Food Allergies

Most people would probably see this as sensitive personal information, but then again, I'm a little odd so will share. Perhaps other people would find this useful...

As a few of you know, I've not had the best run of luck in the last few marathon events, and have mainly put this down to sickness, nausea, etc. Despite trying to eat well in the lead up and during rides the stomach would just not be able to take in enough fuel and when that happens a DNF is pretty much always on the cards.

So, I had some a food allergy tests and here's the results, which explain a lot. Rating is 1 to 4 (highest):

Cow's Milk - 4
Beef - 3
Brewer's Yeast - 3 (OMG!)
Meta-Bi-Sulphite - 3
Baker's Yeast - 2
Cucumber - 2

With the exception of the last item, this is all rather bad.

Milk is in just about every commercial cake + biscuit out there. It's also in Powerbars. I had suspected being lactose intolerant since the Coffs trip and that little 'episode' after stopping for a caramel milkshake. I also had a rather creamy pasta dish night before that event and felt like dirt in the morning.

Beef explains a lot - the meat of choice in pre-race pasta. Doh!

Brewer's Yeast - disaster!

This Meta-Bi-Sulphite stuff is a preservative (E220-228) and found in loads of foods. It's used in lots of dried fruit which was about to become food of choice on the bike.

Baker's Yeast - if the milk in most commercial buns, biscuits, etc. doesn't get you, this will.

Cucumber - Pah, like this matters!

So, a small modification of diet is required. On the plus side, it's better to know what's wrong and avoid the above then carry on feeling ill constantly so it's good news really!

It will be interesting to see how things pan out.