Sprinting caloric needs

Question
Hello, my name is Elena and I am a bit clueless on how many calories I should eat a day. I am about 117-120 pounds, little fat, and 15 years old. I've been training on my own for the track season (winter track) that starts tomorrow.

I've been doing short sprints and some long distance, and I think I haven't been eating enough, as I keep going down in size... so how many calories SHOULD I eat as a sprinter, just so I can achieve optimal performance in this track season?

I'm pretty healthy, I eat whole grain snacks if I get too hungry in between meals and I eat A LOT of fruit. I just really want to know how much and what kinds of food I should eat this year. I will practice every day to run anywhere from 100m to 600m in a practice. I run any race in the 100m-400m range and I also high jump.

So.. advice? I'd really appreciate it.

Answer
Elena I wish I could tell you but no real equation out there is going to be exact it will all give you ball parks. Even hooking you up to machines to measure your BMR etc is going to be an educated guess.

As a sprinter I would pack the food in. Eat eat a LOT and more you need to eat to recover and dont worry about weight worry about how you perform. You need to gauge everything off performance. Lets say we made your scale weight go up 10 lbs. Well thats OK and fine as long as your run times go down or stay at least the same. To many people I see in track and other sports, females mainly and more so now boys dont eat enough and would actually do better at their sport if they threw out the scale ate more and just gauge their progress not on what they weight but how they perform and feel.

If your looking for a number. without me knowing anythign about your current intake I would start at 2400+ calories and likely add to that very soon when we saw what happened.


Phil Stevens

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