What should I eat before a day of alpine climbing?

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What should I eat before a day of alpine climbing?

Good question! Mountain climbing is an aerobic sport similar in physiological cost to the same hours spent distance running, jogging, nordic skiing, bicycling, hiking fast up-hill and so on.

The intensity is governed by your speed over the ground and your elevation gain. You can not go faster than your genetic gifts and endurance training permit. Your speed must be below your anaerobic threshold - you should be able to carry on a conversation with your comrades.

Your intensity must also be based on the length and difficulty of your climb. Only the best trained and gifted athletes can maintain a near anaerobic pace for hours. If the terrain is technical, you should go slower, "well within yourself" so that you can plan and think clearly.

The pre-climb meal (or pre race meal) is well studied. Read Scott Tinley's Winning Guide to Sports Endurance, 1994, Rodale Press, pages 138 and 139. Pre-competition meals eaten at least two hours before the start, should include 60% to 70% carbohydrates, low fat, low protein, low salt, low bulk and 8 to 16 ounces of water.

Mark Twight and James Martin's Extreme Alpinism, 1999, The Mountaineers Press, Chapter 6 covers nutrition for mountaineering in twelve pages including suggestions for meals before, during and after a day or more of concentrated alpine climbing.

What breakfast has worked well for me? I have two instant oatmeal packets with walnuts and non fat (dried) milk, a bagel with non fat cream cheese or a couple of sticks of string cheese and the first ClifBar of the climb, all washed down with a big glass of non-fat milk or a can of cold non fat Ultra Slim Fast if I'm starting from a car-camp trailhead. I drink lots of water and eat some of this stuff as soon as I wake up and I try to finish eating a couple of hours before the heavy breathing will start. You can go slower at first!

Of course, every hour or so as you go hard, you must eat simple and complex carbos (with some protein) . You must swig water when you eat to keep your stomach from taking water from your blood stream. Your stomach needs to make a soup of your food to digest it and send it out through the stomach walls into your blood stream. Your blood is required to carry both oxygen and nutrition to your muscle tissues and it needs to be thin and well hydrated.

Eating about 200 carbohydrate calories every hour will help prevent you from "hitting the wall" or "bonking" which is caused by depleting your muscle glycogen reserves. (Read those books.) Mark Twight uses GU all day long. (I tried this once and got the drizzlies!)

ClifBars are the ideal food for preventing the bonk, when eaten -one per hour- with water or Gatorade.

The post climb meal is of great importance to enable you to keep training or climbing, day after day. You must eat lots of carbohydrates and some protein within the first hour or so after exercise to replace the glycogen burned in your big muscles or it may take more than twenty-four hours to top up your tanks.

There is more to know!. Read my essay on carbo-ration and hydration during traditional alpine climbing 4 pages in pdf
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