Food, food and more food. The people who participate in Endurance Sports at all levels come to understand this fact. When I run extremely long distances, a huge amount of calories are expended and therefore needed to fuel my body to keep it moving forward. Liquid calories just aren't enough to get it done so I need to eat real food. Teaching your body to eat and run at the same time is a very weird concept. Naturally the cooking and baking skills I learned from growing up on a farm and making everything from scratch has really come in handy. I love to experiment with different combinations and ingredients to find the ones that fit my needs the best. Since I'm a fairly patient person the trial and error method is mostly effective and can be fun. Fortunately my husband is a great sport and always steps up to the plate as my guinea pig. No pun intended although it works. He tries anything I put in front of him. I found a cook book that is really informative and has answered a lot of my questions about hydration and fueling for endurance sports. Feed Zone Portables by Biju Thomas and Dr Allen Lim. The introduction to this cookbook explains about endurance athletics and what the specific requirements are to be successful. Very interesting and reasonably more complicated than it might appear at first glance. Great stuff though! I have been following these concepts and ideas for a year now and feel I've had a good deal of success. I've even taken away more ideas, altering the recipes and packing techniques for taking food on my trips. They truly are portable, easy to make and easy to eat while using mostly all natural and fresh ingredients. My favorite is the French Toast mini muffins. I stuff them either with a glob of peanut butter or chocolate chips or both. (my idea for stuffing them) MMMMmmmm. My husband makes amazing fresh blueberry pancakes with 7 natural ingredients to supply the perfect ratio of nutrients and even has the pure maple syrup included. Then I just put the batter in the mini muffin tins to bake. A bite size muffin that has everything I need and is simple to eat and I only need about one an hour. Those muffins work for when I want something sweet. For the savory taste, I make a mashed potato with sausage and grated fresh parmesan cheese mixture. They all get baked the same way in mini bite size muffins. A perfect petite package of pleasure.
Happy eating and exercising!!!
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