09/13/2021
Hey all of you XC Runners!
Lots of you struggling with eating enough food and/or drinking enough. So important to stay HYDRATED and FUELED in season. Here are some ideas:
🥑🥯🍳🍗🥪🍠🍓🫐🍌During the school day, you should make sure you are eating a full breakfast, lunch and dinner plus 2 snacks in between. Including a small carb-protein snack about 90 min before the workout. Like a bar or banana with peanut butter. Food with complex carbs and enough protein to rebuild your muscles from all of our races/workouts.
Whole fruits and veggies plus solid lean proteins are always best. Some of you don’t eat animal-based foods, so you need to work extra hard to combine plant foods that have enough different amino acids (mini building blocks of protein) to rebuild your muscles. Don’t avoid carbs! You need them for energy to run, especially on hard workout days. Ever have that bonking feeling?? Probably didn’t eat enough calories or carbs in the previous 24 hours to sustain the high calorie burn from an interval workout!
Protein is also the most important part of an athlete’s diet. You NEED a lot of protein in your diet, or your muscles will start to “eat themselves” in order to get it. Trust me, you don’t want this to happen. Athletes often need .8-1g of protein per pound of body weight. So that means adding about 30g of protein to each meal! I know you rush to get to school in the morning, so grab some quick Greek yogurt or maybe an Orgain shake or a bar with some whole food nutrients (not weird ingredients you can’t recognize).
And you should try to get a solid amount of protein into your body within one hour of a workout. Protein bars, bananas, peanut butter, beef jerky, protein powder etc. for these snacks. They even come in vegan varieties like Orgain bars and shakes.
💦 Drinking: a ton!! Especially when it’s warmer, like next week, and sweat production goes up. Calculate your weight in kilograms, and that’s about how many ounces of liquid you need per day. If you workout or it’s hot, you need about 20-30% more than that even!!
So for a 120 lb female, that’s about 55 ounces of water per day for a normal day NOT counting a workout. For a 170 lb person, that is 77 ounces!! So when you guys are carrying around a small Swell bottle, u should be filling that sucker up like 5-6x a day, BEFORE you even count the workout water weight lost!!
🏃🏽♀️☀️🔥🥤During the day in school, keep sipping from a reusable water bottle that has water and electrolytes in it. I use tablets when I am not doing more than 1 hour of cardio. If more than that (like a long run or hot day) these are good options. ⬇️ Because they have more sodium, electrolytes and carbs to give u energy.
🥍💦 PRE AND RACE DAY HYDRATION
BASE Hydro
Tailwind Endurance Fuel
💪🏼🦵🏾👣😴POST RACE RECOVERY
You need to try to get protein into your system within 60 min of a hard workout. Protein shakes are a good option, bc they get into your system quickly. They come premixed or you can buy a powder to mix into your water. Chocolate milk is an awesome post run drink as well.
Orgain Organic Nutritional Shake,
Tailwind Rebuild Recovery
If u sweat a lot, and get cramps, make sure you are also getting enough sodium with your hydration. BASE makes salt lick tubes and there are also Salt Stick fast chews which u can take as you feel your muscles start to twitch (pre cramping sign.) Just be careful with these, most people do get enough salt in their diets, but NOT if you are eating a simple salad at lunch and nothing else.
And SLEEEEEP! Your muscles rebuild during sleep. If you don’t get 7-8+ hours, you don’t rebuild. This includes going easy on easy run days. Let them be recovery days, so that your hard workouts can be better.
(Of course, always consult with a doctor and/or Nutritionist before taking any type of supplements.)
