Flavour fatigue sounds simple enough -- and a bit trivial, actually -- but it is something very serious when it comes to performing at your best. If you're in the middle of a race, your body reacts differently to flavours than you might imagine, and the nutrition which you know that you desperately need might seem unappealing, making it impossible to follow your plan. I've heard of this happening to even the pros, and recently experienced it myself due to some of my own mistakes.
With the weather warming up, my training has progressed outdoors from my self imposed training prison -- and this has led to me needing to carry 100% of my required nutrition on my rides. No more sneaking up to the kitchen to mix up another bottle of Infinit if I felt like I was lacking some energy. Although the individual flavours are excellent on their own (my own preference being the fruit punch, which is curious given my typical aversion to overly sweet sports drinks), but due to poor planning, I had run out of all but the orange flavour. Mixing up 4 bottles of a single flavour, I headed out on my planned 4 hour ride.
The first 3 hours felt great -- I was right on my power target with an exertion that felt relatively easy. I had noticed that I was actually feeling so good that I didn't keep up with my nutrition targets. Then it started to hit me -- I could feel the bonk coming. But, at this stage, I had already drank so much volume of a single flavour that I was really fighting being able to finish my nutrition. I knew that I would feel better once I drank it, but just struggled to get it down. Flavour fatigue had hit me. I had heard about this countless times, but never experienced it so acutely until now. It's amazing how something you previously enjoyed can become so difficult to palate when you're pushing your endurance limits during long training sessions!
Having stopped, I was able to compose myself and eventually finish off another bottle. I started feeling much better right away -- the best part, after only a few minutes, I was able to continue the ride, eventually finishing more or less on schedule and on pace!
Having learned my lesson this time, I now make sure to always pack all 3 of the flavours on any long ride or even indoor training session. Being able to quickly and easily go back and forth between the Infinit flavours is a sure way to be able to avoid any of the issues coming along with flavour fatigue. I would highly recommend this to anyone -- if you're investing in adapting to a proper nutrition strategy, giving yourself multiple options is the only way to go. Seeing that I manage to go through the bags of the custom blend fairly quickly, it only made sense to have all 3 flavours on hand at the same time ,meaning that I could switch flavours depending on my preference that day -- or even better, give myself the option for long rides where I don't know what I'll have a taste for!
Having learned my lesson this time, I now make sure to always pack all 3 of the flavours on any long ride or even indoor training session. Being able to quickly and easily go back and forth between the Infinit flavours is a sure way to be able to avoid any of the issues coming along with flavour fatigue. I would highly recommend this to anyone -- if you're investing in adapting to a proper nutrition strategy, giving yourself multiple options is the only way to go. Seeing that I manage to go through the bags of the custom blend fairly quickly, it only made sense to have all 3 flavours on hand at the same time ,meaning that I could switch flavours depending on my preference that day -- or even better, give myself the option for long rides where I don't know what I'll have a taste for!
