Alpine Climbing

So after today’s CrossFit Workout of the Day I was discussing diet with Michael – co-owner, coach and, this morning, the guy who got me through a 5000m row in under twenty minutes. He’d been reading my original post on climbing food and his take on it was that it was carb heavy. As a proponent of The Zone Diet (40, 30, 30) he meant really carb heavy. I’d been meaning to do some more thinking about this before my next trip and this prompted me to make a start.

Firstly here’s the breakdown of what we took last time.

This breaks down into the following by energy intake.

Interestingly on a more recent trip Stuart and I ate pretty much the same menu minus the Alpine Aire meal due to fuel limitations. I also had a much thinner sleeping bag to save weight. This worked fine for three days but it literally took me a day to warm up after we got back.

By any measure the above is high in carbs and low in fat and protein. Improving this would be easy if it were not for the following contraints:

• Can’t weigh any more than about 500g per person per day.
• Fat isn’t metabolised as effectively at altitude and may worsen AMS symptoms (see references). This suggests that a high fat diet, while calorifically benificial may have other disadvantages. In addition most climbers, including me, find fatty food hard to eat at altitude.
• Must be paletable and easily consumed in cold temperatures with little preparation or cooking.
• Items eaten during the day must be tolerated when eaten during exercise.

For example, given none of the above I would plan on consuming 2300 carbohydrate calories in the first few hours after exercise and about 800 kCal in protein just for recovery. I’d also eat a big chunk of fatty food prior to sleep to give my body fuel to generate heat during the night. Unfortunately that represents more than I’m willing to carry in total.

However it should be possible to replace some carbs with fat and protein which should get better balance and, by increasing highly calorific fat, have the nice side effect of upping the total number of calories. More fat should help with aiding use of the fat metabolic pathways and a bit more protein will reduce muscle canabalism by the body. I’m also going to try and replace some of the psychological foods, like gummies, with something more useful.

The other big issue is hydration and this time, like last time, we’re going to try and do a better job, maybe by taking slightly more fuel to allow for a midday brew stop – time allowing. On our last trip we drank only 2l of water during a typical climbing day of ten hours or more and an additional total of 2-3l before and after climbing.

Part 3 should include a new eating and hydration plan.

Useful Links:

High Altitude Nutrition
DIET–Scientific American Article
Endurance Athlete’s Guide to Success
Endurance Sports Nutrition, Suzanne Girard Eberle
Gym Jones – Knowledge

See also links in my original blog.