The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Tour de France Femmes Podcast - Stage 4 & Inside Look at EF Education Oatly's Nutrition Strategies

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 262

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Welcome to the Tour de France Femmes Podcast, from the producers of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast"
CTS publishes daily Tour de France Femmes podcasts with Coaches Adam Pulford and Renee Eastman. They recap the stages, but the unique aspect of these podcasts will be coaching insights about how athletes prepare for the demands showcased in that day's stage. 

STAGE 4 PODCAST OVERVIEW
Stage 4 of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was another sprint finish, but the mountains are coming tomorrow! Keeping athletes fueled for performance and recovery is a full-time job, and Coaches Adam Pulford and Renee Eastman check in with Kristen Arnold, MS, RDN, CSSD and Sports Dietitian for EF Education-Oatly on the team's strategies for in-race fueling, post-race recovery (including tart cherry juice), and day-to-day meal planning. Adam and Renee also discuss sweat rate testing and sweat sodium testing.

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Co-Host: Renee Eastman

Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has been a professional bike fitter for 15 years and was one of the first fitters to use the Retül bike fit system. She has a master's degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.

Renee Eastman bio: https://trainright.com/coaches/renee-eastman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renee.eastman/

HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back Time Crunch fans and TDFF fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, with me again and for all special editions of the Tour de France Femme Avec Zwift episodes is my co-host, renee Eastman.

Speaker 2:

Hey Adam, hey everyone.

Speaker 1:

If you've been joining us for the past three days, thank you. And if you've been enjoying it, please share it with a friend or a training partner to help grow the show even more. For anyone new who's just jumping in, welcome to you. Coach Renee and I are here to give you the best podcast that not only recaps the Women's Tour de France of XFIFT, Palm of X-Fift, but we do so by weaving in coaching and training tips that you can apply to yourself or just learn and appreciate more from the Women's Peloton. So, Renee, do you want to start with a quick recap of today's stage?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, adam. But before I get to today's stage, we had a follow-up question related to our content from yesterday from one of our listeners, and we love questions from our listeners, so keep them coming. This message is from Chris. He says he's enjoying our discussion of the Tour de France FEMS and it's his understanding that professional riders have their own coach, like you are Allison's coach, as well, as they have a team coach. How is their training coordinated? This seems like a unique situation in sports.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, this is a great question and I get asked that for AJ and then some other riders that maybe they're in some kind of junior development program and then they move on, and I would say that this is a situation that has evolved over time. And, straight up with Allison Jackson, they have a team manager, director sportif, then they have a high performance director, which is Emma Trott, who you've heard from in episode one, and I work closely with Emma, who also coaches writers on the team to coordinate the training together. Now, I know that, like Allison Jackson, as well as Kristen Faulkner and a few others on the team, have their own separate coach, but then Emma coaches other writers directly. So there's some chefs in the kitchen there and I would say, in a healthy team environment right now anyway, that's normal and how it's done. However, bigger teams, and especially like in the men's peloton, they try to keep everything more in-house. So more and more, even in the women's Peloton now is they will have, you know, coaches on board uh, high performance directors, coaches, strength coaches, uh, sports psychologists, uh, nutritionists, who you will hear from later today, uh, to all kind of work under the same umbrella.

Speaker 1:

So, with AJ, because I've been working with her for years. I first met her in 2015 and there's a whole story there and how her she was going to different teams, also had a CTS coach before that, but then about 2019, I think she reached out and we started working together and we've been working together since. So I write all the training program on training peaks. We talk weekly. Then Emma during team camps or when there's more team orchestrated things and races and stuff, she'll be in Training Peaks as well and orchestrating the big days, the key days and all that kind of stuff. Then sometimes what I'll see from her is coach's choice. Then I have to stay ahead and work and build that on a specific day. That's how it works. That's behind the scenes action for you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, adam, that's really interesting. I actually was a little curious myself. Excellent, excellent, so let's get on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you, chris. That was a really cool question and, as Renee said, we love questions, so keep them firing in. You can go to trainrightcom backslash podcast, click on ask a training question or throw it in the YouTube comments or IG comments or wherever the heck you're seeing us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, let's get on to the stage. I've got a couple updates before we talk about the stage. Because yesterday's crash, demi Volnery went down. We were really worried about, uh, how she was gonna be. All reports are no broken bones. Uh, she was cleared for percussion. She started to stage. Actually, I don't think I saw her all day, which is a good thing, because she was hiding, um. Another interesting thing that I don't know if, uh, you saw, I was watching the Instagrams and the Blue Sky posts. This morning I saw Team Yumbo Lisa that's not Yumbo anymore Visima Lisa Bike Gosh these team names they switch every year. They screw me up, but they were all rolling up to the sign-in with masks gone. There's some rumor about some GI issues going around and we already know that two of our GC favorites are out due to GI illness Longo Burghini Rooster. So I just thought that was interesting.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in the men's tour there was, there was something going around. I remember a couple interviews, primarily with Todd A, saying like, yeah, it feels like everybody's getting sick.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, good point. Have to watch for that. Yeah, and I have a. Do you have a corrections corner? I mistakenly said Catalina Soto was from Cuba yesterday. Of course she is from Chile, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I know I should have chimed in because they said Chilean. Yeah, I know I like the word Chilean.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, I am not perfect, but I will own up to it and you guys can call me on it, leave it in the notes, leave it in the comments.

Speaker 1:

I think that we are fact-checking ourselves is wonderful so well done Coach.

Speaker 2:

All right, today's when to Watch alert. This is actually a fairly quiet stage up to the finish, so you guys can kind of take the day off. I got plenty of work to do this afternoon. I'm sure you do too, so I'd just say tune in the last 510K, pretty standard sprint stage. So onto the stage. As I said, pretty flat, very straightforward. It took forever for the break to go. It was kind of forming in dribs and drabs and about 50k to go.

Speaker 2:

The two main breakaway riders Anna Victoria Magaliz from Brazil and Franzi Koch from Germany on Team Picnic Post NL. Franzi Koch, she's been off the front a lot. She is going for that most aggressive rider award. But today's break they were kept on a pretty short leash, maybe a minute, minute and a half at the most. Sd Works was really controlling it as we got closer to the finish they were lined out. Clear goal of the day get Weebus up there. One of the things I noticed in particular I saw it yesterday too is how much work Anna Vandenberg is doing in the finals, and today even more. She was up there like the. The lead out kind of fell apart, as kopecky just wasn't. She couldn't. Uh, she's suffering, I think. But vanderbruggen. Yeah, vanderbruggen was up there for at least a kilometer on her own.

Speaker 1:

yeah but even before, even before that, speaking of workhorses and I'm just going to wave my fanboy hat here Blanca Bosch, she is one of my favorite riders to watch for a few years now. She's young, comes from a cyclocross background but workhorse, and she has done a fantastic job of bringing back pretty much every break that's gone along with Vanderbregen and others.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's clear to me that stage wins are a huge priority. The whole SDWorks team lined out to bring Weavis and Vanderbregen doing a bunch of work is a clear sign to me that GC is not her priority. She still has a great shot to finish up in the top five or six riders, maybe even podium, but it's not her priority. You don't see Demi leading anybody out. You don't see Nia Wadoma leading anybody out, but I have noticed Nia Wadoma is always at the front. She was up there with like three 400 meters to go, not contesting the sprint but just staying out of danger. So I thought that was interesting yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean, she's super consistent, always knows where to be a really smart rider in that way. But the one thing I'll throw in we don't have to go super deep on this. But I think what is interesting on Vannebragan is keep in mind she was at the top of her game, retired, went on in the car for six hours a day watching bike racing, and you get a different perspective.

Speaker 1:

So now she's like oh, I'm going to do this, and maybe she doesn't have the spear honed like she used to, but she still has a huge engine, so she knows where to go, what to do, and in a different way, I think. So I just want to mention that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the engine is clearly there. But on the tactics part, we're going to see what she does in the mountains, because what she used to do in the mountains was go to the front and ride everybody off her wheel, and she has tried that in a couple of races and it doesn't work anymore. Yeah, so well, it's a whole lot more competitive now, and I think that's the topic that we can get into later this week about how much more competitive the races are, but the there's no competition when it comes to these flat sprints. It's uh, weeb Webis uh got a little chaotic because she lost her lead out by the last few hundred meters. She was surfing wheels still, uh, was able to slip in, slip in there, uh, between the barriers and chloe diger, I think she gave a little little shove she made her way through vos and chloe it was, and then hulk smashed.

Speaker 1:

It was like yeah, incredible yeah.

Speaker 2:

so you know it's clear vos, uh and we this are the best sprinters in the race and they keep on going one two. They're one two in the in the intermediate sprint and webus definitely has the the upper edge on a flat sprint. She's got the green jersey right now let's see what happens in the rest of the race, because she's never won it before and she would like to win it. Um, I saw webus getting in a lot of breaks at the Giro and I think she was doing it for training, because that's Voss' move 100% To get in the break, get the intermediate sprints on the stages that these sprinters won't be up at the front for the finale. So no big changes in the GC today. Voss is still in yellow, shabby is still in the polka dots, weavis is in the green. As I said, only other race note for today a little bit disappointing.

Speaker 1:

I just wanted to mention Julie Bego in the white jersey, consistently.

Speaker 2:

Oh, of course, yes, yes.

Speaker 1:

Hell of a talent, and I would definitely watch that name in years to come because she's looking good.

Speaker 2:

I had her on my fantasy team. I had to rearrange to take her off, but I'm with you, she's an up-and-coming talent. A sad note on today Kristen Faulkner crashed with about 5K to go, looked pretty hard. She did get up. She looked okay, but she is not having a good race. I don't think she's feeling well. You have any insights on that, adam?

Speaker 1:

I don't. Personally. I think that if you follow her on Instagram which I would suggest, she's very authentic and whatever happens in the race, she'll put it out there and straight up from the was it less yesterday or a couple of days ago where she got caught behind that crash she's just like hey look, sometimes crap happens and then it's a tough day, and then when you're on national international television it sucks even more. So, uh, I'd say, just tune into her channels because you'll probably learn a little bit more of what's going on. But yeah, I don't, I don't. I know she wasn't feeling great going into this, but some girls weren't.

Speaker 2:

And speaking of following on Instagram, everyone's got to follow Allison Jackson because her videos are off the hook.

Speaker 1:

She has a strong. Well, she has a strong presence in the socials, including TikTok, which I am not there, but apparently she crushes it in all platforms.

Speaker 2:

So I'll make one more recommendation because Demi's another good follow on Instagram. She is very honest and raw. She talks a lot about her mental health and things like that, but I'm going to say the main reason to follow Demi is the dog content. She likes to ride around on her bike with her dog in her backpack around Switzerland where she lives, yep.

Speaker 2:

The dog. I'm very pro dog content. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's move on to to talking a little coaching, because I think some of the questions that are like prolific that we get all the time we're just getting ahead of them are about how pros feel during a stage race like this, what they eat when they eat it and how it changes day to day.

Speaker 1:

Yes, well, it's good that I wear my snack hat today. Then, renee, very appropriate. Yes, well, it's good that I wear my snack hat today, then Renee Very appropriate yes.

Speaker 2:

So, Adam, I know we have some content from one of our esteemed guest contributors, so why don't you introduce that for us?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So if you are a loyal listener to the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, you will remember the name, kristen Arnold. She is a dietician and sport nutritionist who has been on the show I don't know a handful of times five, six, something like that and she works closely with some of my top pros and junior elites. And she recently just became a diitian for EF Oatley Cannondale, so reached out to her to get her insights on a few kind of various topics, including recovery, race day nutrition and in a few other things. So, yeah, I would say like watching those videos is like man, this is perfect because they're like 90 seconds, maybe two minutes or something like that, and it really answers, uh, a lot of questions that everybody's been asking about, like tart, cherry juice, electrolytes, what should I eat before and after racing. So, uh, these videos should do, um, some good stuff for everybody curious on how to dial in their race day nutrition. So let's listen to the first one on race nutrition from Kristen Arnold, dietitian of EF Oatley Cannondale.

Speaker 3:

The amount of carbs, electrolytes and fluids that we're recommending athletes take in during the tour are very person dependent and also depending on the day. So for carbs it'll depend on what is the tolerance level of that athlete, what's the profile of the stage and how long is the stage and what's the overall energy expenditure estimated and how does in-race fueling play into the rest of their energy needs for that day? Fueling play into the rest of their energy needs for that day. So that can range anywhere from 75 grams of carb per hour up to 120 grams of carb per hour, and so per stage this can be anywhere from 150 up to 540 grams of carb.

Speaker 3:

As far as fluids and electrolytes go, leading into the tour we'll do sweat volume tests for athletes and see how much are they sweating per hour, depending on different conditions in different environments, and then we'll also do sweat electrolyte concentration testing to see how much sodium are they losing per liter of sweat. So depending on that we'll make fluid recommendations and we always recommend doing mix and water to make sure they're digesting everything with the water but still getting their electrolyte needs met. Going into this stage we might have them do a electrolyte protocol because they may not be able to replace all of them during this stage, but at least they'll get everything by the end. So it's pretty person dependent. But with fluids it can again be anywhere from three quarters of a liter up to a liter and a half per hour.

Speaker 2:

Hey Adam, I thought it would be valuable to maybe follow up on a couple of things that Kristen said. You know, I think, the stuff with the carbohydrates and amount to eat per hour. It's pretty prolific information out there, but I thought it would be helpful if we could explain how our athletes could actually calculate their sweat losses to help them understand how much fluid they need.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this is a critical one, I would say, especially living on the East Coast right now, coming up into August, I mean, we have I we have a high temperature of 100 degrees and a real feel of 109 in DC right now. Knowing how your body responds to heat and knowing how much you're actually losing so you can put it back in is crucial. Then when you're doing stage racing, all the more important because that's your job and you got to live to fight another day. To estimate your sweat loss, weigh yourself naked right before and right after a workout. Ideally you do a workout that's 60 to 90 minutes. For our time crunched athletes, that's your sweet spot, right, and you do it in race-like conditions.

Speaker 1:

If you want to dial in the sweat loss for like race effort, okay. You want to towel off any sweat before the post-workout weigh-in. And for every pound which is right around a half a kilogram or something like that that loss is about 16 ounces of sweat. But don't forget to factor in what you drank. Add the volume of fluids consumed during the session into that weight loss. So, for example, if you lost one pound and drank a 500 milliliter bottle right over 16 ounces or so your sweat loss is about 975 milliliters. This gives you a rough estimate on how much fluid loss per hour you had, which can help guide you in your hydration plan. Keep in mind that you don't need to replace all of that while exercising, but replacing at least 60% up to 80% is usually more comfortable and effective for performance.

Speaker 2:

That's right and that's something that anybody can do. All you need is a scale really Pretty basic. She also mentioned sweat electrolyte concentration testing, which is probably new to or less familiar for a lot of people. It's a test that we actually offer at Carmichael Training Systems. We use a precision hydration system to do sweat electrolyte testing. It's a non-exercise test. We place a little patch on somebody's arm, zap it with some electrodes to stimulate sweating and then just collect the sweat right against the skin, put it into our little analyzer and it's going to give us an accurate sodium loss so that we can give recommendations of.

Speaker 2:

You need X amount of milligrams of sodium per liter, and I see it pretty eye opening for a lot of people because you know we're often telling people 800 milligrams, 900, 1500 milligrams of sodium per liter, which is quite a bit more than what you see on some of your you know normal sports drinks. So, um, person hydration has a lot of a lot of different uh formulas in some of these formulas really geared around those 750, 1,000, 1,500 milligrams of sodium per liter. It's not per bottle, it's per liter. So you know that's a little different.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So a couple of questions to you, renee, because I haven't done this one in particular. I've done a couple other electrolyte tests, but if someone comes so someone has to go to CTS location to get this done, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, and Precision Hydration is one of the main people offering. We have their product, we have their device and you can go to their website and see where you can get tested around your location Tests. The cost varies $150, $200. Somewhere in there is usually pretty standard pricing.

Speaker 1:

So if you get tested in a Colorado Springs which is high and dry, meaning low humidity, high altitude, would the results differ? If I came back to the East Coast, where it is low and humid as a swamp, swamp.

Speaker 2:

No, it's pretty standard that you know where your sweat rate, how much you sweat, is going to vary by the environmental conditions quite a bit. How much sodium you lose is a little bit more even, and because we're doing this in a non-exercise test, we're just stimulating your sweat, so the environmental conditions aren't really playing a big role in the test.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I guess that's. My point is like the electrolyte tests of old or previous not that old actually, but it used to be a little bit more environmentally driven whereas this one is different, and I think that no matter where you get the test done, you can apply it more specifically to your training no matter what. So it's a generalized test that I think is better for most if you want to go to that next step. But I think that the sweat rate is first important, and then the electrolyte test is kind of another cool add-on. Okay, so let's go to video number two, which is talking all about recovery nutrition, and again, this is coming from Kristen Arnold.

Speaker 3:

For recovery.

Speaker 3:

The main goals for our athletes are to make sure that they are rapidly replenishing glycogen at the end of one stage to the beginning of the next stage, and this is where timing of carbs becomes really important for post-race.

Speaker 3:

We're also factoring in rehydration, making sure that they're coming out of the race in good hydration status, and this will help to improve sleep quality and quantity. And we use supplemental strategies such as tart cherry juice You'll see a lot of videos of our athletes using Amex cherry juice immediately after the race and the antioxidants and also the carbohydrates and the fluid help to check a lot of these boxes. So we'll also include a personalized post-race meal, depending on the athlete preferences and also what their specific needs are, based on their kilogram body weight, and that's about an hour to an hour and a half after the race. And then for dinner we have a chef that designs specific meals that will help the athletes to get what they need in, that's easy to digest, high in carbs and lean protein, and also, again, those antioxidants foods that are going to help their bodies to recover, going into sleep and into the next stage.

Speaker 2:

Adam, one of the things that she mentioned in there that I think is kind of new and maybe a little curiosity to some of our athletes out there is like what's that red junk that they see everybody drinking at the end of the stages? Now it seems like what? Probably the last couple of years now? All of a sudden everybody's drinking something red and that's the tart cherry juice she had mentioned the Amex Tart cherry juice contains phenols and those have been shown to reduce oxidative stress as well as decreased muscle soreness and, as Chris had noted, that drinking it right after the stage is an appropriate timing for taking the tartar juice. But it also is going to be bringing in some carbs because it is a sugary drink and it's helping with getting the hydration back up and what they're drinking is concentrated tart cherry juice. If you wanted to get that in the actual cherries you would need to eat 45 or 60 Montessori tart cherries. That's a lot, not really practical to do.

Speaker 2:

We could think back to the days of the when beet juice became real popular and blending up beets and people trying to drink a bunch of beet juice and getting a little ill. But now, like with the tart cherry juice concentrate or beet juice concentrate now, like with the tart cherry juice concentrate or beetroot concentrate, just a little bit more effective dose. The dose is about one ounce of tart cherry concentrate and it's really effective right post-stage, so immediately post-stage, and sometimes I'll even take another dose before bed because there's some impact to just the antioxidants and the little bit better sleep. It's one of those things. I'm not like super pro supplements, especially when you're spending hundreds of dollars on pills that marginally are effective.

Speaker 2:

But this is one I'm saying like, it's shown, it's got some evidence behind it and it's not a crazy concoction, it's just concentrated cherry juice and you can get it in fairly inexpensive ways If you're getting, you know, just looking for. You know, go online and look for concentrated tart cherry juice and that would be something that go ahead and try. That's that's my opinion. It's a might help, probably not going to hurt, it's just. It's just it's food, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Agreed and I and I would agree with you in the okay Of all the pills, potions and powders that you could be taking, right, like, generally speaking, the closer it is to the plant or the animal, um, that's better, less processed, and in all the things. So, also, tart cherry juice is nothing new under the sun. I think it's cycling back through. I've had riders been using this for 15 years. Okay, so it's. But now that Todd is drinking it, now that, uh, vbis is drinking it, like everybody's into it, right, and and because we have better footage after post-race and all this kind of stuff, and also we have better products. A couple aspects here.

Speaker 1:

I think that when it's stage racing, really important to get back out there the next day. So, reducing oxidative stress, reducing inflammation, reducing RPE, all this kind of stuff, and helping to recover quickly. However, we can do that legally, let's do it. However, I would say, if you're this isn't something I would do every single day in training, I probably wouldn't even do it post-workout after a hard workout. If you don't have anything coming up the next day, if you just have recovery, spin or easy endurance the next day, don't have anything coming up the next day If you just have recovery, spin or easy endurance the next day. Don't worry. The reason for that is inflammation is not bad. I've got an episode coming up to talk all about that. I won't reveal all of the information right now, but inflammation is not a bad thing. It comes in. It helps your body to recover. If you're always guzzling tart cherry juice for that reason, you might have unintended consequences Now from a better sleep and recovery just before bed standpoint.

Speaker 1:

Check out Dr Stacey Sims on Instagram. Yesterday she just posted some sleep hacks and this is one of them. So when you're using it kind of as that medicinal sleep aid with recovery and antioxidant sort of benefit, that's great. So for those in the feed right now, putting all the tart cherry juice loading up in hundreds of dollars worth because you're going to do it every day, I wouldn't do that. There's key time periods to do it. Uh, you know, pro tour riders, they, they do it to get back out there to perform at their highest the next stage. And yes, this, this is a pretty um, uh good product in my opinion. Uh, it's natural and it works really well. Okay, um, so now, when we're getting a little long here on the time crunched, uh, episode podcast along here on the Time Crunched. Episode podcast, video three let's listen from Kristen on the pre and post nutrition.

Speaker 3:

For our team. We develop a bank of recipes. That is at the beginning of the season and we use those recipes to create menus about two weeks before the tour. So the menu might change during the tour depending on what the chef can get access to, but we have an amazing chef for the tour and they've been doing a really good job of making sure that the athletes are well-fueled, well-fed and also with recipes and foods that they enjoy.

Speaker 3:

So breakfast will typically be things like pancakes or rice pudding or rice, and the athletes always have the choice of how they want their eggs if they want an omelet or they want fried eggs or scrambled eggs. So they always have that choice. And the breakfasts are recommended to the athletes based on what the stage is and how much time there is between breakfast and starting the stage. They'll also get a pre-race meal before then, but the breakfast is really really key to making sure they get the bulk of those nutrients and those carbs leading into the stage For dinners. Those are designed to make sure that the athletes have access to good, carbohydrate-rich foods and lean protein and generally cooked vegetables, things that are easier to digest. So again, we'll include quite a bit of variety here, but also foods that the athletes are used to because they've been eating those recipes throughout the rest of the season.

Speaker 2:

I wanted to follow up on what Kristen was saying about easy to digest, because stage racing diet, if you will, is a little bit different than your day-to-day healthy diet, because we're not so interested, did in long-term health and in particular, I'm going to talk about fiber and things that stress the gut. So easy to digest means usually low in fiber, low in fat and simple foods a lot of white rice, cooked veggies instead of kale salads, lean proteins and things like that, because you're looking to get a lot of fuel in. So you don't want a lot of bulk and you also don't want a little bulk for other reasons that you might have a mid-race emergency a la Tom Doolan. So the term you might hear is low void and that's just basically low fiber, because these athletes right now they need to be light and they need to not need to do a lot of work digesting. They don't want to slow their digestion down with a lot of fiber.

Speaker 1:

So this is a lot different than being healthy, getting all your fiber and your vitamins and things like that. It's about get the maximum food of kind of this easy to digest aspect that Kristen was talking about, and, let's face it, I mean raw fruits and vegetables. They're healthy and if you don't eat fiber, you probably won't live a good life in the longterm. So you need fiber. But again, coming back to stage race implication or having something really hard again the next day, you need to be able to adjust the food accordingly so easy digestible, get the carbs in, get the proteins in and not have GI issues. What fiber does? It slows, right, it slows digestion, sits there, and so if it sits there and festers, it's there the next day and it's going to cause those GI issues.

Speaker 1:

So all of that to be uh, all that being said, I would even go back to the tart cherry juice and just say you know it's, it's also good to incorporate something like that, you know, post-race, and then again at night um, because you're not getting a ton of the antioxidants and fiber and some of these other uh like, um, uh, phytonutrients that are coming from the more diversity of food that you'd be doing normally during training or for a normal person, right?

Speaker 1:

So the bland foods easy to digest in soft foods that we're eating during a grand tour like this. It's very specific, right so you want to play with that and then be able to adjust it. So if you have a local stage race coming up and and, um, you want to try this for yourself, it's like, well, do, just do in training, have a block of uh, you know, three or four days that are going to be hard, and start eating more of the, you know, the, the rice, the cooked vegetables, easily digestible proteins with low fat, like chicken versus red meats, and things like this. So, yeah, I think the video definitely covers how they actually do it at the tour.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and as we wrap up on all Kristen's content, I'm curious, adam, what's your favorite pre-race meal?

Speaker 1:

Toast, lots of coffee, basic, real basic. I am one that I put it in the night before. So I'll have a nice big meal of pasta, red sauce, typically, and go to bed pretty full. But then I wake up coffee toast, maybe a little bit of almond butter, jam, whatever, but maybe one piece of toast, whatever. And rock and roll, because typically remember, I mean master, master races, cause I'm in beer league, bullshit, sort of stuff. Long live Mabra. Um in gravel races and stuff like it's very early so I don't have the luxury right Of of having a chef curated, uh, uh meal given to me at whatever time I wake up and then racing, you know, at 2 PM or something like that. If I was racing later in the day, yeah, I'd have eggs and something, something bigger, but yeah, and that's just something to follow up on what she said.

Speaker 2:

You know the breakfast, then a pre-race meal Cause, yeah, these ladies aren't racing till afternoon 1, 2, 2, 30, so it's breakfast, probably at a normal time, you know eight or nine in the morning, and then that pre-race meal, which would be, you know, a little bit less in calories, really high carbohydrate, very moderate in in protein, very low fat, so it's easy to digest and that's probably what two, no more than three hours before the stage.

Speaker 1:

Yep, yeah. And I think like the biggest thing to note on all of this is, as I observe riders or people, their breakfasts, their breakfasts don't change all that much and you should know what works for you. So for me it's toast, toast and small toast. If I'm racing early, then if I'm not racing until midday, or if I'm doing a group ride later on in the day, it's eggs, toast, fruit, lots of coffee. The toast is the normal and common denominator. You scale up and scale down depending on the timing of things. Rice is huge in the women's and men's pro tour. A lot of my junior elites they're religious about rice for breakfast and it works really well. I just don't prefer it personally, so that's why I rock toast.

Speaker 2:

Right on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so, renee, we'll keep this short and sweet. But tomorrow's stage what's it looking like and who's your pick?

Speaker 2:

Well, adam, tomorrow is, I would say, when the racing starts to get a little more interesting, because we're starting to get into some climbs, not the big mountains yet, but a little bit more climbing. The first half of tomorrow's stage is pretty flat, but then they start climbing a lot. In the second half there's a climb with about 10, it kind of tops out about 10K from the finish. There's a bonus sprint at the top, bonus seconds at the top 10Ks downhill to the finish, at the top 10Ks downhill to the finish. So I expect a select GC favorite kind of group. Maybe somebody slips off the front, but the GC is so tight that it's going to be close. I'm going to pick Anna Van Der Bergen. She did that at the Vuelta and she tried to pull out the Giro. It didn't work. But that's my pick.

Speaker 1:

So I glanced at the next stage right before this podcast. It finishes downhill, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like slight downhill Okay. No downhill. 10 Ks down Like descent, probably twisty-turny. If Longo Bergini was still here, yeah, I'd be picking a good descender.

Speaker 1:

I'm not picking so bonus time at the top and then 10K downhill, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So aggressive over the top, ripping down to the descent, so aggressive over the top, ripping down to the scent. I think the actual finish line might have a little uphill drag to it, but it's essentially a race to the bottom.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, I will probably stew on my pick a little bit more, but I go PFP. Then she can rip up and down.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so that's my pick.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's my pick. So let's uh, let's end it there. Huh, um, we went pretty long on the whole nutrition side of things but, like Renee said, it is a it's a hot topic. We always get tons of questions on uh, race day, nutrition fueling, and so thank you to Kristen Arnold for providing all that content for us. She's a dear friend and, like I said, she works with a lot of my athletes. So, kristen, thank you. And if you are interested in learning more about Kristen Arnold and what she is doing, we'll link to her website in our show notes, and it's Kristen Arnold Nutrition, if you just Google that. If you're like I never go to show notes, just Google that. And if you're curious, she runs a whole company based on women's physiology and she has other top nutritionists working for her. So if you're curious, go there. And thanks again to Kristen and good luck to your riders this week.

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Adam Pulford

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