Check out Ze’s blog on the science of hiking.

http://hikingscience.blogspot.com/

9/19/09: Mt. Yale Loop – Starting from Sierra Madre trail will head up and connect to Jones Peak and go along the newly carved fire break to the Mt. Wilson Toll Road. From there head on up the ridge to Yale. Depending on time or how I feel, may just want to come back down the same way.

9/27/09: No hike – Will be busing/boozing it up with Ze. Will most likely end up biking somewhere with hills to work on cardio.

10/3/09: Mt. Wilson via Santa Anita Ridge – haven’t done this one. Will probably not do this one though if it’s hot. If it is hot, will probably do Mt. Wilson from Chantry Flats.

10/10/09: ?

10/17/09: Hike in the back country. Not sure where exactly. Also depends on what areas are burned out.

10/24/09: Baldy via Bear Flats – The warmup hike for C2C.

10/31/09: Baldy via Register Ridge – sneak in one more weekend at elevation.

11/7/09: The big day!!!

VO2 stands for volume of oxygen consumed, and is generally measured in liters per minute (L/min) and also scaled for different bodyweights (mL/min/kg). That is, the amount of oxygen that your heart can pump to your muscles. One can say that the larger the value, the better cardiovascular shape you are in, as your heart can pump more oxygen and so you can perform more work during exercise (move faster).

The test generally lasts from 10 – 15 minutes, and works by increasing the workload each minute. In my case, the grade was set at 14%, and the speed was increased 0.5 mph each minute until failure. I think I failed at about 7 – 7.5 mph. The clip only shows the end of the test.

There are plenty of specifics one could talk about in regards to exercise performance – such as the applicability of such a test versus a lactate threshold test – but I just wanted to point out this video as my colleagues were laughing at it (and me) recently.

Final stats

Max VO2 (L/min): 5.3
(ml/kg/min): 64
Max heartrate: 194

Don’t try to max out while hiking!

The Short Take

Water!

And:

The longer the hike, and/or the more intense pace you are gonna move, the more important breakfast becomes. And in that case it should be a few hundred calories, mostly fast absorbing carbohydrates.

The Long Take

The intensity of a hike can vary a lot. It may be to take a nice stroll, or it may be to push oneself nonstop for hours, gaining multiple thousands of feet of elevation. As we move to the latter, the more like other endurance activities hiking becomes.

I’ve talked a bit about what you should eat in a previous post. You should read that too.

There are many, many studies about the most important things to consume to do well during high-intensity or long duration exercise. The two most important:

WATER: You need to be hydrated. I can’t emphasize how underrated this is. When you wake up, you will not be fully hydrated. You may very well have a decent amount of dehydration. Dehydration makes you feel fatigued, drowsy, move slower, and for sure not perform as well during exercise. Cell function and neural activation depend strongly on amount of water and concentration of ions, so make sure you are set.

Since you usually hike not too long after breakfast, you need to be consuming a good amount of water at breakfast to “catch up” after spending probably 10 hrs not drinking any! Shoot for 2 full glasses before the hike.

Electrolytes are more of an issue after you sweat a lot, i.e. later on during exercise, so you won’t have to worry about them that much at breakfast.

Caffeine definitely has some beneficial effects on exercise, but this depends on the intensity and duration. And it also is a diuretic, so it acts to make you more dehydrated. So you need to be careful about how much caffeine you consume as it may just end up having negative effects

CARBOHYDRATES: Simply, you need to be eating a bunch of carbs to do well on a tough hike. However, most of that should be done in the days prior to the hike. Please take a look at this article, for example.

If your glycogen stores are low the morning of a hike, well, you’re probably screwed. Breakfast won’t save you. However, in all cases you want to eat a few 100 calories per hour (depending on your mass) mostly of high-glycemic index carbs that can be readily absorbed and used for energy. If you are really hungry the morning of, eat a bunch of food with high glycemic index ratings. Doesn’t have to be sugar, but bread without much fiber works well too, for instance.

If you are probably fed the days up to the hike, then eating something at breakfast probably won’t do much help for you. It is always good to have something to make sure your blood sugar levels are decent.

However, you do not want to eat TOO MUCH. Food in the stomach waiting to be digested takes up blood; blood that could otherwise deliver oxygen to muscles. This can cause cramps, and is the whole “don’t swim for 1/2 hour after eating” thing.

Now, if you are not pushing it intensely (not breathing at a high rate / high heartrate), this stuff won’t matter as much. Instead of using carb storage, you’ll rely more on fat metabolism. You won’t move as quickly though. And if you are not moving fast, you’ll use less blood, and you can eat a big breakfast without it bothering you. But of course, you’ll probably not need to eat a big breakfast since you’re not gonna burn that many calories.

Alas, breakfast is not the most important meal before a hike. You want to be prepared before the morning of. Simple carbs digest the best. Fiber will just make the food digest slowly, and make you more likely to share some special alone time with nature.

For next time, I’m thinking one time counter clockwise to the start, and then going clockwise around again for a good 6 miler.

With that said, let’s get to it.

It’s morning, you wake up and go through your mornings routine before you head out the door. The question is now, what do I eat? For me, it used to be McDonalds. An Egg McMuffin with hash browns and an orange juice. This was an especially good meal which brought back childhood memories. But as happened then, happens still, it leaves me feeling a bit sluggish. It was probably just too heavy and probably doesn’t have the essential nutritional requirements that I would need.

So eventually I moved on to what I eat now, a Clif Bar, or if that’s unavailable, a Powerbar. This seems to hold me over pretty well until lunch which is normally 3-4 hours into our hike and normally either at the summit or near our goal. So for the most part, all the leg work is already done.

But as of the last two weeks, I’ve come to start drinking Sugar Free Red Bulls along with my Clif Bar. Why? For the caffeine. A couple of hikes, I drank a cup of coffee, but that left me parched for a good hour or so on those hikes. So trying to rehydrate while on the trail at the beginning of a hike wasn’t my idea of fun.

Alright, below are the nutritional values of a Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar and a Sugar Free Red Bull.

The only real numbers that stand out to me are the calories and sugar. Fiber as well, but I’m thinking that isn’t as important starting out as it is during the hike. So Clif Bar has the calories to provide the fuel, and a good amount of sugar to provide the kick.

As far as the Red Bull is concerned, it’s most likely the caffeine that gives me a jolt. Here’s some facts about it:

it contains, per 250 mL (8.4 U.S. fl. oz.) serving, about 21.5 g sucrose, 5.25 g of glucose, 50 mg of inositol, 1000 mg of taurine, 600 mg of glucuronolactone, vitamin B — 20 mg of niacin, 5 mg of vitamin B6, 5 mg of pantothenic acid and 5 μg of vitamin B12 , 80 mg of caffeine.

So why the switch from a tasty Egg McMuffin meal to something that only astronauts stranded on Mars would eat? Here’s why:

I suppose these nutritional values would make some sense if you’re going on something extreme like Cactus to Clouds, but even for our day excursions, I think this is too much. Especially considering that I’m looking to lose body fat on these hikes. The fat count here along with the carbs is pretty extreme. Perhaps the carbs would help the night before. But even I know that there are better/healthier ways to carb up. Again though, for another post.

So that’s breakfast. Is it the breakfast of champions? Most likely not. But so far, it works pretty well for me. So until I find another alternative cocktail mix, this will be my morning nutrition for the foreseeable future.

Next up in the Layman’s Series, lunch.

The goal of this is to not only show how much I still have to learn, but to also hopefully shed light on the topic of proper nutrition and training in order to go farther, faster, longer. Hopefully you find these back and forth rantings not only entertaining, but educational as well.

Coming Monday, Layman’s Guide to Hiking Series – Part I: Breakfast

Perception: This is the hardest hike you will do, therefore you need to train for it. I have heard this many times.

Reality: The hike certainly is a biggie (~ 22 – 24 miles, 6500 ft gain), but there are many other hikes that have more stringent cardiovascular conditioning demands. In fact, the main trail up to Mt. Whitney is not very steep.

What makes Mt. Whitney difficult is the altitude and the low pressure of oxygen.

Problem: Cardiovascular training does not improve a person’s ability to handle low altitude, so how else can we adapt?

Discussion:

First, we need to understand what exactly is the problem with hiking up to high altitudes. A good discussion of these problems can be found here. The problem is that at increasing altitudes, the atmospheric pressure decreases. Atmospheric pressure is used to get air into our lungs and then into our blood. There is a pressure gradient, with lower pressure in the blood than the lungs, and lower in the lungs than in the air.

As the air pressure decreases, less oxygen will go into the lungs. Normally, we have certain breathing patterns that are based on having certain oxygen pressure in the air. If there is now less oxygen but we breathe with the same rate, we will not get enough oxygen into our body to use for energy. This is called hypoxia.

Less oxygen means less energy, and if nothing else changes, we will have to move slower. Luckily, the body realizes that we need more oxygen, and begins to breathe deeper and more frequently. This allows for more oxygen to get to the blood. Sounds good right? The problem is, this phenomenon is also known as hyperventilation and has its own side effects including making our blood alkaline (opposite of acidic) and makes us lightheaded and gives us tingling sensations.

So if we start hiking up to high altitudes, our body will start hyperventilating, but only so much so quickly. Lots of hyperventilization will worsen those side effects, which we don’t want. But if we don’t breath more, we won’t get enough oxygen and will have to slow down. And lead to altitude sickness.

How do we prevent this crap from occurring? Well, it is known that fitness level does not affect chances of getting altitude sickness. This is why the common thought of “training for Whitney” is flawed as it won’t tackle the real problems of dealing with altitude. In theory, my conditioning is such that I could ascend Whitney in 3 hours if it was at low elevations, but I took 6 and still felt like crap. Certainly I wasn’t challenged in the normal conditioning sense.

The time proven way to prevent it is to only ascend 1000 ft a day…ha! This gives you time to acclimate – time to let the body get used to hyperventilation. But there is obviously a large elephant standing in the room, no one wants to ascend only 1,000 ft a day on a hike, it would just take too long. But that is the best way to avoid issues with altitude (and enjoy nature).

How else? Some people take a drug known as diamox, which basically works by making your blood more acidic and therefore stimulates hyperventilation to balance the blood pH. So this lets you hyperventilate without such strong side effects of hyperventilation, and therefore allows you to take in more oxygen.

But who wants to take drugs? Shouldn’t there be a more natural way to adapt and ‘train’ for high altitude hiking? I think so. It is of my opinion that it would make sense to practice hyperventilating for several days before the big hike. This allows for the body to “acclimate” to the change in pH in the blood by adjusting how much CO2 and bicarbonate it allows in the blood. By the time you really need to hyperventilate, your body will be able to do so with less side effects.

This seems somewhat odd but basically this is what short term acclimatization is…getting used to hyperventilating. You can get used to hyperventilating at altitude (multi-day excursions with gradual increases in altitude) or consciously force yourself to get used to it. You won’t have the hypoxia to stimulate the hyperventilation, so you’d have to do it yourself.

One of these choices should be made, otherwise you may come down with some serious acute mountain sickness (AMS). Throwing up on the top of Mt. Whitney (me) is not a good sign!

Keep in mind, hydration and consumption of carbohydrates are also important in helping your hiking performance at altitude. High altitudes suck even more water out of us, so we need to drink even more than normal. But this doesn’t mean hydration will do anything to change the hypoxia/hyperventilation issue; it just means that dehydration due to altitude will make you feel even crappier – lethargic, headaches, etc…

Carbohydrates are needed because when there is less oxygen, our bodies will uses glycolysis (burning of carbohydrate storages) for energy. If we run out of those storages, we will move slower and have less energy. Not good!

Hopefully these thoughts provide some tips and thought provocation on how to deal with hiking at altitude. I have looked over journal articles and other sites to educate on this, but certainly do not have the issue down pat. Please let me know your thoughts.

Zé

Here’s a few webcams that record live images of various spots in the San Gabriel mountains.

Looking east toward Mt San Antonio, Cucamonga, etc… from Mt Wilson

From Josephine Peak, looking west toward Mt Lukens (I think direction varies)

Mt Wilson

Mt Baldy / Thunder Mt

PCA is under investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a recent Salmonella outbreak thought to be caused by tainted peanut butter. In light of this investigation, and with an abundance of caution, Clif Bar & Company has enacted a voluntary recall. We take the health and safety of our consumers very seriously.