Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Eating for Elite Performances

Coming into our championship season, it is really important that we not only keep our training at a high level, but also our eating and drinking and rest (Hydration-Nutrition-Relaxation)

Let's talk eating. While the pasta dinners at Carino's are a great source of merriment and entertainment and excellent spaghetti, it has been proven, time and time again, that simply eating well one night before a big race doesn't do a bit of good for you. You need to eat well ALL THE TIME, plain and simple. That means every day, three meals a day. That means you need to start today, to get ready for races weeks from now.

I subscribe to two simple nutrition rules. One, don't eat anything with ingredients you cannot pronounce. Two, eat lots of it. The training that we are doing requires huge amounts of energy and calories, and you simply cannot eat too much when you are training on an elite level track team. You can eat too many Cheeze-Its, but you can't eat too many apples.

So, do some research, talk to Coach Whintenack, our nutrition guru. Google "Nancy Clark articles" and you will find tons of great resources like this one, which will help you fine-tune your diet for optimum performance.

SEP

1 comment:

STEVE-O said...

Add Pedialyte to the diet a few days leading up the the race! I eat pasta two nights before. A small steak the night before a race, and drink a bottle of Pedialyte. Plus a half turkey sandwich the day of a race if I race in the late afternoon.

Took a few years but I found my perfect diet for race weeks!

Everyone is a little different tho.

Steveo