Early morning pre exercise food

Rawhead

Just wondering what a good eating routine is for an early morning run/swim or cycle.
If I am up at 6am for a session I will generally have a banana and a slice of toast before hitting the turbo or pool. I will then have my usual porridge post exercise.
Is this a fairly okay routine or should I eat more/less before a session?

tmc86

If you are doing a session that early and are just up then a banana is ideal. I'd usually have a banana as soon as i'm up and then try and drink 1litre+ of water before I start.

post session breakfast is important and porridge is a good option and include some protein/more fruit.

If you have a slighlty higher carb meal the night before you will be pre loaded with energy for the morning and this will help your session.

Head The Wall

Yeah, that sounds good.

The OH who's a Nutritional Therapist has me eating two oat biscuits with almond or hazelnut butter before I do my 13 mile cycle to work, this gets the digestive enzymes going and then I'll have a banana or wholemeal toast before I start work.

Head The Wall

Fruit on it's own first thing in the morning wouldn't be great as the fructose will elevate your insulin levels.

metamorphosis

I tried eating beforehand if i slumped outa bed and then went to training but just didnt work for me. If i am doing anything under an hour, a glass of water will do me beforehand. Anything over, i have juice, coffee and then have a decent breakfast after. Whatever works for you i suppose. Different strokes and all that.

Rawhead

Thanks for that. I feel it suits me well but I was just afraid I was missing out on some golden rule of training "you must never eat before training etc".

TFBubendorfer

Head The Wall wrote: »

Fruit on it's own first thing in the morning wouldn't be great as the fructose will elevate your insulin levels.

If you exercise within a few minutes of eating that fruit, you don't have to worry about your insulin levels.

I get up around 6 o'clock (give or take a bit, depending on the planned mileage) and usually run on an empty stomach. I've tried eating something beforehand, but it does not agree with me.

I have yet to run out of energy.

HardyEustace

Barry Murray of optimum nutrition for sport is a big fan of running on empty. You should find some resources on this on his website.

Ruu_Old

Cup of tea for a bit of comfort, more of a mental thing really and maybe a half of a bagel but no more.

Rawhead

HardyEustace wrote: »

Barry Murray of optimum nutrition for sport is a big fan of running on empty. You should find some resources on this on his website.

Good website.

tmc86

running on empty is a great way to excersise as you are using your glucose and energy stores and not the energy you have just acquired from eating some breakfast.

Post workout it is obviously important to refuel

hf4z6sqo7vjngi

I think what you have post workout is more important. If i am doing over an hour or a tough workout early morning i will have something small like a piece of fruit and wholemeal toast but if its an easy session i will just drink water.
My post workout food intake on the early sessions, is water mixed with phd recovery and then porridge, honey, chopped banana and a small bit of protein powder mixed in.
Keeps me away from mid morning treats until lunchtime rolls around:)

Gringo78

HardyEustace wrote: »

Barry Murray of optimum nutrition for sport is a big fan of running on empty. You should find some resources on this on his website.

Will running with food in your stomach not actually train your stomach to be able to digest food a bit better on the run? This would be probably only relevant to longer distance events like marathon, tri, ultra where you want a better ability to take on carbs during the event.

TFBubendorfer

Gringo78 wrote: »

Will running with food in your stomach not actually train your stomach to be able to digest food a bit better on the run? This would be probably only relevant to longer distance events like marathon, tri, ultra where you want a better ability to take on carbs during the event.

You don't run a marathon with food in your stomach, at least not as long as you're trying to achieve a time.

Ultra, yes but only if it's over 50 miles (that's just me - your mileage may vary and everybody is different, of course).

Tri, not speaking from personal experience here, but I gather during an IM they tend to eat on the bike, not the run.

Taking on carbs does not mean eating. Gels and sports drinks contain plenty of carbs.

Gringo78

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

You don't run a marathon with food in your stomach, at least not as long as you're trying to achieve a time.

Ultra, yes but only if it's over 50 miles (that's just me - your mileage may vary and everybody is different, of course).

Tri, not speaking from personal experience here, but I gather during an IM they tend to eat on the bike, not the run.

Taking on carbs does not mean eating. Gels and sports drinks contain plenty of carbs.

Just to clarify, I meant purely from the point of view of digesting gels & sports drinks during a race, not being able to tolerate a hang sandwich 10 miles in.

In an IM, I'm pretty sure they continue to consume as much carbs as they can on the run - just, on the run you can get less in before you run into discomfort problems so maybe 2-3 gels per hour on the run, 3-4 gels per hour on the bike (and/or sports drink). So why can you consume less on the run than the bike? I assume all the bobbing about your stomach is doing.

In a family compromise type run I do at the weekends (I run, they bike) we stop at a cafe halfway through and have lunch. At first I used to have problems then running on a full stomach but now I have got a lot more used to it - theres definetly a training effect from running on a full stomach. Hopefully this means I can tolerate taking on more gels during a race (although I've never had stomach issues from gels)

TFBubendorfer

Gringo78 wrote: »

Just to clarify, I meant purely from the point of view of digesting gels & sports drinks during a race, not being able to tolerate a hang sandwich 10 miles in.

Learn to digest gels and sports drink? Doesn't that work straight from the off? I never had problems digesting either, and I very rarely use them (just about never in training).

Personally I strongly believe that you would be much better off training your body to use its internal fat stores rather than train it to digest a gel.

Gringo78

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Learn to digest gels and sports drink? Doesn't that work straight from the off? I never had problems digesting either, and I very rarely use them (just about never in training).

Personally I strongly believe that you would be much better off training your body to use its internal fat stores rather than train it to digest a gel.

Obviously any normal person should be able to digest a gel or sports drink but things change when you're at race pace and if you are really trying to optimise performance then the key is the ability to maximise the amount of carbs you can get through your system without getting diarhoea. I agree about training your body to use more fat, but glycogen is a turbo power source in comparison to fat and is there to be used so why not try to maximise the use of it? You can only store a certain amount of glycogen but you then take extra carbs on during the race so I'm talking about how to maximise the amount you can take on, can you train this?

TFBubendorfer

Gringo78 wrote: »

Obviously any normal person should be able to digest a gel or sports drink but things change when you're at race pace and if you are really trying to optimise performance then the key is the ability to maximise the amount of carbs you can get through your system without getting diarhoea. I agree about training your body to use more fat, but glycogen is a turbo power source in comparison to fat and is there to be used so why not try to maximise the use of it? You can only store a certain amount of glycogen but you then take extra carbs on during the race so I'm talking about how to maximise the amount you can take on, can you train this?

Sorry, I still don't get your argument.

If I run at an intensive pace (say, 5K race pace), I don't need extra carbs because the distance will be too low. I have taken gels from 10-mile races upwards, which is still reasonably intensive, and did not have any problems digesting that stuff.

For longer races, the intensity will be significantly lower and you shouldn't have any issues anyway.

You don't really have to worry about running out of glycogen for anything shorter than a marathon, so that argument is a red herring in my view. For anythong longer than 20 miles, the intensity should be low enough to be able to digest a gel without having to train your body towards that.

SWL

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Sorry, I still don't get your argument.

If I run at an intensive pace (say, 5K race pace), I don't need extra carbs because the distance will be too low. I have taken gels from 10-mile races upwards, which is still reasonably intensive, and did not have any problems digesting that stuff.

For longer races, the intensity will be significantly lower and you shouldn't have any issues anyway.

You don't really have to worry about running out of glycogen for anything shorter than a marathon, so that argument is a red herring in my view. For anythong longer than 20 miles, the intensity should be low enough to be able to digest a gel without having to train your body towards that.

Also at lower intensities the percentage of carb and fat used varies. I agree train your body to use fat, I never use gels in training I always have them with me in case of emergency’s especially on a cycle but hate to use them as I believe I am just cheating myself.

Gringo78

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Sorry, I still don't get your argument.

If I run at an intensive pace (say, 5K race pace), I don't need extra carbs because the distance will be too low. I have taken gels from 10-mile races upwards, which is still reasonably intensive, and did not have any problems digesting that stuff.

For longer races, the intensity will be significantly lower and you shouldn't have any issues anyway.

You don't really have to worry about running out of glycogen for anything shorter than a marathon, so that argument is a red herring in my view. For anythong longer than 20 miles, the intensity should be low enough to be able to digest a gel without having to train your body towards that.

I don't think the intensity is 'significantly' lower at say 50k to 50mile ultra events and also HIM up in Tri, at the sharper end of the age group field they're cycling & running pretty intensively.

I reckon for my current marathon pace I will bonk at 19 miles if I don't ake on any gels and thus actually need to take on 7 or 8 gels.

I don't actually use gels or water during training but I actually am not sure this makes any difference anyway to training your fat utilisation - as far as I know the efficient way to train fat utilisation is to run slow. My weekly mileage is quite low so I don't have a great number of slow miles so my fat utilisation is probably quite poor anyway hence the need for gels.

Gringo78

SWL wrote: »

Also at lower intensities the percentage of carb and fat used varies. I agree train your body to use fat, I never use gels in training I always have them with me in case of emergency’s especially on a cycle but hate to use them as I believe I am just cheating myself.

How are you cheating yourself? If the idea of running is for weight loss, then you should be doing all your running at low intensite and burning more fat but the idea of a race is to as fast as you can, not prove how long your glycogen reserves can last.

SWL

Gringo78 wrote: »

How are you cheating yourself? If the idea of running is for weight loss, then you should be doing all your running at low intensite and burning more fat but the idea of a race is to as fast as you can, not prove how long your glycogen reserves can last.

Agreed - but in training I never use them in a race over 10 miles if I feel I need them I will use them

Gringo78

SWL wrote: »

Agreed - but in training I never use them in a race over 10 miles if I feel I need them I will use them

OK, not using them in training I understand. Apart from using them in training to learn to get used to them, they're not really required in training unless the amount of training you are doing means you are pushing your glycogen reserves quite low and so consuming the gels on the run will make recovery easier.. I've a sweet tooth & low mileage training so I never tax my glycogen reserves bar in a race.

Notwitch

Gringo78 wrote: »

Obviously any normal person should be able to digest a gel or sports drink but things change when you're at race pace and if you are really trying to optimise performance then the key is the ability to maximise the amount of carbs you can get through your system without getting diarhoea. I agree about training your body to use more fat, but glycogen is a turbo power source in comparison to fat and is there to be used so why not try to maximise the use of it? You can only store a certain amount of glycogen but you then take extra carbs on during the race so I'm talking about how to maximise the amount you can take on, can you train this?[/QUOTE]

google asker jeukendrup and his work in this area.

here's a quick extract from an interview with him

SLOWTWITCH: I've got one technical question for you and I'll ask it now. Mark Allen has always maintained that carbohydrate uptake is trainable, and he felt he trained his body to uptake upwards of 600 calories an hour during an Ironman. How trainable is the gut during exercise, and how much hope is there for the mere mortal who uptakes 250 calories an hour?

ASKER: Absolutely! Mark Allen was well ahead of us scientists! There are studies that clearly show that the gut is a very adaptable organ. I have been working with athletes to increase the capacity to use carbohydrates. One session a week should have the goal to train the gut! Take on board at least as much carbohydrate as you would in a race! How many marathon runners never take carbohydrate in training and then show up for their big event and start to use gels and drinks. How many of them then complain about poor tolerance? This then gives them a reason to train another year without gels and drinks! I have called the training where the purpose is to train your gut nutritional training and this should play a role in every endurance athlete's training schedule.

TFBubendorfer

This has gone off-topic now, the original question was about early morning food intake. And as I mentioned (much) earlier, I run on an empty stomach - in training. For a marathon race, I eat 2-3 hours before race start.

I still don't think that you need to train your body to take gels. By all means, try them out before a marathon to see if you agree with them, but that's a different issue.

Gringo78 wrote: »

as far as I know the efficient way to train fat utilisation is to run slow.

Sorry, but that's nonsense. You're still burining plenty of fat at higher intensities. The aim of my training with regards to fat/carbs utilisation is to burn a higher percentage of fat while maintaining race pace.

Gringo78

Notwitch wrote: »

SLOWTWITCH: I've got one technical question for you and I'll ask it now. Mark Allen has always maintained that carbohydrate uptake is trainable, and he felt he trained his body to uptake upwards of 600 calories an hour during an Ironman. How trainable is the gut during exercise, and how much hope is there for the mere mortal who uptakes 250 calories an hour?

ASKER: Absolutely! Mark Allen was well ahead of us scientists! There are studies that clearly show that the gut is a very adaptable organ. I have been working with athletes to increase the capacity to use carbohydrates. One session a week should have the goal to train the gut! Take on board at least as much carbohydrate as you would in a race! How many marathon runners never take carbohydrate in training and then show up for their big event and start to use gels and drinks. How many of them then complain about poor tolerance? This then gives them a reason to train another year without gels and drinks! I have called the training where the purpose is to train your gut nutritional training and this should play a role in every endurance athlete's training schedule.

Interesting - not all in my head so. As I said previously, I've found that my gut has toughened up by stopping for lunch mid run and then running afterwards. I would run at tempo pace after the lunch and don't have much issue with it now whereas I would have had to slow right down before.

As I don't do Ironmans though, this ability is not really much use to me at the moment.

TFBubendorfer

and he felt he trained his body to uptake upwards of 600 calories an hour during an Ironman

Ok, we are talking ENTIRELY different things here. 600 calories an hour :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

That's worlds away from the scenario I have in mind. I'm talking about us mere mortals here, trying to run a marathon or similar.

If you want to digest 600 calories an hour while exercising, then yes, you will have to train for that.

hf4z6sqo7vjngi

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

I still don't think that you need to train your body to take gels.

Thread has gone way OT:) re the above i disagree slightly, for an IM event it is key to train and practice race nutrition. Below gives you an idea of what i took on board for a 12 hour IM and if i had not trialed or practiced race nutrition on my my long runs and long bikes in training then GI issues and a tough day day may of occured.

Pre race
Bowl of porridge, coffee, and power bar, 500ml sports drink & gel about 20 minutes before the start of the swim
Total – around 180g of CHO

Bike
Powerbar gels ½ caffeinated taken twice every hour – 13 gels – 364g of CHO
2 powerbars and 2 nutigrains, nibbling away every hour – 134g of CHO
High 5 energy mix drink x 3 – 180g of CHO
Water mixed with nuun tabs x 2 bottles
Total – 639g of CHO

Run
8 gels taken every 25 mins – 224g of CHO
Coke and anything I can get my hands on in the last 10k.
Total – 224g of CHO

Total of 1043g of CHO – 87g of CHO per hour based on a 12 hour completion.

I probably did not need as much on the day but there was no dips in energy levels, had i not trained and practiced taking the above whilst moving at race pace intensity then i would dread to think how my day would of went.

EDIT: BTW I do agree that you should not need to take anything below marathon distance.

tunguska

Rice krispies squares......could even eat them during a speed session and not a bother.

Sauve

I don't run nearly as far as some of you guys, I'm a bit of a newbie.
Just getting up to the 10 mile mark at the minute, doing that about once a fortnight, with four to five 4 mile runs weekly.
Food doesn't sit well if I eat in the mornings before I go out, but by the time I get home I'm like a rabid dog looking for food! A big glass of milk usually settles me pretty quickly though.
So no, for me, no food before a morning run.