Nutrition Testing

I started doing some testing with maltodextrin this weekend at the suggestion of fellow blogger Mike. Maltodextrin is a common food additive containing easily digestible carbohydrates, yet is cheaper than sports powders. It can be purchased online or at your local brewing supply store, since it is a common ingredient used to brew beer. My local brewing supply store is 40 minutes away, so I ordered a pound online so I could experiment. There was no calorie label on the package but doing a little googling, it looks like a cup contains about 360 calories.

I had a long brick work out scheduled for Saturday for which I planned on mixing a one hour bottle and a long ride Sunday for which I planned mixing a four hour bottle. My first attempt was one cup of maltodextrin, one scoop of Gatorade powder and one tablespoon of salt. I mixed that up, took a sip and promptly poured it out :-). The Gatorade flavor was way too strong as was the salt taste. My second attempt was one cup of maltodextrin, one Succeed S!CAP for electrolytes and a little lemonade flavored Crystal Light for flavoring. The taste was pretty good so I went with it for my first test.

On the plan for Saturday was a brick workout consisting of an hour swim, an hour ride, and an hour run. Unfortunately, lap swim didn't start until noon and the temperature was forecast to be in the mid 90's with the heat index being over 100. If nothing else, it would be a good nutrition test. If you can take in calories in the heat and keep it down, it should work in just about all conditions, right? The workout went fine, nutrition seemed to taste good and sit well but I did cut the run short due to the heat (5k instead of a 10k). Cutting it short had nothing to do with nutrition. I didn't want to hurt myself and risk missing the long ride Sunday.

With that success, I decided to make a four hour bottle for Sunday. I mixed three cups of maltodextrin, three S!CAPS, and lemonade flavored Crystal Light again. Maltodextrin is easier to mix hot, so i mixed the bottle Saturday night and put it in the fridge. Sunday was a little cooler than Saturday, but not much. I set off on a four and a half hour ride with ~1100 calories in one bottle and a second bottle of water only. My plan was to take a sip of calories every 15 minutes and drink water to thirst. This plan seemed to work ok. A couple times I skipped a calorie drink because I was feeling a little bloated. This worked out so I finished the bottle four hours in. I think finishing it in three hours would have been a little soon. I did notice a slight after taste a few times, but nothing stomach turning.

The last half hour of the ride wasn't pretty. I was exhausted and over heated and stopped at every water fountain to pour water over my head. Afterward I think I hopped in the shower too quick because when I got out, I started sweating, got the cold shakes, nausea, and really light headed. Let me tell you, its tough to shave when you are about to pass out (and probably not a good idea). I laid down for a while and felt better. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since I weighed seven pounds less than when I started. I don't think it had anything to do with nutrition, I think it had to do with heat exhaustion. I guess when I do a full IM, I need to find a cool one.

With four and a half weeks until my 70.3, I'm running out of time to experiment. I did run to my local brewing supply store and buy some more maltodextrin and plan to try mixing some powdered Gatorade instead of Crystal Light for my next long session. Speaking of which, my next long ride is scheduled for Sunday, but I'll be in Cohasset, MA for a family visit and a little racing. The race should be challenging as it will be a cold ocean swim and ill be riding a borrowed bike. I'll try to fit in a long run while I'm there and a long ride when I return.

The goods :-)

 

Swimmer's Shoulder Shirt

Here is my foray into the fashion design/physical therapy arena :-).  As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm prone to swimmer's shoulder.  In fact it sidelined me from doing an Olympic distance tri in my first season.  Since then, I do the minimum amount of swimming possible to complete the swim portion of my triathlons with ease.  I would love to swim more because I'm pretty slow, but when I swim more, my shoulders start to ache.

Enter the swimmer's shoulder shirt.  While sitting on the couch, not wanting to hold a bag of frozen corn on each shoulder, I came up with the idea to take an old t-shirt and sew pockets over the shoulder area to hold heat packs and bags of ice.  The thought being then I can sit on the couch in the evening and have both hands free to catch up on blogs and twitter.  So I grabbed a couple old t-shirts, put one on and held a ziplock bag on each shoulder and drew an outline of where I wanted the pockets.  I should have measured because as you will see, the pockets aren't symmetrical :-).

After my workout Tuesday night, I decided to try it out.  I now present the swimmer shoulder shirt :-).

The plan was to alternate between heat and cold, ending on cold.

Crooked grin :-) Never noticed the paint on the door trim.

Laughing at how ridiculous this is :-)

The result?  Partial success.  I was indeed able to watch TV, blog, twitter, etc while my shoulders got some heating and cooling.  The shirt was too loose so the heat wasn't as hot as it could have been.  I had to press on the pockets to really get my shoulders to warm up.  Same with the cooling.  The shirt was kind of baggy so the weight of the ice makes the pockets drop forward.  I need to find a tight fitting shirt and repeat, maybe an old compression top.

So much for my debut.  Hopefully you got a chuckle out of this if nothing else.