Nutrition and stuff

I took two pics from my ride yesterday.  It's essentially what I saw during the storm.  

A little over a month before ITI 2013! Each year training, gear and nutrition get revisited.  New ideas and rehashing old ones--- like to see if the bike can be the lightest possible without compromising safety.  This year is probably my most radical in changes:  I have a new bike, new training methods, new gear and new nutrition ideas.  I won't go into all of these things as it might bore one to tears reading yet another method for gear and training... BUT nutrition!!! Now that's been interesting.

If you've read any of my ITI reports you'll note one common theme in every race: at some point I swell and retain water of an obscene amount.  This usually occurs following a significant lack of sleep and pushing the bike forever.  I've tossed around salt and electrolytes, hypoanatremia, too much IBuprofen.... without much success. The problem is all the above can cause edema in endurance sports, particularly hypoanatremia.  Each time I read a post about endurance and swelling I try to dive into the details.  I was convinced previously it was sodium and previously previously convinced it was ibuprofen .... so now I'm back to basic nutrition.

Last year I wore a vapor barrier shirt and from the retained sweat I (and others around me) smelled ammonia. I also retained 14 lbs of water after pushing the majority of the 350 miles to McGrath and running out of food multiple times.  The ammonia is a clue.  Diabetics have the smell from the inability to process glycogen and fatty stores are used, ketosis.  In an endurance event, it is my understanding the ammonia smell could be from spent glycogen and fat stores are being burnt, ie not enough carbs. I heard (from a reliable source) this lack of carb input leads to the lack of glycogen and eating of fat stores (ketosis) can lead to a whole bunch of swelling.  We'll see if this is the case, I have been training to load up on the right kind of carb in the right time interval..... We'll see about this year.