Paleo Nutrition for the Endurance Athlete

Someone recently asked,

My boss and I got her to go paleo after reading Taubes’ books. She training for a 120 mile bike race at high elevation (10,000 ft and above) and she’s wondering how that’s going to work into the paleo lifestyle. She usually loaded up on carbs before a big ride. Is that still what she should do now? She has several 50 mile rides planned before the big event, so she’s willing to experiment with different things.

This is a great question! I am an endurance runner and have been eating paleo for a couple of years now. Nutrition while running was something I needed to tackle early on when I switched from the SAD to eating low carb, then to paleo. Traditional endurance-athlete foods never really sat well in my stomach (Gu, Power Bar, Hammer, etc), and I was making do with consuming granola bars and …