Another Nutrition Question
Hey y'all,
I went on what was supposed to be a 60 mile ride today. My stomach was kind of bothering me as we began the ride, feeling bloated. But, around mile 35, I started feeling really naseous. By mile 40, I lost my snacks on the side of the road. You gotta love vomiting with an audience (sorry, probably too much information).
My body felt great, except for the tossing of the cookies, so I know if I can conquer that, I'll be able to ride much farther. I ate a Snickers Marathon bar and had a little bit of coke before the ride. I realize that the coke and chocolate may not have been the smartest, but I generally get a headache if I don't have caffeine all day, and I knew I'd be riding for a while. On the ride, I stopped at 2 rest stops and had a quarter orange slice, half a banana, and animal crackers or vanilla wafers at each stop. I only drank water on the ride. I was drinking out of the camelback so I don't know how much I drank, but I tried to drink consistently.
Now that I've told you more than you wanted to know, here are my questions. First of all, what do you generally consume before the ride (either the night before and/or the morning of)? How long before the ride do you try to eat? I know you shouldn't wait until you feel bad to eat, but what do you eat if/when you start to feel naseous?
Thanks so much for all your help. I really want to accomplish bigger cycling goals and don't want this to hold me up. Many of your tips helped my husband finish the ride today and helped me to ride safely in a large group.
-sarah b.
Carbs...sticking points...
Note too that there are different kinds of carbs and the body converts them to glycogen or burns them off differently - typically, the less processed your grain and vegetable products are, the more efficiently your body will use them and convert them to fuel with fewer spikes in glucose levels
Whole wheat/whole grain carbs like oatmeal (not the over processed quick cooking kind), stone ground bread and pasta (NO ENRICHED FLOUR!), corn meal tortillas, these are the kinds of carbs you want to load up on - sweet potatos and other starchy vegetables are also good, but we do tend to load potatos full of butter and fat. Buy bread and pasta products that list the first ingredient as "Stone ground" or "Unbromated" grain - it's more expensive, but you get a lot more nutrition for your money. Your body burns these slower, more efficiently and at a more even rate than over processed simple carbs. And you don't have to eat as much of them to get the effect you want as you would have to eat if you were having white bread for instance.
Enriched flour is WORTHLESS - all the nutrition is processed out of it, then it is "enriched" by adding back in an artificial form of what was removed!
Fat and simple sugar (like a snickers bar) creates a spike and then a rapid decline in glucose levels - that rapid decline is most likely what was responsible for your nausea and vomiting - not only did you run out of fuel, but you probably down spiked your glucose level at about the same time. Eating a gel pack will reverse this quickly, but then you have another downspike coming along soon - to avoid this you need to maintain a baseline glucose level with complex carbs (an oatmeal bar pre-workout for instance), and then use your glucose spikes to create fuel above that when your workouts hit high intensity.
Sports drinks are excellent if you are doing long high intensity workouts - but caution needs to be used with these too - if you find they are making you thirstier instead of satiating your thirst, that's a sign that you need to drink water instead.
Mud?
