The Gunnison Growler is T minus 8 days and counting. At 7 AM, one week from tomorrow, the longest race of the year (so far) will commence. I do not particularly want to drag myself out of bed at 3:30 AM to feed, so after reading Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes and chatting with Rick da man, we came up with a good plan. Liquid breakfast 1.5 hours before with about 500 calories, 100g of carbs, and 20g of protein. I tested out my nutrition strategy today and it worked well. I just have to make sure I don’t get behind on my liquid and gel intake.
A little tunage for the post.
I headed out with Mr. Kerkove and Shawn Meredith. My plan was to ride at my Growler pace and hope it was good enough to keep up.
Alas, to go their pace, I had to go out of the HR zone I had planned out, so I hung back by my lonesome. I did run into some of my peeps riding today though!
I went up the bike path out of Boulder, up 4 mile to Sunset, up Switzerland trail to Gold Hill Rd, up Gold Hill Rd to Peak to Peak Highway, then went up to Brainard Lake, down Lefthand Canyon, up Lickskillet to Gold Hill and back home. The theme of this ride was “up.” About 4 hours, 60 miles, and 6000′ of climbing later, I arrived back home and made a beeline for the fridge. 🙂
Switzerland trail. Fun stuff.
Almost to Gold Hill Rd off Switzerland Trail.
I did my fair share of suffering today. I rode at sub-threshold for the whole time I was pedaling. That is HR 170-180… perfect for me for 50-60 miles.
I think I’m around 9000′ here. My ride topped out around 11,000′ (Brainard Lake)
I saw a mommy and 2 baby foxes today… and talked to them in a high-pitched voice haha!
Starting up Lickskillet Road. It is one of the steepest roads in Boulder County… like so steep I am in my granny gear on the mtb! I giggled and smiled the whole way up like a small child. WEEE!
Jeff and I did a mountain bike clinic at REI last night. We got some good questions and it was great to meet the guys that came!
Tomorrow will be a short and delightful day on singletrack. I love the weekend, especially when it’s warm and I get to play on dirt.
The trails look great! i must ride there someday.
Good to hear you found some nutrition that works for you in the early AM. That can be a tough riddle to solve.
darn, missed my stalking chance. I suck as a stalker. 🙂 I’ve done a few 10+ hour races and found that the longer I waited before the gels or bars the better. Mix drinks for the first say 3-4 hours, then a gel every half hour to 40 minutes. I think the more you can play games with your body (like re-setting clock so you don’t see 7:00:00) the better off it goes. Remember it’s 1/2 physical and the other 70% is mental. 🙂
Hammer Nutrition recommends the light liquid breakfast before races too. Basically thye say if you carb-load the night before that tops off muscle glycogen, and as you sleep you lose only a bit of liver glycogen…a small ~300-cal breakfast a couple hours before the race tops off the liver glycogen stores and since there is no need loss of muscle glycogen during the night that’s all you need.
I’ve shown up at the start of endurance races with an empty stomach and done well. From the start on, it’s just calorie balance every 15-mins or so…
Good luck next weekend…Jeni will be racing, I’ll be working the feed zone.
See ya in Gunny! 🙂