Hi Team!  I've enjoyed reading Nancy Clark's (Simmons Alum) Sports Nutrition Guidebook this summer.  There is some GREAT information in there... I'm sharing two articles from this text that I feel are very relevant to our team.  The first refers to fueling before morning workouts - something I know a lot of us struggle with, and the second refers to cramping (which we always seem to encounter during September and October while we're transitioning).

Fuel Before Morning Workouts
(extracted from Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 2008)

Skipping breakfast is a common practice among people who exercise early in the morning.  If you roll out of bed and eat nothing before you jump into the swimming pool, you may be running on fumes.  You will probably perform better if you eat something before you exercise.  During the night, you can deplete your liver glycogen, the source of carbohydrate that maintains normal blood sugar levels.  When you start a workout with low blood sugar, you fatigue earlier than you would have if you had eaten something.

How much you should eat varies from person to person, ranging from a few crackers to a slice of bread, a glass of juice, a bowl of cereal, or a whole breakfast.  If you had a large snack the night before, you'll be less needy of early-morning food.  But if you've eaten nothing since a 6:00pm dinner the night before, your blood sugar will definitely need a boost.  Most people get good results from 0.5 gram of carbohydrate (2 calories) per pound of body weight one hour before moderately hard exercise, or 2 grams of carbohydrate (8 calories) per pound of body weight four hours beforehand.  For a 150-pound person, this is 75 to 300 grams of carbohydrate - the equivalent of a small bowl of cereal with a banana to a big stack of pancakes.

Defining the best amount of pre-exercise food is difficult because tolerances vary greatly from person to person.  Some athletes get up two hours early just to eat and then go back to bed and allow time for the food to settle.  Others have a few bites of a bagel, a banana, or some other easy-to-digest food as they dash out the door.  Then there are those who habitually run on empty.  If that's you, an abstainer, here is a noteworthy study that might convince you to experiment with eating at least 100 calories of a morning snack before you work out.

Researchers asked a group of athletes to bike moderately hard for as long as they could.  When they ate breakfast (400 calories of carbohydrate), they biked for 136 minutes, as compared with 109 minutes after only drinking water.  Clearly, these athletes were able to train better with some fuel in their tanks. Pre-exercise morning fuel will likely for you, too.

Four hundred calories is the equivalent of an average bowl of cereal with some milk and a banana; it's not a pile of pancakes.  You need not eat tons of food to notice a benefit.  Eat what's comfortable for you, and learn what is the right amount of food to fuel your workouts but still settle well.


Cramping Your Style? 
(extracted from Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook, 2008)

Muscle cramps are often associated with dehydration. If you have ever experience the excruciating pain of a severe muscle cramp, you may fearfully wonder if it will strike again.  Because no one totally understands what causes muscle cramps, these unpredictable spasms are somewhat mysterious.  Since cramps occur when muscles are fatigued, the problem may be related to a nerve malfunction that creates an imbalance between muscle excitation and inhibition, which prevents the muscle from relaxing.

Although cramps are likely related to overexertion, other predisposing factors may include fluid loss, inadequate conditioning, and electrolyte imbalance.  The solution often can be found with massage and stretching.  Other times, nutrition may be involved.  Although the following nutrition tips are not guaranteed to resolve this malady, I recommend that people who are predisposed to getting cramps rule out these possible contributing causes:

• Lack of water.  Cramps commonly coincide with dehydration.  To prevent dehydration-induced cramps, drink enough fluids before, during, and after you exercise.  Always drink enough fluids daily so that your urine is clear, pale yellow, or copious.  During a long exercise session, a target for a 150 pound athlete might be about 8 ounces of fluid every 15 to 20 minutes. 

• Lack of calcium.  Calcium plays an essential role in muscle contractions.  Some active people report that their problem with cramping disappears when they boost their calcium intake.  Athletes plagues by cramps should consume dairy products or other calcium sources at least twice a day. 

• Lack of potassium.  Electrolyte imbalance, such as lack of potassium, may play a role in muscle cramps.  But a potassium deficiency is unlikely to occur as a result of sweat losses because the body contains much more potassium than even a marathoner might lose during a hot, sweaty race.  Nevertheless, you can rule out this issue by eating potassium-rich foods on a daily basis. [Some potassium-rich foods: spinach, bananas, apricots, cantaloupe, white beans, acorn squash, avocado]

• Lack of sodium.  Active people who restrict their sodium intake during exercise may be putting themselves at risk of developing a sodium imbalance that could contribute to cramps.  This circumstance is most likely to occur in athletes who exercise hard for more than four hours in the heat.  The risk increases if they consume only water during the event and have eaten no foods or beverages that contain sodium.  Endurance sports drinks and salted pretzels would be wise snack choices during exercise.

• Lack of magnesium.  Just as muscles need calcium to contract they also need magnesium to relax.  Magnesium helps reduce leg cramps that occur in the middle of the night.  Whether or not magnesium can also help with exercise-related cramps is unclear.  Many people do not meet the RDA for magnesium: 320 milligrams/day for women.  The richest sources of magnesium include green leafy vegetables, whole grains, nuts, beans, and legumes.