I wonder if it's too late to be fattening up for winter hibernation...

Possibly so. Whether or not it's cold, and whether or not one has just swum for an hour and then run for 3 hours 40 minutes, eating an entire Ginger Cake on Keynsham train station right out of the packet last sunday did seem a little....gratuitous if rather tasty!

I did however discover that one "slice" (how big is a slice?!) contains 93 calories and one entire cake is over 80% of your daily maximum allowance of saturated fat.

Which temporarily took the poetry out of my cake-fest...

Eating though is a hugely important and hopefully pleasurable thing - a central part of athletic endeavour and life in general. More so if one is lucky enough to be French, or Thai, or Moroccan, or from any number of countries other than Blighty, where excellent and healthy food is not always that easy to obtain.

For triathletes, knowing what to eat and when can be somewhat bewildering. We need to be healthy just like everyone else, but also should recognise that being a sport where people tend to train a LOT, some of our needs are different.

I won't prattle on about it too much (collar me at a training session if you want to talk about cake!), but I thought the below approaches were simple and could be useful, things I've picked up on my travels around the place...

- eat 90% healthily, 10% do what you want!
- look with some suspicion on anything with more than 5 ingredients...
- likewise less food in packets = better
- hunger is there for a reason, so feed it carefully!

Now where has the biscuit barrel gone...