A Letter to His Younger Self: Jake Brown's Reflections on Nutrition

Credit: Nordic Focus

Dear 20-year old Jake,

I know you, because I am you. All of a sudden, I’m the oldest athlete on a club team I won’t tell you about, because I want you to remain ignorant of that future, keep dreaming, and stay hungry. 

What I will tell you is that I’ve journeyed through running, skiing, and biathlon careers and am still standing, still racing hard multiple times a week as I near age 32. So I hope that gives me a little credibility in your eyes.

I know you have a lot of specific opinions about training and nutrition. You’ll receive counsel from elite coaches and sport dieticians, but it will be only through mistakes, injuries, and illnesses, as well as successes, wins, and breakthroughs, that you’ll really change the way you think. Your specific opinions will dissolve and you’ll develop new ideas that will broaden more into themes. Those themes I want to share with you, because I believe if you adopt them now you’ll be not only happier and healthier, but most importantly to you, faster. 

And in case anyone else ever reads this, they should know that these opinions are truly mine alone and that I am far, far from a professional dietician, whom they should consult before making changes to their diet.

So, here are four general thoughts for you to consider, young Jake. And though you probably won’t listen and need to learn for yourself, I’ll share them anyway:

Sugar during and after your workout is good, not bad.

You can read all the theories you want about becoming a fat-adapted athlete. And there is no doubt that you can improve your fat-usage capabilities through training, and you will. But you’ll come to learn that the fastest European athletes are happy to literally eat candy during their workouts, especially the long ones, and you should too. Your favorite will be the Haribo Happy Colas, which are really just gummy bears that they sell in Europe (so they’re sugar and not high fructose corn syrup) for 1 Euro. You’ll find that you’ll become a faster skier when you stop “embracing the bonk” and start eating a little bit of sugar before you even feel a bonk coming. You won’t get the sugar rush that you do when you eat too much dessert after dinner because during exercise your body’s cells absorb the glucose without needing as much insulin, which you’ll learn. You’ll recover faster and be ready for what you’ll discover are the way more important workouts: the intensity sessions. Will you believe me when I tell you that you’ll see Olympic and World Champions regularly downing Coca-Cola after training? Don’t tell your dentist, and try it sometime. Just not for every meal, OK?

Replenish post-workout with more than you think.

You’ll have the privilege to race a lot of hard races, complete a lot of hard trainings, and do some easy ones, too. Sometimes they’ll finish at weird times. 10:00am. 3:00pm. 8:00pm. Not really lining up with a meal, right?

Trust me, you need that meal. You need to plan ahead. Buy a shaker bottle, some recovery mix, and take the extra time to pack that away for after every session, plus a little food for after the bigger sessions: intensities and long ones. Then get a meal as soon as you can. I don’t care if lunch is in 90 min. Get it in right away, and then eat lunch, too. You’ll be hungry then anyway. Make four meals a day your minimum, and time them around your workouts. What you’ll discover is that it won’t make any difference for the first race weekend. But over time, it will add up. It’s not necessarily easy, so your commitment to this will ebb and flow. The seasons you do this well, you’ll get stronger as you race throughout the winter and have your best results. The seasons you don’t, you’ll risk big-time injuries and illnesses. So be smart, plan ahead, and eat up.

Learn to be flexible with pre-race eating. Don’t overdo it. Then make sure you make up for it after the race.

No two races will ever really be the same for you. You’ll see athletes who are obsessive about what they eat before a race, and they’ll have to eat the same exact thing every time. But they won’t really last. Racing will be too mentally taxing for them. The ones who you’ll see be successful are the ones who stick to general guidelines. You’ll learn that you race well off of a medium-sized meal of some plain carbohydrates (oatmeal, rice, pasta, potatoes, etc.) and some fiber (fruit or vegetables) with a small bit of fat or protein (say, butter and a little cheese on pasta) eaten between 2-4 hours before your race. You’ll learn that timing is more important than what you actually eat, and that staying close to your normal meal schedule and just reducing amounts is better than waking up at ungodly hours or significantly modifying your routine to get in your pre-race meal. You’ll learn to stay away from yogurt and bananas too close to race time, among other things like Chinese octopus that make you vomit, but you can eat them in the morning before an afternoon race and be OK. You’ll learn that most people obsess about coffee, but for you, it makes you too jittery. Moral of the story is, you’ll learn, but don’t tie yourself down to one recipe for race success. 

You’ll end up racing a tad hungry most days, and that’s OK. You find that helps you go fast. And often you’ll have some sugar within the hour before your race if you’re hungry (even a whole pastry before one of your best races ever), and that works well. But, you will find that it is **IMPORTANT** that you eat two meals after your race. You’ll NEED to make up for eating a little less before the race if you want any chance at feeling good again next week. And you’ll want that chance! 

Prioritize sleep: understand different foods’ effects on your unique physiology

You’ll struggle to get sleep during the racing season, and you’ll try so many different tactics to sleep well. Eventually, two things will really help. The first is not drinking coffee. But you really like coffee so you’ll struggle with this one, especially in Europe where they don’t really do decaf. The second is eating habits. You’ll find that eating before bed really hurts your sleep. So you need to be smart about when you eat and how often. Because oftentimes you’re going to be so hungry before bed that you HAVE TO eat in order to sleep, but eating before sleeping isn’t good for you, so you’ll feel you’re in a bit of a Catch 22.

My advice: first, be smart about when you eat those two dinners, especially during the racing season. Eat a meal right after afternoon training, and then again at a later dinner so it’s not so long before bed. And if you do need to eat before bed, pay attention to what foods you can eat and still sleep well. For an accessible European option, a good cheese will be your friend for this one. When you’re home, fried eggs and avocado do the trick. But no coffee with that before-bed breakfast, OK?

You’ll find that food is important, but you don’t need to obsess about it, and you’ll learn not to, mostly thanks to the fact that you’ll realize that the best athletes don’t, either. And you want to be one of the best. Get enough, get enough variety, take some sugar with you for training, and find fueling strategies that help you sleep well, too. Good luck my friend.

Sincerely,

Jake Brown
Oslo, Norway
February 2024