Eat well on your rest days

We can all benefit from maintaining good eating habits on our easy, rest- days as well as through the hard training days. Don’t fall into the trap of (too often) rewarding yourself with junk food because you “deserve it”. Your body really deserves high quality nutrients, and those rest days should be packed full of nutritious food because you’ll have more time to prepare the good stuff.

Eating high quality food on rest days (lots of fruits and vegetables) will help ensure that your rest day is actually doing what it’s supposed to – repairing muscle and cell damage caused by hard training.

This is especially true after hard races. The craving for junky food is always at its highest after a race, it feels like a reward for accomplishing the task at hand. Yes you crave salt, but try getting it with a V8 instead of potato chips and fries. If you’re diligent about your food intake you can turn those race days in to your best ever training sessions. Good food first, party food later!

At the risk of having this sound like a blatant plug: We will say that one of the more impressive recovery products we’ve come across is Ultragen by First Endurance. Not only does it hit the bloodstream quickly and contain all the proteins, vitamins, and minerals you’d want from a recovery drink – the stuff mixes with water to the texture of a juice.  Absolutely no clumping or powdery residue. It is a pretty nice option for bringing with you post workout or post race; you can mix it on the fly and the flavour is awesome.