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Eating to keep going
Endurance Sports Nutrition: Suzanne Girard Eberle. Human Kinetics 2000. 264
pages paperback, £13.95. ISBN 0-7360-0143-3
Whenever there's a danger that we might settle down to civilised living, along
comes some spoilsport with a new way of torturing our bodies in hostile
surroundings, preferably for at least a week. It's no surprise that optimising
your way of re-fuelling these aberrations has become a major science.
The basic information – what you need, what it does for you – is all fairly
standard, but it's neatly presented and Suzanne Eberle writes a nicely informal
style. The basis is, reassuringly, the balanced diet, as exemplified by the
food pyramid, with the staples (cereals, rice, bread, pasta) at the bottom, the
fruit, veg and meat on the way up in decreasing quantities, and the sweets at
the top in tiny reward-sized bites for having been good. In other words, the
now-standard modern athlete's diet of 60% or more carbohydrate, plus around 20%
each of protein and fat. There are frequent lists of foods and their various
values, formulas for determining calorie intake and body-mass index, menus for
varying periods of time, and the use of food supplements. A separate chapter
covers the special needs of vegetarians. We are what we eat, and we have to eat
enough of it.
There are plenty of charts and boxes, and a few photos, one of which identifies
Greg Lemond winning the time-trial on the Champs-Elysées as Lance Armstrong.
Chapters 9 through 15 are sport-specific: marathon running, triathlon,
open-water swimming (i.e. cross-channel), ultrarunning (100 miles or more),
marathon skiing, cycling (across America), and adventure racing. This last one
is, as they say, a doozy: the Raid Gauloises (they smoked all the way?) in
Ecuador took eight and a half days and finished with 155 miles by raft, canoe,
and sea kayak. The survivors of these lunatic enterprises describe their food
and how they ate it. Cannibalism was not an option. Principal strategy for the
six-day Moroccan adventure was: 'Avoid all ethnic Moroccan cuisine' – the
soundest nutritional advice you'll get this year.
Excellent guide, very good value for money.
Ramin Minovi
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