Competition Day Nutrition

How to properly fuel to be at your best.

For top performance it’s essential to start and stay hydrated, and have enough fuel (mainly carbohydrates), to keep power and endurance right to the end. However on an event day we often have a much harder time digesting, so here are some tips to find your own personal competition day plan.

The longer the exercise, and the higher intensity the more carbohydrate you’ll need.

A healthy diet is one that contains lots of fibre, especially for gut health, and healthy fats, chiefly for heart and brain health. However both of these can be problematic on a competition day as we can either have a hard time digesting or under fuel when trying to avoid this.

As you’ll be having more carbohydrate than normal, it’s worth doing this once a week on your heaviest training day. This train the gut to adapt to this higher carbohydrate plan.

What we need to do

  • Eat lots of Carbohydrates for fuel

  • Lower risk of GI distress

  • Hydrate

  • Take Caffeine for energy and focus

How do we achieve this?

  • Low fibre, low fat foods to prioritise carbohydrate. Fibre will need to go through the intestine, and fat is the slowest macronutrient to digest, both of which raise the chance of stomach upset. Lower fibre, low fat foods are faster to digest which helps us as we want all available energy going to working muscles.

  • High carbohydrate, moderate protein.

  • Plenty of water, with sports drinks and fast carbs (energy bars, gels, candies) an option for hot conditions or events lasting over an hour.

  • Caffeine (ideally Coffee) 30-60 mins before the event.

  • Eat last main meal 3-4 hours before, if shorter then only eat high carbohydrate snack.

  • Eating more carbohydrate that day before the event, by eating every 3-4 hours a carbohydrate rich meal, and also fuelling before and perhaps even during the event.

  • Avoid lactose on competition days. Many athletes are fine with dairy during training and only show symptoms on match days, so consider having lacto free or oat milk on competition day.

  • Make sure you’ve been for a pee before you start your event (not including first thing), to ensure hydration.

Here’s an example plan that will fuel and reduce the chance of stress from GI discomfort or dehydration.

If event is in the morning

Night Before

  • large carbohydrate rich meal the night before to help fill glycogen stores

  • less fibre for that dinner (white carbohydrates eg. White pasta, bread, rice, with less vegetables.

  • For example spaghetti bolognese, Thai curry with rice, pork / chicken sausages with mash, beef / chicken burger with sweet potato wedges. Followed by dessert of yoghurt, fruit and honey.

Morning

Consume carbs to fuel, without making yourself too full. Here are some options, which will also work as high carb snacks when afternoon competition. With the combination and amount being individual, which is where we need trial and error.

  • White bread / bagels with jam / peanut butter

  • Fruit juice

  • Fruit such as blueberries, apple, banana

  • Bran flakes

  • Porridge / overnight oats (though higher fibre)

  • High GI cereal such as Frosties, coco pops etc with lacto free milk (avoid granola)

Example meal plan

  • 1 large (50g) bowl of high GI cereal eg. Freee chocolate stars with 200ml lacto free milk

  • 2 slices of toast with jam and peanut butter

  • 400ml Orange Juice

If event is around midday

The above but also with perhaps eggs on toast.

Add snack around 10am of banana and energy bar.

If competition in the afternoon eg. 3pm (shift all an hour forward if 2pm).

Breakfast 8.30am

  • 1 large (50g) bowl of high GI cereal eg. Freee chocolate stars with 200ml lacto free milk

  • 2 slices of toast with jam and peanut butter

  • 400ml Orange Juice

  • Double espresso

Snack 11am

  • banana

  • Energy bar

Lunch 1pm

  • ham salad baguette

  • Rice pudding

  • Sports drink

  • Energy bar

  • Double espresso

If multiple events / Sessions

In this instance consider a protein shake / bar and high carb snacks between sessions unless you have 3-4 hours to digest.

This is all personal as we digest differently, and have different tastes, preferences and intolerances, however use this as a jumping off point to make your own template. Then you can just rinse and repeat with the occasional tweak.

Will Purdue