How to increase your performance and recovery with nutrient timing

Second in the series on natural food fueling, alternatives to Gu's, energy drinks and junk food.

Follow these three essential steps to extend your performance and optimise your recovery from both training and racing:

1. Fuel correctly pre-exercise when your sessions are greater than 60 minutes

Training on an empty stomach is essential to turn you into a fat burning machine, but when your duration extends beyond 60 minutes, such a strategy is likely to negate your performance. Body stores alone are insufficient to supply the energy needs during longer sessions or events.

The solution? Eat a small amount of carbohydrate prior to your session. This is the perfect time to eat fruit, as the sugars will be broken down, utilised as fuel and not shuttled off to the liver for fat storage. Which, we know, is what happens when we consume fructose in excess, or at the wrong time.

 * Race Day

On race day, our requirements differ slightly, due to the timing of the event and the increased energy requirements of the day. A pre-race meal is simply designed to top up liver glycogen, which has depleted overnight during your sleep. General guidelines are 200 to 400 calories of complex carbohydrates, consumed two to three hours prior to the start. Be flexible however, as sleep is more important than waking up at the crack of dawn for breakfast.

Here are some simple, natural, pre-race meal ideas, all of which can also be used pre-training when your duration extends towards 90 minutes and beyond.

-       Two pieces of gluten free toast with banana

-       A smoothie with one banana and a small handful of berries

-       Quinoa Porridge with rice malt syrup, chopped banana and cinnamon

-       Homemade granola with Greek yogurt and a small handful of raspberries

Your pre-race meal should always be something you practice in training. Nothing new happens on race day.

Reprinted from:

THE NATURAL NUTRITIONIST

Reprinted from

Average Times for English Channel Crossings - Updated

Average Times For English Channel Swimmers

Open Water Source analyzed 1,612 individual solo crossings of the English Channel between 1875 and 2010 that are included in Julian Critchlow's database ofEnglish Channel swimmers. All solo, two-way and three-way crossings were included (with the 2nd and 3rd legs of the two-way and three-way crossing counting as solo legs). The average times found:

Average female time from England to France: 12:48 (429 total crossing)
Average male time from England to France: 13:24 (908 total crossings)

Average female time from France to England: 13:33 (94 total crossings)
Average male time from France to England: 14:19 (180 total crossings)

The average times on a country-by-country basis is found at Open Water Source. Some interesting comparisons include the following:

Average time of female swimmers from Australia: 11:01 (23 crossings)
Average time of female swimmers from Canada: 11:53 (29 crossings)
Average time of female swimmers from Czech Republic: 9:17 (6 crossings)
Average time of female swimmers from Mexico: 11:04 (11 crossings)
Average time of female swimmers from the Netherlands: 10:28 (14 crossings)
Average time of male swimmers from New Zealand: 10:41 (15 crossings)
Average time of male swimmers from Spain: 10:35 (8 crossings)
Average time of male swimmers from U.S.A.: 13:01 (218 crossings)
Average time of female swimmers from U.S.A.: 12:13 (106 crossings)

2.5 miles of lake Michigan practice, 1 miles up and down

Cruising through the weeks leading up to masters open water national 10k(6.2 mile) race and continue logging 28k yards per week. Spent this week in the open water, except two pool practices, focused on longer swims at a solid pace and working on technique. Tired but gaining confidence to swim through the next several weeks and big races to my real test, that at Boston 8 to 10 miles cold (55-65f) ocean race then on to my 6-8 hour English channel qualifying swim in the fall.

Had a good swim with my coach (Marcia Cleveland) in lake Michigan this week. Booked 2.5 miles in a 1-3 foot swells. Learning to sense the pattern of the waves, several big rollers and the calm. During the calm I take advantage and bi- lateral breath which balances my stroke and releives my neck stress, then back at riding the waves. It's amazing how different it is swimming in even easy rolling waves, the extra time it requires, to complete the same distance in a pool or smooth lake. But I am now confident I can take on some big wavy water if needed and be patient and work through it. Next on my trainig regime is to swim a night. I finally found a few folks willing to tolerate me crazy dream and help me out at night kayaking with glow sticks and head lamps while I swim. We'll try easy lake Zurich first and then move on to lake Michigan.

As for Boston, I will be honest I am a little nervous, it's my first big ocean swim despite the fact that I will have been swimming in and around martha's vineyard the week before. Guess where jaws was filmed ... You guessed it...martha's vineyard. Oh the joy of knowing this. But I have to face these fears because In the end, get busy living or get busy dying. I'll be just fine in all these but it's the mental game.

Thank you to everyone that sends notes and akses about how it's going. You can't imagine the challenge of something this big, the details, the logistics, the learning of both oneself and how to work with mother nature. Special thanks to jennifer, mom and dad, Katie, Ted, Kevin, and my swi coaches marita, Marcia and John, and doug McConnell (he inspires me every to try harder). Oh one last driving reason, to teach my daughter that despite very big odds, something like this can be done, I hope she someday she has a similar opportunity of a life challenge.