The morning of the event:
It is our firm opinion that there’s nothing much you can do on event day morning other than make poor dietary choices that can ruin your performance. You should be Carbo loaded at this point, so the effect of further carbohydrate intake on event morning is going to have a negligible effect. In fact, if you consume a significant quantity of high glycaemic index (High GI) carbohydrate in the hour before exercise, this can leave you feeling lacklustre and unfocussed on the start line. The diagram below shows how high GI carbohydrate sources will cause a rapid rise in blood glucose followed by a proportional rise in insulin, which in turn lowers blood glucose. This panic response actually sends blood glucose (and your mental responsiveness) to a low point and it’s not a great place to be when you’re about to start a big endurance challenge.
So the key to optimal nutrition on the morning of race day is to make sure that you have a mix of high and low GI carbohydrates for breakfast so that you don’t get an exaggerated insulin response. If you want to learn more about high and low GI sources, do a Google search, because there’s far too much information out there to put into this article, but effectively more processed carbohydrates have a higher GI, because the body breaks them down more easily. Raw husky organic carbohydrates tend to have a lower GI.
It’s also a good idea to consume some lean savoury protein at breakfast if you fancy it, because this is going to be the last satiating meal you’ll have for a while. And this triggers the final point ‘lean’. Choosing low fat is going to be a key concept to remember if you’re going to get through the day in respectable shape. Within reason, you can celebrate and do what you like when you’ve finished, but don’t drop a ball now. The reason fat intake is such an issue on event day is because it takes so long to digest and in its dietary form it’s metabolically useless.
We all have plenty of fat to metabolise stored under our skin and around our organs, so there’s no fuelling benefit to taking it on board within your food on the day of the event anyway. Fat will also slow the passage of food through the gut and impede the absorption of carbohydrate, so it’s really not a good thing. In addition to this, if you have a fatty breakfast, you could start taking the perfect energy products on board from the start of your run and they’ll all sit on top of this plug of fat. You’ll struggle to digest the good stuff and then you’ll feel nauseous and get all sorts of gastric problems as the run progresses. This won’t be because of the energy products you’ve consumed; it’ll be due to your earlier fat intake.
It’s important to note here that fat does carry certain essential omega oils and vitamins A,D,E and K which are fat-soluble, so you certainly don’t want to emit fat from your diet altogether, but you don’t need it on event morning, or as you’ll read in the next section, during the event itself.
As an aside, an excellent TORQ-recommended pre-paddle breakfast is beans on toast with no butter on the toast and if you fancy it, a rasher or two of lean bacon (with all the fat trimmed off). This ticks all the boxes as far as we’re concerned.
During the event:
It’s during the event where TORQ products are meant to be used. You could use low fat forms of carbohydrate like Jelly Babies and jelly blocks as fuel, because these are essentially delivering carbohydrate to your blood stream, but this isn’t an optimal approach and quite frankly, we wouldn’t have a business if our products couldn’t do a significantly better job and get you home quicker and more comfortably.
Before the turn of the millennium, research had proven that glucose-based products delivered energy quicker than any other whilst exercising and specifically a special polymer of glucose called ‘Maltodextrin’. Using maltodextrin-based products, it was deemed possible to deliver approximately 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour, which basically meant that 60 grams of stored carbohydrate was ‘spared’ per hour of exercise. As carbohydrate is stored in limited supply within the working muscles, fuelling at this rate was (and still is) considered to be hugely beneficial to endurance performance.
In 2005, new research found that by mixing maltodextrin with fructose (fruit sugar) at a 2:1 ratio, carbohydrate delivery was increased by 40% and this had huge implications for the prescription of fuelling for endurance events.
This and other studies suggest that a 2:1 maltodextrin: fructose formulation allows the user to consume and use up to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour. The implications of being able to deliver and use 30 grams more carbohydrate than previously considered possible has significant implications to endurance performance. In short, it gives you 40% better carbohydrate-sparing than using maltodextrin alone, which is quite a staggering finding. This extremely fast delivery of carbohydrate also means that the product isn’t in the gut for long, so stomach problems from these formulations are extremely rare. Suffice to say, all of TORQ’s energy products are formulated using 2:1 maltodextrin: fructose and to further ease gastric emptying, the philosophy of the company is very much about keeping the products natural. We also have Soil Association Organic Certification on two of our products and Fairtrade Certification on four of them.
So, whether you decide to use TORQ, another brand or just jelly babies for your paddle, you should be taking on board a minimum of 40 grams of carbohydrate per hour, up to a maximum of 90 grams per hour depending on your fuel choice.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you are in fact going to use TORQ for your event and it’ll make the following example much easier to explain. TORQ products have been designed in 30 gram doses to make life easier for everyone:
500ml TORQ energy (6% standard recommended mix) = 30 grams carbohydrate (1 TORQ unit)
1 X TORQ gel = 30 grams carbohydrate (1 TORQ unit)
1 X TORQ bar = 30 grams carbohydrate (1 TORQ unit)
Let’s assume that you want to err on the side of caution for your first event and want to go with 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour instead of 90. This means that you need to consume 2 TORQ units per hour, but which units do you take? Dehydration beyond 2% of body weight will have a negative effect on performance, particularly in hot conditions, so drinking enough is also clearly a consideration.
In a nutshell, if perspiration rates are high, more of your TORQ units should come from energy drinks as opposed to bars or gels, however we also realise that as a paddler it is very difficult to carry such volumes of energy drinks – this is why we would steer you as to use our TORQ gels as your fuel and to use water for hydration needs. Although with paddling it is perfectly acceptable to wear a hydration bladder on your back with a pouch on the front to store your TORQ gels. TORQ’s energy gels also contain 5 electrolytes and although these are not quite at the levels of our Energy drinks, which are very high, they do contain all 5 key electrolytes – which is more than most other gels on the market today. These will assist in the prevention of cramping and the water will help in the hydration process.
In cooler conditions when perspiration rates are lower, trying to drink excessive amounts of fluid or sports drinks will quite simply start to fill your bladder too quickly and if you have to stop too often, you’re not going to get a very good event time! You’ll also find that in cooler conditions that you’re just not as thirsty as you would be in warmer ones and therefore the energy drinks you have in your hydration bladder will no doubt just stay there – and getting back after your paddle with it still in the hydration bladder isn’t going to help you! Whether you take a bar or a gel is up to you. A bar will feel more like ‘food’ if your stomach is asking for something to work on, but gels are much easier to get down in a hurry and are functional when you’re not necessarily hungry.
Our suggestion is that you start with 2 TORQ units per hour and then practice with 3. If you’re over 70kg, you really shouldn’t have a problem with 3 TORQ units per hour.
This probably doesn’t need repeating, but I think it’s important to reiterate the ‘low fat’ discussion point from the previous section, because any fat consumed during the ride will affect:
- a) Carbohydrate delivery
- b) Gastrointestinal comfort
- c) Performance (the sum of the above 2 factors)
So, if an energy bar has a chocolate or yoghurt coating, it will be quite high in fat and therefore we don’t consider it an energy bar. There are also plenty of apparently healthy flapjack-type products on the market masquerading as ‘energy bars’, so CHECK THE FAT CONTENT. Ideally it’ll be close to 2 grams of fat per 100g of product and they should be very high in carbohydrate.
The final point to get across is that you should NEVER wait until you’re hungry or thirsty.
You need to assume the mantle of ‘eating/drinking machine’ right from the gun, because the carbohydrate calories you take on board at the start of the race will save you towards the end. If you run out of carbohydrate, it’s a phenomenon in running known as ‘Hitting the Wall’ and ‘Bonking’ in cycling (maybe we ought to invent a word for this process in paddling?) it’s not very pleasant at all. If you’ve Carbo-loaded and fuelled properly throughout however, ‘hitting the wall’ is almost impossible, so do the right thing.