– to access more content and expert support, check out 
.
After the event:
One school of thought is that once you’ve finished your event, you have every reason to reward yourself with a beer and some high fat indulgences. Whilst we can’t argue with this perspective, there is a compromise. Within 15 minutes of finishing, you should ideally consume a proper recovery drink, because the correct nutrients at this time will perform a huge amount of work and it’ll mean that you’ll be able to walk and function relatively normally the following day. Once you’ve absorbed your recovery drink, hey of course, chill out, have a beer and eat some of the stuff you’ve not been allowed to for the last couple of days.
The main function of a recovery drink is to restore muscle carbohydrate (glycogen) levels to normal as soon as possible, enabling you to exercise again sooner. Other components within a good quality recovery drink will aid muscular/biochemical repair and support your immune system. Our opinion is that recovery drinks are best used during high load periods of training (like you might have done in the lead up to this event), because they increase your resilience to training and allow you to perform a higher training volume. After an event like this, they certainly help you to feel less fatigued the next day, but presumably you’ll be giving yourself a few days off paddling anyway as a reward, so how necessary is it? The choice is yours.
TORQ’s recovery product is delivered by a dose according to your bodyweight as everyone is different and we all have slightly differing requirements. We sell small tubs (4-7 doses) and larger tubs (12-20 doses). Once again, there’s the subject of fat content. If a recovery product is high in fat, it’s going to delay carbohydrate and protein absorption and the whole point of a recovery drink is to get the correct mix of calories into your blood quickly whilst enzyme activity is elevated (enzymes are the chemicals within your body that do the graft of storing and building). TORQ recovery has 0.7g fat per 100g of powder, which is extremely low fat. Remember that with pre-mixed recovery drinks, most of the product is calorie-less water, so this can distort your perception of fat levels. For instance, 0.7g fat per 100ml of ready-to-drink is actually quite high fat.
TORQ recovery also contains whey protein to facilitate carbohydrate absorption as well as providing the building blocks for muscular repair and Ribose, HMB and L-Glutamine, which are extremely potent natural ingredients specifically chosen for their recovery/immune enhancing properties. Ribose in particular is very unique to TORQ.
For more comprehensive information on this subject and others, please feel free to phone our fitness consultancy on 0344 332 0852 or contact Martin on info@360active.co.uk.
Words Martin Rendle
Images Martin Rendle, Marie Buchanan and Philip Arthur
There are many schools of thought on fuelling for races and endurance paddles and many paddlers will have their own favourite snacks from Jelly Babies to Fig Rolls and any number of homemade fuelling suggestions. If you are getting serious about your performance then it’s well worth considering what you eat and drink and more importantly how and when you fuel for events.