Swimming Nutrition with Lara Giusti of Veloforte

This week on Cook Eat Run, Charlie chats with Lara Giusti, co-founder and head chef at Veloforte, about the unique challenges of nutrition for swimming. Lara shares her journey of creating Veloforte to provide natural sports nutrition options and offers invaluable tips on how to effectively fuel for swimming, especially for those tackling triathlons or long-distance swims.

The Birth of Veloforte

Lara discusses the inspiration behind Veloforte, driven by the need for natural sports nutrition. Learn how her personal experiences and passion for real food led to the creation of a product range that caters to athletes seeking healthier fueling options.

Challenges of Swimming Nutrition

Swimming poses unique fueling challenges due to the lack of storage options and the water environment. Lara explains how to pre-fuel and post-fuel effectively, and offers advice on intra-swim fueling for those longer sessions. Discover why hydration is just as crucial in swimming and how to manage it.

Practical Tips for Swim Fuelling

From the importance of practising your fueling strategy during training to the logistics of carrying and consuming gels while swimming, Lara provides practical tips to ensure you’re well-prepared. She also covers the importance of carbohydrate loading and how to structure your nutrition leading up to race day.

Product Highlights

Charlie and Lara discuss some of Veloforte's standout products, including the endurance bars, chews, and the newly launched overnight oats. Learn why these products are favourites among athletes and how they can fit into your training and recovery routine.

Connect with Veloforteand explore their range of natural sports nutrition products at Veloforte.com.

Connect with Charlie online @therunnerbeans / www.therunnerbeans.com 

Grab a copy of Charlie’s book ‘Cook Eat Run’ 

The Cook Eat Run Podcast is sponsored by XMiles - the One Stop Nutrition Shop - use discount code COOKEATRUN for 10% off site wide at Xmiles.co.uk

This podcast is produced by Buckers at Decibelle Creative decibellecreative.com / @decibelle_creative

Hello and welcome back to the Cook Eat Run podcast with x

Miles. Today I'm chatting with Lara Giusti,

the co founder and head chef at Veloforte We're going to be talking

about nutrition for swimming, which is arguably the hardest sport to

fuel for. But first, I'd love to hear a little bit

more about how and why you started

Veloforte

Well, hi Charlie. Thank you for inviting me on. it's a

pleasure. I started

Velaforte a little bit selfishly actually, because

I was just astounded by the lack

of natural sports nutrition on the market.

So I think when you are, ah,

active and you take care in

your health and fitness, it always

astounds me that you follow a healthy

diet. You try and do that day in, day out

and when you put your body through its hardest paces,

the options for sports nutrition were very

limited to ultra processed,

weird and wonderful, concoctions of,

ingredients that you would never, ever normally eat. And

that's what you're putting in your body when you're pushing yourself your hardest.

So I thought there must be a better way, there must be a

more natural way to do that. So I actually started

coming up with the recipes for Velaforte, really to fuel me

and my husband through our sports, and it's

really rolled itself out through there, really.

So we started, you know, making our own

prototype products in the kitchen and then sharing them with our

friends and then they wanted to order some and it just

became bigger and bigger and bigger. Ah, and here we are

now, with a full complement of sports

nutrition and wellness products.

Amazing. So what was your sport, what were you, your husband, you

training for? Need the kind of sports

nutrition.

So mark, my husband, cycling

all the way, he was training for

a really long ride, Manchester to London,

to support ambitious about autism. and he

was just really struggling. He was either under

fuelling because he couldn't face taking on the

gels and the dry, dusty energy bars that

he was putting in his jersey pockets, or he

was having really bad gastric side effects

from taking on these, food that he just, his

body wasn't used to eating. and so that

was his challenge. And me, I'm a bit of

an omni sports person. I like to do a bit of

running. I, ah, like to do, you know, strength and

conditioning training. So it's just ways to

sort of help me fuel and recover

after my exercise. but yeah,

it was just sort of a no brainer

really, from I'm madly

passionate about home cooking and using real food

ingredients and to try incorporate those into

our fueling strategies for our events, then

that was just, you know, it was what we wanted to do

and what we ended up being very successful

doing.

I mean, I know a lot of people that use your products. I personally,

I really like the, I don't know, the chews, the like

ginger. I feel like I save them for the

end of my runs when my stomach is feeling a bit

and they just feel like quite nicely

settling. They don't feel overwhelming. It's not like trying

to shove down another gel and

I feel like a lot of people who struggled with gels,

or normal gels in particular, have found your products and

they really work for them.

So, yeah, yeah, I think it's

because we use a combination of sweet and savoury

in most of our recipes. So the problem with

fueling for any long endurance, exercise

or session or event is that you get so bored with sweet

en suite fuelling and you can't face to have another

sugary, you know, gel or a bar.

So we purposefully use

spices and botanical ingredients that

sort of break that sweet on sweet flavour

fatigue. We want you to look forward

to your fueling. We want you to get excited about that. Oh,

you know, my garmin's pinged at 20 minutes. It's now my

next time to take on some energy. What am I going to have

next? Am I going to have something with a little bit of mint in it to

freshen my head? Am I going to have something with ginger in it because I'm feeling a little

bit nauseous. It's going to settle my stomach.

Our hydration mixes have herbs in

them, so there's basil and there's,

sage. So it really challenges

your taste buds and gives you that break and that sort

of motivation to keep fueling.

I feel like the electrolyte drinks make quite good cocktails,

like post run recovery

cocktails.

I do have to say the most amazing hangover cure as well.

So, but yes, so, yeah, so our, ah,

activo, which is strawberry, and

basil. It's got some lemon in there as

well. Delicious. Shaken over ice with

whatever tipple you want to add, you know. Yummy.

Might have to try that this weekend.

Do you have a particular favourite product?

Well, I think the whole Vellaforte journey started

with our endurance bars. It started with

our energy bars which are based on an ancient

italian recipe, Pam forte. So my

husband, his family are italian. He's brought up with

Panforti in his house. And, it was just a. It's

rumoured to be what powered the roman legions

to conquer the new world. So if it can power them, what

can it power you to do? So, we took an old family

recipe and I tweaked it, you know, pom Forte's

got lots of lovely, you know,

brandies and spirits in it, so they all

came out and fresh, orange zests and fruit juices

went in and I altered the mix of nuts and fruits

to give a really good endurance profile.

and our classico bar was born. And that is what really

started Veloforte And so I guess my allegiances

still are, ah, to our classico bar, which has just won

two stars in the great Taste awards as well as of

yesterday, which is amazing. So

not only does it support your endurance exercise,

but it is guaranteed to taste amazing, too. So,

I think, yeah, I'm in love with those. I love the chews

as well. but also super proud of some of our

newer product ranges which morph between,

performance nutrition and wellness

nutrition. So again, it's sort of supporting this 360

approach of what you put in,

you get out. And it's not just when you're on the bike, on the run,

in the water, swimming. It's everything that you do

before, during and after that really

helps your performance.

Yeah, I've got the overnight oats to test that you

kindly sent me that. I can't wait. I'm a big overnight oats fan, especially in

this weather. They're such an easy kind of prep ahead.

Chuck in the fridge, have them after a long run or after a

run, or I take them to work to have them

in the hospital while I'm going through patient notes and

stuff.

Exactly. Good.

okay, so swimming. We've talked a bit about

cycling and running. We talk about that a lot on

the podcast. I think that's the area that people

maybe feel not the most

comfortable, but are most aware of sort of how to

fuel and what to fuel with. But swimming is really

challenging and I feel like as more people are

transitioning towards

triathlon and for me personally, this

is quite a selfish, podcast episode because I want to do swim

serpentine, which is next. I'm doing it next

summer, which is 2 miles. And

I've got. I asked somebody today, I was

like, do they provide snacks on the route? Because 2 miles, I'm

going to be swimming for over an hour. I'm going to be

thirsty, hungry, grumpy.

So let's start at the beginning. How

does swim fuellings differ to

running and cycling?

So the joy of running and cycling is you have

all these wonderful pockets to shove your energy

products in, whether it's in your running belt, it's in your top

tube bag on your bike, you know, you've got water

holders, you can have hydration packs.

Easy peasy. So if you want to fuel, if

you want to run or cycle with fuel, and if

you're running and cycling for long enough that

demands you to fuel, then easy

peasy, right. You're going to shove whatever you fancy in whatever

pockets, obviously swimming much harder.

you've got the water nature of it. So,

you know, whatever you're going to be fueling with needs to be in a

waterproof packet. It needs to be easy to either

shove in your wetsuit or down your swimsuit. it

needs to be really quick to access, easy to

open, liquid format rather than

chewing, because chewing and swimming and water, very

difficult. so what we see is

a lot of people who swim tend to focus on pre

fuelling and post fuelling. And the

intra swim fuelling is sort of, as you say, if

you feel like you really need to fuel, then

having an emergency gel, something that's really easy to

open, take and carry on swimming,

seems to be the preference for people

who are swimming longer distances over an hour, over

an hour and a half. But for those shorter distance

swims, if you're doing it up to 60

minutes, maybe up to 90 minutes, if

you're pre fueling right, and you're taking your

recovery fuelling seriously, you should be

absolutely fine.

I just get really thirsty when I do

swims the pool and I end up having kind of a

bottle of electrolytes with my like, swim

workout kind of taped to that at the end of the

lane.

Yeah.

Would you suggest kind of having electrolytes

pre swim then to try and kind of combat

that?

Totally. There is a misconception because you're

in the water, you don't sweat. You absolutely do sweat. And

especially if in your pool, if you're in a heated pool,

you will be sweating, you will be losing vital

electrolytes and you won't be necessarily as aware

of that. So it's really important to stay on top of your

electrolyte load. So, yes, pre fueling with

electrolytes before you swim, you know, 500

mils of an electrolyte solution, you can have energy in

there as well to sort of help with your pre

fuelling. And then if you are in a pool, having

a bottle pool side that you can every three or

four lengths, have a good swig and keep going.

Brilliant. If you're out open water

swimming, harder if you're on your own,

obviously, to take electrites with you, but you can

have electrolytes in your energy fuel as well,

so lots of gels contain electrolytes. All of our

gels contain an electrolyte load as well. So if you're taking

on energy, you can also start taking on electrolytes there as

well. And obviously, if you're doing ultra

distances outdoors, then you should

have some support boats with you that they can carry your

fuel for you. But it's all about the

planning and the training of your gut

and your fuelling as you're, as you're

exercising, as you're swimming, as well as your support

team as well. So they know exactly what you'll need. Need at

what stage. But yes, hydration is something

that's often overlooked. So yes, pre

hydrating, post hydrating as well. So having a

hydration mix as part of your recovery

routine is best.

Okay, so we, you said a little bit there about

kind of training the gut, and that's something that I really advocate for in

run training. If you're planning on having

a gel kind of midway through or partway through

your swim, is that something you'd suggest then practising in

your longer swim training, even if you're in the pool?

Absolutely, yeah, totally. You don't want any

surprises on event day. So it is

hard to coordinate, you know, treading water, opening

a gel, taking it. What do you do with the packet no one

wants, you know, sea pollution, shoving it back down

you, you've got to practise it and you've got to

know how that feels when you can't touch the

bottom, and when you're slightly out of breath. So

absolutely practise it in your training.

Make yourself do that. Even if you're doing a shorter

training swim, still practise the fueling.

It's not going to do you any harm, but the actual going through

the motions, having your muscle memory, knowing what it's

like to take on fuel while you're in the

water is essential if you're on those longer swims. And you

know you're going to have to take something when you're out there.

Just thinking about the logistics of this. for those just

listening, you're kind of demonstrating as if you just have it in. But my

wetsuit is a really hard to get into and

you kind of don't want to let that water in. Once you're kind of cosy

inside, could you shove it up the

sleeve or.

Any opening is a

goal, to put your fuel. So if it's easier to

shove it in your sleeve, if you're wearing a sleeveless one, to put it

in here rather than obviously down your neck.

yeah, but practise, practise in

the thing you're going to swim in. Practise fueling,

wearing your outfit and where you're going to

stash and re stash your packet after you've fueled.

I'm just imagining myself next summer in my like,

local pool with like a wetsuit on, getting

gels out and trying to film it. I mean, I'm

already, it's already embarrassing enough, me trying to kind

of film myself, have my workout, have my

electrolytes. Now I'm going to be in the wetsuit with my

gel, having a little snack.

As embarrassing as it may be, it's worth its weight in

gold. So please do practise.

Yeah, yeah, that's really good tips. And

so, again, selfishly, for those who are doing swim

serpentine, it's part of the London classics. For those who don't

know, that is when you complete the London marathon

ride, 100 hundred mile bike ride

and 2 miles in the

serpentine. For me,

I think that's going to take me an hour and a

half ish. How would you recommend

structuring? Do I feel for it? Like an hour and a

half run with that pre,

load? Would I carb load before that? How

would you recommend kind of leading up to

that as my race day?

Yes. I mean, you want to perform at m your best,

you want to enjoy it, so you don't want to hit that

wall in the water. That's horrendous. So

approach it like you would approach any event. Yes, you can

carb load. We would always suggest that you don't do

that in just one bowl of pasta in the night before. it

sits too heavy in your stomach and you're bloated

and, you don't sleep well. So in the three

days running up, just generally increase the amount of

carbohydrates you take on with each meal. So, you know,

have another little spoon of pasta, have another scoop of

potato, have another slice of toast. It doesn't have to

be huge mammoth portions. You're just trying to

generally up your carbohydrate intake.

And it's that slow increase in your carb

intake that makes sure that your glycogen

stores in your muscles and your liver are tip

top when you're entering that race. So,

yes, have a carb focused, meal

the night before your breakfast or the meal that

you, enjoy before the start. It might

not be a morning start. Should be two

to 3 hours before the start line to allow your body

time to properly digest it.

Carb focus with low level protein, some

healthy fats in there, something that you've eaten

before. No surprises on event day.

So if you love oats, have some oats.

Yeah, have it with some greek yoghurt. Have it with some fruits and

some bit of honey or maple syrup to up that

carbohydrate load in there. if you're like

a scrambled egg lover, whole mil toast,

scrambled eggs, you know, bagels and peanut butter and bananas.

All of these are fantastic. And if you've tried it before and

you know that it sits well in your stomach, go for something that,

you know works for you. Now, your

start line, you know, if your start line is 3

hours ahead of your breakfast, you're going to

need to top yourself up. So an

hour before, we would suggest a little carbohydrate

snack. And again, think about your hydration at that point. You can

take on some electrolytes in that hour

window beforehand. And that is the time, if you

love caffeine, to take on caffeine.

So there's a lot of misconception about caffeine in

that, ten minutes before, if you're on a run or a

ride last hill or ten minutes before the

end, I'm going to take my caffeine gel. And,

no, it takes 45 to 60 minutes for

caffeine to enter into your system and then it

stays in your system for three to 4 hours.

So use that time. Your hour

before is the time to load with caffeine. If you like to fuel with

caffeine and then, you know, by start line it's fully

absorbed. Your tip top, you're mentally switched

on. Your perception of exertion is

lowered and you're ready to like put in your all on

that. Diving in on your first part of.

The serpentine swim also bit

tmI, but also the caffeine. A hot drink

can help things get moving so that you can go to the loo

before your race.

Very important, like, because when

you're in the water you can wee,

but not anything else.

so yes, very important to try and be regular,

to choose a food that, you know, sits well in your

stomach to think about when you're going to fuel with your caffeine

and then, you know, 20 minutes before a little

extra, carbohydrate load a little gel or a

half a banana or something to really get you tip

top. You can fuel your

muscle glycogen stores in the three days beforehand. Then

overnight when you're sleeping, your liver stores will drop.

So the food that you take on in the morning and in the

run up to the start line is topping up your liver stores again.

So you want to enter it as full as you can. Because

if you find that fueling during that swim, if

it takes you an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half,

if you find it really difficult to fuel, your body

holds enough glycogen if you go in full for

up to 90 minutes. So you could finish it

without taking on extra fuel or

you could time it. If you are comfortable taking on gels, then

you would time it more like a long run, more

like a long ride. In that you would start to fuel

within the first half an hour, 20 minutes, half an hour of

your swim. You know, take a gel and then little

and often as you go through your swim because that

improves your absorption and, it

reduces the, risk of your gastric side

effects if you do little and often fueling throughout the

swim.

Guess more, more tricky in terms of

like stopping and opening things. So maybe like that. Yeah,

just the, like you said, kind of a

gel every sort of half hourish in

that you only hopefully need two

in that one, one in each sleeve and you're good to go.

You're all fine.

Yeah.

Evenly balanced? Yes, totally. And

then after, the

important thing is that you really take your

recovery fueling. Because if you haven't managed to take on energy

during that 90 minutes swim, your

glycogen levels are through the floor, you're in massive

glycogen debt. So your focus on recovery fueling

needs to be carbohydrates first and

then your uptake within those 1st 30

minutes, which is your golden window of

recovery, is improved by low level

protein. And then you can take on your fluids and electrolytes at the

same time as well. So having a protein shake

that is ready for you or a

protein bar with carbohydrates in it

is the best thing to do. As soon as you're out the water,

warm up, have something to eat which is

carbohydrate focused with protein, and restore your

electrolytes either with electrolyte drink or having electrolytes

in your protein recovery shake. Then, you know, that

you've ticked that box, you've kick started your

recovery and then you've got two to 3 hours to have a

proper balanced meal that you would, you know,

have your proteins and your carbs and your green

veggies and everything else, so. But it's in that

30 minutes window that your body is most receptive to

topping up those stores again. And that's really going to help you if you

are on back to back events. just help with

your recovery in general.

Now, the water in the UK,

unfortunately, and especially

m recently, isn't the cleanest. It was the

triathlon in Paris the other day and there was huge.

They delayed it for 24 hours, didn't they?

Yeah. I've been recommended by a

friend with no scientific background or

knowledge to have like a coke or something

like that afterwards, almost as like a. Ah, I know. There's so

much disgusting stuff in it that it will then

balance out kill anything you've

accidentally consumed.

A coke after is great for carb

loading. Obviously, there needs to be a full

sugar coke, not a zero. and any

other, you know, carbonated, sugary drink will do as

well. so, yes, you could have that. I don't

think the chemicals within a coat will, will

neutralise any of the, any of the bacteria or anything that you

take on. it's a Coca Cola. If

a Coca cola is something that you look forward to and you

know you're going to want after you finish, then have

one. It's all about getting the

carbohydrate in, in whatever form you want.

Choose a form that suits you, that you

enjoy, that you know, you're not going to get to the end and go, I can't face

that, you know, train with it again. So

if you're doing your long training swims, think

about what would you have as your recovery? Is it a

shake that you've tried and tested before, you know, sits well

in your digestion? Is it a protein

recovery bar? Is it a can of coke and

a packet of peanuts? You know, you're getting

what you will need, your carbohydrates, your

proteins and your salts from those

foods. Choose something that you know you're

going to stomach. the healthier

the better.

And hopefully try and find bodies of water that are, on

the cleaner side and just keep your mouth closed.

Yeah. At least with the serpentine, it's a lake, isn't it? So,

you're hoping that there's no sewage contamination?

Yeah, unfortunately, I train,

will be training in the Thames and it's. I haven't

summoned it this year because it just looks so disgusting, or I've

heard so many, they won't even throw.

The copses in after the Oxford Cambridge boat

races anymore. So.

Yes, yeah, but, yeah,

the serpentine is at least a little bit

more. It's probably bird poo rather than

human pigeon poop. Yeah.

talking of kind of open water, is there a difference in

fueling needs in an open water swim

versus, like, the training in the pool that probably most people are

doing as a more regular, you know, get that, getting

their swimming miles in?

Yeah. I don't think you should underestimate the

force of nature that is open water swimming.

So it's temperature, it's

tidals, it's currents, it's general

weather around you, it's the impact of

waves on your stroke style. so

if you can do some open water training,

if that is what your event is, then do it. training

in the pool is great for endurance and

understand you can practise your fueling and

hours and hours of repetitive muscle memory and

everything else, but actually training in the

conditions that you're going to do your inventing

is paramount to success, really.

Things like the tides and the waves. It will

increase your energy demands. So what

you are comfortable fueling in with

endurance swimming in the pool, you should consider to

increase your energy intake. So we would suggest, you know,

45 to 60 grammes of carbs per hour, if you're

swimming over those 90 minutes, is what you should be

focusing on. You may feel that you need

more than that in open water swimming. So

it's better to carry more fuel and not

need it than to carry less and find

that you're hitting the wall, that you're really struggling with your energy

levels.

Good advice. Do you have any kind of final top

tips for people taking on a swimming

challenge or just kind of new

to perhaps fueling for swimming?

just try and, try and try the different types

of fuels on the marketplace. Find one that you enjoy,

that you want to fuel with, because in

that moment when you're battling a

wave or even in, like in the

serpentine, where there's lots of swimmers around you, and that's a

very new experience as well. Normally, your swimming

training will just be you in a lane or very

few swimmers, in a lake or

wherever, but having that volume of swimmers, the splash

that's going on around you, the turbulence in the

water, choose, something that

you're gonna, you're not, you're not gonna brace yourself for fueling

you're gonna enjoy the taste of and you, and you look forward to,

you know, sits well in your digestion as well.

So it's all about practise, you know, it's, you

know, fail to prepare, prepare to fail, all of

that.

Thank you so much, Zara. Is there anything we can be looking out

for coming soon from Belleforte? Any

sneaks, sneak peeks to any products?

I'm always busy developing new

products. we have around 30 products on the market now

from energy bars, protein recovery bars,

gels, our natural gels, which are a

blend of plant based syrups versus sort of synthetic

sugars, and we've got chews,

hydration shakes. our

wellness range is fantastic as well. So,

again, alongside our performance bars,

our wellness snack bars, our ot snack bars, which

are no added sugar, they're great things to chuck in your

commute bag and just have at your desk as well. They

just won great taste awards as well, so that's fantastic. And

obviously, we've just launched, as you said, our overnight

oats, which are brilliant. So they're everything

in one pack. Give it a good shake. Just add, water

and you've got your carbs and your crunchy seeds and

your source of protein and your fibres

and all of the good stuff in there. You don't have to think about it. So it's

like one pack fits all. So,

yeah, really excited about those.

Amazing. Well, I will leave a link in the show notes

to some of my favourite products. And for

those products that are available on xmiles, you can

save 10% with the code cook, eat,

run. And that will save on all of the

Vellaforte products on xmiles, you can save your 10%.

So, yeah, give them a try. People that are new to the

brand, give those. I highly recommend

the chews. And, it sounds like I'm going to be ordering some more

bars because they sound absolutely delicious.

And, yeah, so give them. Give them a go.

Thank you so much for listening to.

This week's episode of the Cook Eat.

Run podcast with x miles for regular listeners.

Firstly, thank you. Your support means so much. And for those

that have taken advantage of the discount codes in the past,

yay. I know it's been a little confusing, but we're sticking

with one simple discount code from now on.

Cook, eat, run.

All one word, all uppercase, no months, no

numbers. Each month, that discount code will give you

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so that you.

Can stock up on your favourites and.

Try out new nutrition products.

So if you want to try the.

Amazing Veloforte products, you can save 10% across the

range at xmiles.com. throughout the month of

August with the code cookeatrun, my

personal faves are the ginger chews, although I'm really excited

to try the overnight oats made with real food and complete with

16 grammes of plant based protein. I've got the

apple and cinnamon flavour to try out, but they've also got a strawberry and

coconut which sounds ideal for summer, and a smooth cocoa

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