Two-time Olympian and professional mountain-bike racer Carl Swenson is a part-time Winter Park resident.
I decided to do a mountain-bike race in the Intermountain Cup Series in Utah last weekend. The race was up at the 2002 Olympic cross country course at Soldier Hollow, where they have some good singletrack loops. And although it was nice to get in a long ride, I died. I totally bonked.
I wasn’t prepared for a long race. And the lesson is even if it’s a little local race, it’s hard to make it worthwhile if you’re not prepared. I thought I could just show up and race, but I didn’t eat enough and didn’t have enough energy drink.
For longer races, you have to plan ahead. If you race more than two hours, you need energy drinks, someone lined up to hand bottles to you in the feed zone or maybe some Goo. Otherwise, you end up surviving instead of racing.
Any race more than 1 1/2 hours is long. Make sure you have the calories to get through it. And as I found out, there’s a big difference between going out for a two-hour training ride and going out to race for two hours. It’s amazing. When you are at race pace, you burn through your energy stores fast.
Unless I break something, I almost always manage to finish a race. Not this time. I didn’t eat much breakfast and started to die at about two hours. By the time I got to three hours, I realized I had to get back to the car or become a vegetable. The highlight of the day was stopping for a milkshake and a burger after the race.
Nutrition needs are individual. Some people have stomach problems and can’t eat or drink during a ride, so they have to make sure to eat enough the night before. Others like to enter races on an empty stomach and take strong energy drinks and energy bars throughout. For road races, you have to be able to take in a lot of calories during the course of four to five hours. During mountain-bike races, I usually can get by just on bottles. I mix up different brands, but I try to get 100 to 150 calories in a bottle and drink one every 25 minutes or so during a hard race on a hot day.
I can’t take a lot of multodextrin, a carbohydrate found in a lot of energy drinks. I tend to do better on the cheaper stuff: fructose, corn syrup, straight sugars during the race. But some people are the opposite.
I would suggest something that tastes good, then try it during a race and take note of how you feel. You don’t really know your tolerance for different sugars unless you are racing.
The most important thing is you can’t just drink water. You need to get some sodium and electrolytes.
And next time, I think I’ll eat that burger before the race.
