Carb Loading When & How

jonski1968

Hi All. Signed up for a 62.5 walk over 30 hours in June. Currently doing a lot of treadmill work and walking in the hills at the weekends. Any advice on Carb loading would be good, what i should be eating and more to the point when.

Thanks
John

jonski1968

bump...

jonski1968

I cannot believe no-one has a comment!!

BerryH

I don't know about super-long walks, but from Marathons general opinion is you can't store that much extra by doing traditional carb-loading, i.e. going low carb for a couple of days of hard training then stuffing yourself with pasta.

You should store as much as you need by tapering, so if you've been training for long distances, cut down dramatically over the last week or so and rest entirely two days before your challenge, eating as much as you normally do. Keep it balanced, so don't shy away from protein and fat too. I'm keen on a big spaghetti bolognese the night before an endurance event!

Have a good breakfast (I recommend double porridge) and given the time you'll be out there, bring lots of easy to digest on-the-go food. Energy bars and the like are good, but you may find you get sick of sweet stuff. I take pretzels on long runs for a salty carb hit.

Good luck!

FJMilner

Are you doing the Trans Pennine challenge?/ Im doing that!!! Advice this way too please!!!

bdamaster60

honestly you can do it the night before.

jonski1968

I`ve been advised to eat at least 10 times my bodyweight in Kilos for the 3 weeks before the challenge...Thats a staggering 800-900 gramms of carbs a day...Thats ten time what i normally eat in a week !

bdamaster60

I`ve been advised to eat at least 10 times my bodyweight in Kilos for the 3 weeks before the challenge...Thats a staggering 800-900 gramms of carbs a day...Thats ten time what i normally eat in a week !

you're body can only store so much water and glycogen. That is limited by how much muscle you have. Only reason I could think of why you would need to eat that many carbs would be to put on body fat, but you're doing a walk, not swimming the english channel.

snowbike

I`ve been advised to eat at least 10 times my bodyweight in Kilos for the 3 weeks before the challenge...Thats a staggering 800-900 gramms of carbs a day...Thats ten time what i normally eat in a week !

3 weeks!!! no no no!
Carb loading is used to "charge" muscles with glycgen and only can be done the 2-3 days before and event or its just removed and stored as fat.

Carb loading for me is adding about 500-800 cals a day on top of maintance in carbs for 3 days prior to the event.

Anything before 3days of the event will either be burnt or stored as fat.

I am lucky if I can pre-load 1500 -2000 cals and that only lasts 3-4 hours (cycling) and I need to top this up at about 300-500 cals and hour

jonski1968

Thanks for the advice...2 or 3 days loading sounds better than 3 weeks..