Strategies for Fueling Up Before Morning Practice
Several months ago I went from swimming to stay in shape to training for the summer open water swims. When I started increasing my speed and yardage, I noticed that at a certain point, I would just peter out. I thought it was just my body revolting against the increased pace and yardage but the Masters Coach suggested that it could be what I was eating for breakfast. I typically just ate a half of granola bar before practice mostly because I wasn’t hungry! It can be hard to choke down breakfast at 5am.
I decided to ask around and see what type of morning nutrition other swimmers were consuming before practicing. I received a whole slew of responses from a wide variety of swimmers, open water to competitive meet swimmers. I focused only on what people who swam in the morning ate before practice. I imagine that your nutritional needs may be different if swimming at night. Some of the responses I received were English muffins or bagels with cream cheese or peanut butter, raisin bran or other fiber rich cereal, omelets and home fries, and a granola bar along with fruit.
So began my experiment. I decided to give them all a try and see what worked best for me and waking up 15 minutes earlier to give me some extra time to digest. I started with English muffins and bagels with either cream cheese or peanut butter. While they were very tasty and seemed to give me enough calories to get through practice, I had so much trouble choking it down in the morning that I moved onto the next choice. The cereal with milk was okay but upset my stomach a little. I don’t think my body likes liquid dairy that early and I have heard similar complaints from other swimmers. Next, I tried the omelets and home fries one time but frankly, I don’t like cooking up eggs that early in the morning! I had already tried granola bars previously and they just don’t have enough calories in them to get through practice. My last experiment was eating instant oatmeal with water rather than milk. This seemed to work the best for me. I could easily get it down in the morning and I didn’t feel like I was running out of energy at the end of practice.
After a week of eating oatmeal and swimming, I started thinking about what to eat after practice. I couldn’t make it until lunchtime with only oatmeal in my stomach. I bought the Horizon Organic 2% Chocolate Milk and lots of bananas. The chocolate milk has lots of protein and the banana has potassium to help with recovery. This is not a study based on scientific proof rather a journal of my attempts to find the perfect pre-practice breakfast.
Editors Note: Courtney’s Chocolate Milk tip is recommended by USA-Swimming nutritionists as a post-workout recovery aide. The particular drink she mentions is available in a convenient shelf-stable form, and comes highly recommended by high school, college and Masters athletes of many sports.
