During our cycling expedition we have been pushing a lot of kilometres and due to this we have found that we need rest. We are now in Mount Isa, staying on Greg and Margaret’s property. Margaret is a physiotherapist, and I asked her about how important rest is. She threw me loads of facts about how we should be eating and what we should be eating; how we should be sleeping and general signs of over training. Some of these are your pee is yellow, this is a major sign that you are not getting enough water into your body, your pee should be clear. Loss of appetite and loss of body weight (3%) is when you should start getting worried. Some physical signs are heavy legs, sore anything and generally tired. Some psychological stress can be low motivation, low concentration, low self-confidence, increased aggressiveness. Other signs of over training can be poor sleeping patterns and poor eating routines.
For eating we have a fairly stable diet and although it may not be first class restaurant food, it does get us by. I found some interesting information from Margaret that foods have just recently been researched into to find some simple carbohydrates like potatoes and pasta may not be as heavy-duty endurance foods as we were led to believe. These sources in the foods are called G.I foods and they are rated from 1 to 100, 1 being the highest in the G.I food group. Some pastas are not as good for you as some such as normal pasta that you may pay the same price doesn’t have as high G.I as Basmati or Doongarra pastas, these both have rather high G.Is.
G.I food supplements are important for all endurance athletes, as when someone hits “the wall” they have simply run out of G.I foods. G.I foods can only be stored for 24 hours or there about so everyday you must supplement them as much as possible. Some foods that are high in G.I are corn, peas, sweet potato, Pink potato with apples and oranges.
Some ways of realising that you are over training can be recording sleep and quality, recognising that you are feeling constantly tired and recording your heart rate. So now you guys out there reading this won’t have any excuses for over training.
Feed your children wheat. Joshua.