Feeding the furnace: Hill training nutrition

After doing tedious amounts of research on the Internet in regards to nutrition for hill training and mountain marathons, I've found that most work on a ratio of 80 percent effective nutrition and 20 percent effective training.

The main aim of my hill training has been to build the strength, endurance and conditioning of my leg muscles, to do this I have implied a tough training program (to follow on this blog shortly) which results in the production of small micro tears in my leg muscles. When these micro tears repair, they grow back stronger and generally bigger. This only occurs when you provide your muscles with the building blocks to repair themselves i.e. protein, carbohydrates and vitamins.

When training for endurance there is an optimum ratio of 3:1 carbohydrates: protein. These come in the form of supplement powders or pre-made shakes. I use 'For Goodness Shakes' and 'Sport in Science REGO' simply because I don't suffer from delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) the day after training (due to the supplements providing the correct nutrition for muscle repair), and they are the only supplements that actually taste like real food!! Although this is what I use it is solely down to personal preference along with what works best with your body.

Supplementation is great when you train hard and need all the help you can get, but I'm a big believer in getting as much nutrition from regular food as is possible, therefore I focus a lot of time into preparing very nutritious, high calorie and healthy food.

To achieve this I operate on the basis of eating a high calorie breakfast consisting of whole grains, protein and fruit, a lunch rich in carbohydrates, fruit, veg and protein ( e.g. chicken and vegetable soup with a fruit smoothie), and a dinner rich in all the important of the above. Snacks consist of fruit, carbohydrates and protein, personally I prefer a fruit and veg smoothie with some protein and carbohydrate supplement powder added.

This is the basis that i operate on for my nutrition and is not professional advice. Professional recommendations should always be sort after from a GP and nutritionist before embarking on a nutritional program.