition situation, feeling good, pushing hard, when suddenly, bang, you run out of energy. Call it what you want – hitting the wall, bonking, knocking – it’s all the same: you’ve used up all your carbohydrate stores and you’re running on empty. However, you can delay if not prevent this disaster altogether by taking a few precautionary measures during the event.

Despite all the knowledge on pre-event carbo-loading, it has only been relatively recently that attention has focused on fuelling up during exercise. Watch any big endurance event on television – an Ironman, for instance – and you’ll see athletes collect their own specially-formulated sports drink or food at a drinks station. And that is part of the key: choosing what suits you. Know the basics, try out a few formulations during training, find out what you can tolerate and then practise until you are sure you can ingest the required amount under race conditions.

But why is this necessary if you have successfully loaded up your glycogen stores prior to competition? At the onset of moderate-intensity exercise, around 50% of energy will come from fat and 50% from muscle glycogen. Straight away muscle and liver stores begin falling. Although muscle glycogen continues to supply energy throughout exercise, blood glucose starts being delivered to your muscles as a fuel source. If this blood glucose isn’t maintained, levels will fall and you will have to rely more heavily on muscle glycogen.

Remember, though, that your muscle glycogen stores aren’t unlimited, and following two hours of continuous exercise they will have fallen low. If you can keep topping up blood glucose by eating carbohydrates and save glycogen stores until you need them later, you can delay fatigue by as much as 30-50 minutes. What’s more, should you find yourself in a sprint finish situation at the end of a long endurance event, a bit of saved muscle glycogen could just give you an edge.

It’s not just endurance performance that benefits from carbo-feeding; intermittent exercise performance of varying intensities, such as in hockey and football, is also improved. Taking in a carbo drink at half time can improve sprinting ability in the latter stages of the game, making all the difference as the opposition tires.

The major factors to consider when taking on fuel during competition are:

• length and intensity of the event;
• ease of taking on food and fluids;
• what can be tolerated.

A 70kg athlete should aim to ingest 30-60g of carbohydrates per hour, depending on the length and intensity of competition. A 60kg athlete should aim for 25-50g. Don’t wait until you feel hungry to eat and don’t wait until you feel thirsty to drink. Once you start to feel fatigued it is too late, and you will struggle to take on enough fuel to reverse the adverse effects.

Begin regular small feedings in the early stages of competition. Have foods readily available and easy to find, open and ingest. If you think you might forget, set the alarm on your watch to go off every hour, reminding you to eat something.

Many endurance athletes carry small bags of pre-portioned food supplies in a bum bag or saddle bag. Sports drinks should be measured into water bottles and be easy to reach. If you know the race route, ask friends to stand at certain points with drinks or food; or leave your own drinks at drink stations beforehand.

What should be in these food packages or water bottles? How much food and what type of carbohydrates? Because energy needs to be delivered as rapidly as possible to your hard-working muscles, it is best to choose foods with a high glycaemic index. Sweets like jelly babies are ideal to stuff into a pocket, as are energy bars or gels. There are many different commercial sports fuels to choose from now, so why not buy several brands and experiment?

During a competition you may not feel much like eating or drinking, but you are more likely to do so if you actually like the food and drink you have with you. Other options include bananas, raisins, fig rolls, and honey or jam sandwiches. Avoid foods with high fat, protein or fibre content, as they can cause gastric discomfort.

If, like many athletes, you find it hard to tolerate food at all while competing, try fluids alone. A water bottle may be more bulky to carry than an energy bar, but fluids are often better tolerated in your stomach if you are prone to gastrointestinal distress. Commercial sports drinks of 6-10% carbohydrate content will rapidly supply you with both fuel and fluids, killing two birds with one stone. Good examples include Gatorade, Lucozade and High 5.

Athletes were refuelling before the advent of commercial sports drinks, however, and home-made sports drinks are just as effective as well as cheaper. Diluted Coca-Cola is a favourite among cyclists, and fruit juice diluted with equal parts water is just as good.

Go for small frequent drinks

As the carbohydrate content of the drink increases, the rate at which it is emptied from your stomach falls; above 10%, the delivery rate is too slow for during competition, and below 6% the volume required to provide enough energy would be so high as to be impractical. Drinking small frequent volumes is generally advised, as this will be better tolerated than a single large bolus.

Remember, though, it is possible to train your stomach to tolerate larger food and fluid loads during exercise by starting with a small amount of food in your stomach and building up to being able to ingest larger amounts during training.

After competition, your refuelling requirements are the same as after a hard training session. Aim to ingest at least 50g of carbohydrates as soon as possible. Remember, in those first two hours after competition, your muscles are far more receptive to carbohydrates than they will be several hours later. Don’t wait until you get home to eat; plan ahead and have a sports drink and a couple of energy bars in your bag, or a packet of jelly babies and a can of juice. Your muscles aren’t fussy, and as long as the food is carbohydrate-rich, they will use it. And if you can take in 100-200g in the first few hours after exercise, you’re well on the way to the goal of a total 500g.

Carbohydrates are the fuel of choice for serious athletes who strive to get the most out of their bodies. To train hard and compete successfully, go for carbs every time!

Clare Miller

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