Didn't cover this in the race report, and wanted to make a focus of it.
Prerace nutrition. On Friday I stopped all veggies and moved to chicken and sweet potatoes. I let myself eat as I wanted, and I might have eaten too much. I'm of the opinion that "carbo loading" is a useless practice, as long as you have enough carbs beforehand. The idea of "storing" carbs for a race though, I don't agree with or practice. That being said, I had 2 big sweet potatoes on Friday. With ghee butter and cinnamon and salt. :)
Race morning. Coffee, banana, two poached eggs, then munched slowly a powerbar at the start line. A well-practiced and honed system there. 230 calories.
In race. The plan was to eat every 45 mins, no matter how I felt. I knew that once behind on nutrition it was hard to catch up. This worked, and became an easy habit I quit thinking about. I total up 1300 calories of EFS, 720 calories of Powerbars, 100 of Sport Beans, 250 of gels, and a few tablespoons of nuts and raisins from the aid stations. MFP adds it up to about 28g fat, 1811 mg sodium, 1351g potassium, 478g carbs, 29g protein, 0% vitamin A, 410% vitamin C, 119% calcium, and 91% iron. Sorry, I had to include those last ones, damn the vitamins they add to that food! Puts me at about 2500 calories, give or take.
That doesn't include the drop bag munchies I had, and that's hard to measure because I ate some Thursday, some Friday, some Saturday, some Sunday. But that included a bag of sweet potato chips, 2 servings of plantain chips, coconut chips, and a bag of apple chips. Wow! 2500 calories as 140g fat, 280g carbs, 8g protein. All goodness :)
Post race. Worked on my special chips bag (above), two poached eggs, some chicken breast. Not including chips, about 300 calories.
Next day. Two more eggs for breakfast, more of my chips before I gave up and threw the rest away, about 10 dates, some of my special chocolate treats,...this would be a hard day to count.
Summary. The Garmin estimated about 3500 net calories burned. In race I ate 2500, combined with brekkie and dinner that day added up to 3000 calories not including my special chips bag. I'm not sure where to add it, but it's safe to assume that by having it spread out over the 4 days it was a good calorie boost.
I know I have trouble race day and post race with food, so I made a special point to eat good the days ahead, figuring that would help me out. But I'm not sure that's the way to go. I think I should always eat good, always eat to satiety and with hunger, never forcing anything down like I sometimes do. I'm starting to hate it.
But my in-race nutrition was spot on. I mostly used the EFS, a 1 oz sip with the 45 min alarm. When I needed a break, I'd eat half a powerbar or a bag of sport beans. My stomach never growled and I never threw up. (But I felt like I would, burping up water and EFS late in the race!). The EFS is so much easier than a gel to eat, no foils or tabs or garbage to track. It tasted so damned sweet but by swallowing it fast as I could I minimized it.
I was very surprised by how I didn't tap into the caffeine in this race! I had one caffeinated gel--a chocolate gu--around lap 4. I had sorted caff and non-caff foods separately so I could track that and limit how much I ate early in the race. I didn't want to get dependent on it. Turns out I never felt the need for it!
The aid station foods weren't looking at all good to me. I wanted to try potato chips but I didn't want the crunch, I wanted soft. I thought about a salty boiled potato but I didn't want the stuck-in-the-back-of-my-throat feeling. None of the soda, candy, or other foods even appealed. I did try some cut-in-half Lara nut bars from the Totem AS but only ate a small bite of each before donating it to the squirrels. Good, but too solid.
All I drank was water, and by the end of the race I hated water. Especially the ambient temp'd water from the coolers at the start/finish, with it's flat stale taste. Now we know why other runners had gallons of water at their drop bags.
Overall, a winner of a nutrition plan!
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