I made this up for a reporter who wanted to ride around the track and do an article. Amazingly, he still showed up, although he only lasted ten laps before we had to come in to the hot pit and let him out of the car because he was getting nauseous. Still, kudos to him for doing it. If you take a guest out on the track, feel free to use or modify this to suit your own sense of humor.
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For breakfast you should be careful to have something nutritious to keep your energy up, but not too much.
Stay away from acidic or astringent things like orange juice and
coffee which the stomach may not like under stress. Too much of any
liquid including water and sport drinks will "slosh" and make you queasy, so hold down on water or gatorade consumption before the run as well.
Similarly, avoid greasy or fatty foods like sausage, bacon, and other
typical breakfast meats. Anything spicy or hot is truly a bad gastronomic idea.
Hard to digest complex carbohydrates, breads and biscuits, potatoes, rice, pasta and corn are definite "no-no" items for a race day. Cereal or granola might be fine, except for the milk. But if you chew it dry you get thirsty and that leads to water or juice drinking and if you review the second paragraph
you know that is out.
Milks, creams, gravy and yogurts are prone to curdling and thus
promote a sudden and sometimes violent reaction when the abdomen
tightens under g forces. We will be pushing 1 g lateral forces in
corners several times a lap, and probably double to three times that on some braking, which will force your chest and abdomen forward with great pressure
against the harness. Another reason not to gulp liquid before the run.
We will show you how to brace yourself with the left hand on the seat and the right hand and forearm on the door bar to reduce some of that pressure, but that mostly is to just keep your head from slapping the door pillar or tubular steel roll bar and brace, which tends to knock crowns and fillings from the teeth.
Some thigh to ankle pressing with the legs agains the firewall can reduce the belt pressures, but just as with heavy weights in the gym, be careful to press with the heels of your feet and not the ball of the foot, to avoid damaging your arches. Your body load can easily be close to 500-600lbs. With 23 turns per lap, three miles in about one minute and 45 seconds, you will get some good practice at this.
Try to keep your breathing level steady and deep/low in the chest. In the hard corner and braking sections you want to hiss or release it steadily through the mouth against the pressure of the g forces, with your teeth still together, and transition back to inhale through the nose only as we exit the corner into the next straight.
If any of this gets confusing you can of course ask questions while we are driving, but with both windows down and front straight velocity at over 170mph, helmets and balaclavas and ear plugs, you have to shout, and use short sentences and words.
So this pretty much reduces an intelligent breakfast choice to
....bananas.
They are high in protein and sugars, soft and creamy in consistency,
and are one of the few foods to actually taste pretty much the same
coming up as going down.
You can bring you own or we will have plenty there for ourselves to
share.
Cheers.
Ed
PS. Clean up is much easier if you keep the face shield down. Thanks.
_________________________________________________________________
For breakfast you should be careful to have something nutritious to keep your energy up, but not too much.
Stay away from acidic or astringent things like orange juice and
coffee which the stomach may not like under stress. Too much of any
liquid including water and sport drinks will "slosh" and make you queasy, so hold down on water or gatorade consumption before the run as well.
Similarly, avoid greasy or fatty foods like sausage, bacon, and other
typical breakfast meats. Anything spicy or hot is truly a bad gastronomic idea.
Hard to digest complex carbohydrates, breads and biscuits, potatoes, rice, pasta and corn are definite "no-no" items for a race day. Cereal or granola might be fine, except for the milk. But if you chew it dry you get thirsty and that leads to water or juice drinking and if you review the second paragraph
you know that is out.
Milks, creams, gravy and yogurts are prone to curdling and thus
promote a sudden and sometimes violent reaction when the abdomen
tightens under g forces. We will be pushing 1 g lateral forces in
corners several times a lap, and probably double to three times that on some braking, which will force your chest and abdomen forward with great pressure
against the harness. Another reason not to gulp liquid before the run.
We will show you how to brace yourself with the left hand on the seat and the right hand and forearm on the door bar to reduce some of that pressure, but that mostly is to just keep your head from slapping the door pillar or tubular steel roll bar and brace, which tends to knock crowns and fillings from the teeth.
Some thigh to ankle pressing with the legs agains the firewall can reduce the belt pressures, but just as with heavy weights in the gym, be careful to press with the heels of your feet and not the ball of the foot, to avoid damaging your arches. Your body load can easily be close to 500-600lbs. With 23 turns per lap, three miles in about one minute and 45 seconds, you will get some good practice at this.
Try to keep your breathing level steady and deep/low in the chest. In the hard corner and braking sections you want to hiss or release it steadily through the mouth against the pressure of the g forces, with your teeth still together, and transition back to inhale through the nose only as we exit the corner into the next straight.
If any of this gets confusing you can of course ask questions while we are driving, but with both windows down and front straight velocity at over 170mph, helmets and balaclavas and ear plugs, you have to shout, and use short sentences and words.
So this pretty much reduces an intelligent breakfast choice to
....bananas.
They are high in protein and sugars, soft and creamy in consistency,
and are one of the few foods to actually taste pretty much the same
coming up as going down.
You can bring you own or we will have plenty there for ourselves to
share.
Cheers.
Ed
PS. Clean up is much easier if you keep the face shield down. Thanks.