First of all a disclaimer/introduction regarding the Dutch organization I collect money for.
It is called Swim to Fight cancer, was established by passionate swimmers in 2014 out of a simple idea: swimming in a city, in the canals, where participants and teams collect as many donations as possible for cancer research.
You can find here a list of research works that have been made possible thanks to the organization’s financial support. I swam already in two of their events: once last year in the Amstel and this year in Haarlem (see one of my previous posts on LinkedIn).
The pages are all in Dutch but I am sure that you get the idea.
In this article, I want to talk about food, dietary arrangements I underwent to get ready for the upcoming swim quest. I also want to talk about food in general and in abstract terms.
Swimming in open waters requires our bodies to burn a lot some calories.
Before every training or swim, I make sure to eat, not too much but also not too little. There is nothing worse than swimming on a completely empty stomach, believe me. And although to many it seems counterintuitive – swimming with a full belly and the connected risks of congestion – having eaten ahead of a swimming session – let alone a competition – is the wisest thing to do.
Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash
The question is more about WHAT.
BEFORE SWIMMING
As I am no expert, I can only tell what worked for me.
For breakfast, I quit yogurt last year and went back for milk, something I had not done in 30 years. Mixed with muesli, it gives me the energy I need until mid morning.
For lunch and dinner I try to stay away from white flower, otherwise known as plain or all-purpose flour. Since years, we eat almost exclusively brown pasta and brown bread when home.
The Dutch habits have been quite the challenge for me, and I still have a hard time to adapt to the dull and repetitive approach with which meals are planned, served and eaten in this country.
Even more challenging that that is finding seasonal fruits and vegetables that taste fine and do not cost a fortune. Bananas are an all around friend for every sports person, I know. But so can also be dried apricots or peaches (long live the shops run by second generation Turks and Moroccans in our neighbourhood!).
I have been trying out stuff that provides a lot of unprocessed or minimally processed carbohydrates: on top of Quinoa salads, which have become everyday food in the Netherlands, I have also been eating more chickpeas, in all their form. I have a hard time with potatoes and frankly I believe they do not go well with open water swimmers.
DURING SWIMMING
Finding the right food during a long training session has been the most challenging part of the story.
What do you do when you swim two straight hours in a pool or in a canal?
After asking some fellow swimmers and reading a bit around ( I recommend to everybody a short read if you are serious about going for longer swims: Open Water Swimming: A Complete Guide for Swimmers and Triathletes).
In my case, I ended up mixing a bottle of an orange flavored hypotonic sports drink. Which I drink after the first hour of activity ( it contains carbohydrates, minerals (= electrolytes) and does not taste horribly artificial).
AFTER a long training, I usually do not feel very hungry for the first hour or so. Then, the chasm in my stomach opens up. That is the trickiest part of the whole deal, since a lot of m yintensive training happened in the evenings in the last months (which is also not the best solution apparently, at least the newest findings, as described in this article in German possibly behind paywall) . Going to bed with a lot of food in your belly does not feel well, anyway. Going to be hungry is difficult too, right?
HEALTH
Over these months it has been important to stay injury free. Swimming is not as heavy on our bodies as basketball, for instance. Still, shoulders and back can also be affected. Warm ups, stretching sessions and a light weight training helped too
The most important aspect of all remains mental health, though.
Photo by Emily Underworld on Unsplash
Keeping the stress from work below the borderline level; sleeping without interruptions as much as children allowed; limiting screen time in the evening; reading more and all in all, going to the pool even if I did not feel great: all this strengthened my endurance. I am convinced that the challenge of this swim is going to be more psychological than physical. Which is also why I did not assume a manichean approach to all I just described. I want to feel free to eat whatever I feel like, every once in a while. Yesterday it was a fantastic pizza baked in a wood oven in the city!
FEW WORDS ABOUT L&D
If a newly onboarded employee or a postgraduate student defined the latest course they completed as ‘food for thought’, it would be a major success for whoever had been responsible for its development.
And this could actually become the definition to the whole sector: Learning and Development / Creating Sustainable Food For Thought.
A course is seldom enough for a participant to be completely knowledgeable about something or an expert in some fields. And yet, how many times do we hear in L&D courses offer that once you complete XYZ, you are going to master this or that?
If our content managed to bring a participant to the end without the blackmailing of badges, points, certificates and so on, we can say that we won one battle!
In more practical terms, food is also raw energy. Energizing the participants shall not happen only in the beginning of an activity, when we often hear the sales pitch of the course to start. And energy is better applied if offered direclty, unprocessed.
Which is why I believe in the need to build different moments of self reflection into the content. Where inputs and suggestions provide the learner with the additional insight of what she can gain in terms of perspective or new opportunities, once the course is concluded.
And energy is something that we also need to conserve. How many training schedules did I see where the workload on participants was uneven, unrealistic?And above all decided by somebody who had never tested it or experienced it first hand? How many times, pauses are not taken literally but figuratively?
I am confident to say that it is better to think about what is advisable to achieve within one session/course rather than what is possible, i.e. the most that can be done.
Although some learners would probably go for the overkiller, for many others it can simply result in an overstretched and stressful experience. And affect their mental health.
Diversifying between minimum requirements, insights of what is more to discover (and there always is), and additional opportunities to learn sounds to me a much more balanced approach that feeds into learner’s needs more fittingly.
The same approach I follow when it comes to stay hydrated and fed in my swims. I am confident it makes sense and it is the right way to go.
Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
