Performance Nutrition

One of the highlights of the visit to the HSBC UK National Cycle Centre was actually the nutrition advice.  I know that sounds a bit unlikely  and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting too much from the session. After all, I’ve successfully managed to get to 50-odd and know how to eat healthily – what could I possibly learn? It turns out, quite a lot.

The nutrition session was run by Lauren Delaney @LaurenVeronaD– it took me a few minutes to work out that she is one of the two Performance Nutritionists employed by British Cycling. She has a serious level of expertise. So, in the morning she’d have given advice to Laura Kenny and Ed Clancy – in the afternoon she was telling Ed Thompson to cut down on the pies. I learnt a few really important things.

Firstly, I shouldn’t lose weight on LEJOG. I need to eat enough of the right food to maintain my weight level. This was a real surprise as I’d expected to be like a rake when I finished – apparently not.  Interestingly, when cyclists are in competitions, they often carry portable scales to check their weight.

Apparently not good


Water intake levels are also interesting; someone my size probably needs to drink around 1 litre of water for every hour on the bike. That’s a lot of water. For me, the most staggering thing was the information on just how much you need to eat on the bike. Carbs are the key and I will need to eat one banana/flapjack/energy bar for every 20 minutes on the bike. That’s three an hour!  So, for a 10 hour riding day, that’s around 30 flap-jack equivalents! No wonder we need a back-up team, the van will basically be a giant flap-jack on wheels.

Given that I had the undivided attention of one of Britain’s top nutrition experts, you’d think that I wouldn’t waste time by asking any stupid questions. Laura handled my question “I really like ice-cream, is it OK to eat lots?” remarkably sympathetically. “Well Ed, ice-cream is mainly fat and we’ve talked about that haven’t we.”  It turns out that eating your body weight in Magnums isn’t the route to Olympic glory.


Much better


As part of the day, we all had to make and sign-up to an action plan. I intend to keep to mine despite the fact that it doesn’t include the word ‘cornetto’.

How you can help

To sponsor me: please go to https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/EdThompsonLEJOG

For regular updates on my preparation and the ride itself, please follow me on twitter: @BambooLEJOG

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