Hunger for success

Top sailing physiologist, Pete Cunningham shares his thoughts on Volvo Ocean race food.

After 36 days at sea on the first leg of the Volvo Ocean race there were some very thin looking faces on the dock in Cape Town. Virtually all the crews had experienced food rationing at one time or another during the voyage from Southampton and the late finishers had all but run out of provisions several days before the end of the leg. With as few as ten days in port to repair and restore their boats, the crews will also have been working hard to rejuvenate their own bodies in an attempt to get fit for the rigours of the Southern Ocean.
Peter Bentley spoke to Pete Cunningham (pictured above), the Team GBR Physiologist who devised the fitness and diet programmes for several of last year’s Olympic medal winners to try and understand what the impact of the enforced diet would be. While the pain of some crews in having virtually no food for several days was clear to see, the issue of getting ready for leg two is also significant. Some of the more hungry ones he says ,will have struggle to get back up to full strength before Sunday's restart.

When first questioned, Cunningham could hardly believe that any team had allowed themselves to run out of food on leg one. “I’d say they’ve got a lot more to gain by keeping energy levels up and just carrying maybe an extra 100kgs of food,” says Cunningham. While agreeing that no one could have predicted how long the first leg would last, Cunningham was surprised that the crews had not calculated to take some spare stores. “There’s a lot more to gain by taking enough food and they must be very weak now,” he says. “I appreciate that weight is probably pretty crucial, but if I were a skipper on board I’d much rather have a the troops fully fit and alert.” Pointing out that the half-starved crews will have started running out of energy and concentration Cunningham is simply unable to contemplate running out of food.

So what happens to the body when it is both deprived of food and required to try and keep working hard? “The body starts shutting down,” says Cunningham who adds that the slowing down of systems and widespread physical adaptations are not easily or quickly reversed. With restricted calories, vitamins and minerals will be down and protein intake will have suffered massively so there will be a lot of muscle deprivation. “Muscles would have broken down and wouldn’t have been refuelled adequately enough so you get muscle wastage all this sort of stuff, says Cunningham. Drinking only desalinated seawater with no natural minerals only excaberates the problems.

There is also the psychological impact of failing food supplied. “It can’t do your mind any good thinking ‘I’m hungry’ for six days especially as moral’s a bit low at the back of the fleet,” says Cunningham. “You’ll be thinking about being hungry instead of what you are supposed to be thinking about sailing wise.”