Friday, January 29, 2010

Ensure - It's not just for old people anymore

As part of my radical new hydration/carbo loading experiment (in which I am the sole guinea pig) I am finding that it's much easier to get my daily additional 310g of carbohydrates via nutrition replacement drinks than it is through meals and snacks alone.

On previous marathon taper periods, I have tried to eat enough pasta, potatoes and rice to completely load my glycogen stores before race day, but I always found it difficult. First, you get sick of that much starch. Secondly, the "bulk" accompanied with those carb-rich foods is significant, and would leave me feeling bloated, heavy and not at all ready to jaunt 26.2 miles in 2 days. Thirdly, I found it difficult to have enough time throughout those final 3 days to be able to eat that much food.

So, I am trying something a bit different. One of the single serving cans of Ensure contains roughly 40g of carbs and around 250 calories. They're quite small and taste pretty darn good. I am consuming about 6-8 servings of these drinks per day ( X 3 days) for a total carb increase of roughly 320g per day. Suffice it to say that these drinks will keep you feeling less than hungry throughout the day, so I don't find myself eating very much. I am trying to augment those carbs with smaller snacks and meals that provide additional nutrition such as protein and magnesium.

This is a new one for me, and I'm really curious to see how it plays out on Sunday during the race. I may be a complete idiot for trying this, but it was time to shake things up a bit with my race nutrition plan. This is definitely a shake-up in my book.

I'll let you know how it works out for me in 2 more days...

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