Nutrition: Keep Your Bananas Longer

All runners know that bananas are an important staple in your running diet. If you didn’t know, here’s your news flash; bananas are an awesome running food. Bananas have a natural anti-acid affect on the body and help calm the stomach, making it easy to eat bananas right before or during exercise. Research has shown that 2 bananas serve up enough energy for 90 min of strenuous exercise and bananas are a natural source of potassium - an indispensable mineral which aids oxygen transportation to our organs, helps to regularize heartbeat as well as fluid levels in the body and can help combat the muscle cramps runners sometimes get after strenuous workouts when electrolyte levels are low.

So the question is not if bananas should be in your diet, but rather how do we keep bananas around longer so they’re there when we need them…

The Long Run: Eating On the Run - Scott Jurek

A short article by Scott Jurek on Competitor.com.  Scott talks about fueling during long runs and presents a couple of formulas to figure the upper and lower ranges of your needed carbs per hour of running.

http://running.competitor.com/2011/06/inside-the-magazine/the-long-run/the-long-run-eating-on-the-run_28754

Beer & Running

A Beer post on a Friday? Brilliant!

First, I do not condone drinking. In fact, my friends know I don’t even like drinking. *Cough* *Hack* I can’t even type that with a straight face. Okay, I love a beer after a run, and I like to claim I’m reloading on carbs and hydrating… So I when I started to write this post I was planning on talking about how beer is good for your running. Turns out that’s wrong. Sorry.

So here’s the summary for those who don’t want to read this; if you want to be an elite ultra runner, don’t drink alcohol, there are much better ways of hydrating and carbo loading. If you want to enjoy life, there must be a reason we have a liver – just make sure to practice moderation.

So with the unfortunate (for ultra athletes) summary out of the way, here are some of the facts;

Nutrition - Chia Seeds

Chia seeds are nothing new, in fact most Americans will immediately think of green furry potted pets when you mention chia, but very few will think running super food. Christopher Douglas’s mention of them in Born to Run has brought them to the forefront of the discussion on “natural energy” for runners.

Chia has been used for thousands of years as an endurance enhancing food, easily traced back to the Mayans and Aztecs. Stories abound about Aztec warriors and messengers running extreme distances on nothing but a handful of chia seeds. Chia seeds alone won’t make you a super runner, but they have many properties that can greatly improve your performance.

28 g of chia, or about 3 tablespoons, contains roughly 137 calories and 12 g of

Run & Race Tip #1 - Carbo Loading

A very familiar concept to most distance runners, but does it really work?  Maybe not as much as many runners think.  While it’s important to make sure you have enough carbs in your diet, your muscles can only hold so much glycogen (carbohydrate calories stored in the body - about 60-90 minutes worth).  So as long as you’re doing a good job replenishing glycogen stores before and after hard workouts those pre-race pasta parties really aren’t helping much.  But what if you were able to coax your body into overloading on glycogen?  The answer is simple – your performance in endurance races would be improved, and it turns out it IS possible to temporarily boost your glycogen stores.

Veronica recently sent me this article on carbo loading strategies.  Definitely worth a look if you’re running in events longer than an hour…  http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/carbo-loading-managing-your-glycogen-intake-without-overloading-on-glucose-65

Basic idea; intense workouts increase your muscle’s synthesis of glycogen.  Studies have shown that an intense workout of even just 3 minutes (if done correctly) can start this increased synthesis.  Follow this workout with 24 hours of a high carb diet and no exercise and muscle glycogen levels can be boosted as much as 82%.  Also realize that this glycogen synthesis is greatest right after workouts, so it’s important to start refueling soon after your cool down.  Something to think about before your next long race or workout...

Another good site about glycogen: http://www.exrx.net/Nutrition/Glycogen.html