Fuelling for Success: Essential Nutrition Tips for Endurance Athletes

Nutrition is a complex subject that can take up multiple books, and can have positive benefits for endurance performance, as well as for health. Additionally, people can make nutrition choices based on cultural choices as well, as well as ethical grounds.

While there is still much to learn and while there is still a way to go, the science of health nutrition and performance nutrition does provide some suggestions as to how we, as endurance athletes should eat.

Macronutrients
Macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fats that form the basis of our diet. It’s now well understood that each plays a key role in helping us perform better, and have better health.

Carbohydrates, need to be consumed to aid performance and maintain health. Depending on how much training you’re doing daily consumption should be in the region of 4 to 12g of carbs per kg of body mass (which I realise is a huge range). On a day off or very easy recovery spin you may (and this won’t always be the case) need around 4g/kg. On the other hand if you’re riding the Tour de France or some similar amount of huge training you’ll need around 12g/kg

Protein aids recovery and helps rebuild muscle. Your intake should increase if you’re 40 or older, losing weight, trying to build muscle, or eat a plant based diet. It should be in the region of 1.6 to 2.5 g/kg of body mass and should be reasonably consistent.

Fat provides essential nutrients that help the body function. In general your fat consumption should be around 10 to 20% of your total daily energy intake.

Nutrient Timing
When you eat is also as important as what you eat. Prior to intense sessions you should mainly be consuming carbohydrates as both fats and protein slow blood flow to your exercising limbs. This may not be important for an endurance session but would be for intervals or a race. Generally, you should leave time between eating and racing and this should form the basis of how much carbohydrates to consume. Aim for 60g per hour. In other words if your race is 2 hours from now, consume 120 g, 4 hours from now is 240 g, etc.

Of course, if you’re not racing then include fats and protein, especially if the session is long. These are both filling and will help fuel you.

During exercise
During cycling you it’s likely that you can consume more than when running due to GI distress and being shaken around… For running you’ll have to experiment as there’s considerable individual differences. On the other hand, for cycling for longer rides you should aim for an absolute minimum of 60g/hour of carbohydrates no matter how much you weigh (historically, it was thought that a person could only consume 1g/kg body mass but this has been disproven). This amount (60g/hr) is now thought of as low carbohydrate training, with upper limits currently around 120 – 150g/hour. However, if you’ve never eaten on a ride (or not much) you can’t start at 120 or more, you’ll likely end up with bad GI distress. Start at the 60g/hour and then work your way up to higher levels by eating more in subsequent training sessions. Note that for short endurance rides or recovery spins you may only need water or similar, you don’t need to fuel every session.

Plant based
More and more people are moving to a plant based diet. Evidence suggests that a diet high in plants leads to better all round health, and better adaptations from training. Plant based diets appear to lower all risks mortality in masters athletes and may lead to better performance. However, an entirely plant based diet isn’t without risk – that is, some nutrients are harder to source on such a diet (such as some micronutrients and protein). High levels of nitrate consumption – found in veggies such as beetroot (beets), rocket (arugula) and lettuce can lead to both a decrease in blood pressure as well as potentially increasing VO2max (MAP) and FTP. They may also help (I’ve literally just found this out!!) if you suffer from Reynauds Syndrome (where your fingers or toes become extremely cold and painful in colder weather).

As with training, your nutrition should be personalized to fit your unique needs, training regimen, health, and preferences. If you’re unsure about your current diet and want expert guidance on optimising your macros for improved performance or weight management, feel free to reach out. Together, we can tailor a nutrition plan that helps you achieve your goals and reach peak performance.