Trying to maximise your training effort? Don’t forget to factor in nutrition. Nutrition can make or break your training, so eat up and fuel wisely to achieve your training goals.

Consider these ‘mistakes’ and avoid them if you find yourself falling into these traps.

MISTAKE 1

Not eating before early training
Your body has been without food for several hours overnight, so you can’t expect to get the best out of it in your training or racing if you are under-fuelling the session.

Solution
Eat enough carbohydrates the day before and find things that are easy to eat or drink and sit well in your stomach in the morning. This could be a yoghurt smoothie, half a banana sandwich or a slice of toast with peanut butter and a glass of fresh juice mixed with water.

MISTAKE 2

Eating foods that cause stomach problems
Here we’re talking essentially about ‘runners trots’ – this is a really common problem in runners that can also happen during any exercise when blood is diverted from the digestive system to the working muscles.

Solution
Eat bland, non-spicy, nonfibrous foods the night and hours before training. Stick to meals such as white pasta with plain tomato sauce the night before, and in the morning have something like a small bowl of porridge or easily digestible cereal or some white toast with peanut butter.

MISTAKE 3

Not taking on fuel during long training sessions
This is very common during runs when people don’t want to carry food or gels. They often go without anything and wonder why they slow down towards the end of a long session.

Solution
Work out how much carbohydrate and fluid you need and know how much is in the drinks and foods you’re consuming. You should aim for 30-60g of carbohydrate per hour, and it follows that the smaller you are, the less you will need.

MISTAKE 4

Bingeing after training and racing
Sometimes the last thing you want to do after a long session is to eat. If you don’t, then subsequent training sessions will suffer and you’ll feel tired with heavy muscles. The other side of the coin is people who eat everything in sight, using the fact that they’ve done a hard session as an excuse to hoover up anything that falls in their path!

Solution
Plan your post-training and racing eating and make sure you have the right nutrition to hand at the finish. Chocolate milk is superb and slips down very nicely; have about 300ml with some salted nuts or a peanut butter sandwich and that should see you through until the next meal. If you sit straight down to a meal then have something like spaghetti bolognese made with lean beef or Quorn mince.

MISTAKE 5

Eating big meals after late training
When you train in the evening you might not get home until after 8pm. A big meal afterwards will still be churning away when you go to bed and can affect your sleep and increase fat storage.

Solution
Have your main meal at lunch and a small post-training meal. This could be beans or eggs on toast or homemade bean and vegetable soup with bread; sushi with a fruit smoothie or one of the good one-pot ready meals such as Innocent Veg Pots or a pot of Stewed!

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