I've tried to load up on carbs for two to three days leading up to long races previously and it definitely works. Having read this excellent article from Run your BQ though, I suspected I wasn't eating quite enough.
Essentially, in order to maximise glycogen stores, you should aim to eat 7-10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight each day. For me that is something between 540 and 780 grams of carbs; a massive amount of food!
Generally speaking, having carte blanche to eat everything in sight for a few days with no sense of remorse is about as good as it gets. Its a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
It can be a bloody pain in the arse though trying to sum up everything you are eating and its tempting to refuse to eat anything that doesn't have a clearly printed label on it somewhere. Thankfully our friend the internet helps fill in the blanks and I now know that an apple contains about 22 grams of carbohydrate whereas an egg has less than 1 (try carb-counter.net as your starter for 10).
Clearly man cannot live on apples alone since I'd need to eat 20 a day to hit my goal!
Bread, pasta, rice & potatoes is mainly where its at. However even pasta is only 75% carbohydrate so unless you want to eat the best part of a kilogram of spagetti then some good old dirty sweet food, and drink, is going to be required. In fact drink is very important; its almost impossible to consume this many carbs without drinking a fair bit of it.
Here comes another lesson learned: the free Cadbury's hot chocolate at work is much harder to consume in quantity than Sprite. In fact the hot chocolate made me feel pretty sick, but I drank a litre of sprite over the course of the day and hardly noticed myself doing it. A litre of sprite contains 100 grams of sugar! DON'T FEED THIS SHIT TO YOUR KIDS. I seriously think these kind of drinks might be worse than crack.
Anyway here's what yesterday's menu consisted of. All in all this adds up to a whopping 541 grams:
| Beetroot juice 250ml | 22 |
| Large bowl Muesli | 90 |
| Toast and honey – 2 slices | 25 |
| 2 apples | 44 |
| 1 banana | 24 |
| 2 satsumas | 18 |
| 1 litre sprite | 100 |
| scambled eggs and 2 slices toast | 25 |
| boost | 34 |
| ma bakers banana flapjack | 54 |
| 1/2 baked potato with cheese and butter | 15 |
| Vegetables (toms, brocoli, cabbage) | 15 |
| Spinach & Ricotta stuffed pasta with pesto | 52 |
| cadbury mini roll | 15 |
| 1 glass red wine | 8 |
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