Gluconeogenesis: humans don’t do this well. Why impair racing, training, and recovery effect by depleting liver glycogen, etc?
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I listen to a podcast where the hosts are massive advocates of high-carb fueling. One of the things they suggest is that high-carb training is net healthier at any intensity because
a) it doesn’t have a negative effect on insulin
b) it improves recovery and ability to train the next day
c) it limits the desire to eat unhealthy food for the rest of the day to make up the deficit
d) long-term, it’s better for the body because you’re not in constant state of breakdown from being underfueled
I tend to agree with what the suggest but I don’t think it’s been studied in this way. I wonder whether high-carb will extend the longevity of athlete’s careers for this reason
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Bryan, I 100% agree that greater fueling is a game changer as I’ve aged up over the years. My top end numbers are no longer what they were in my late 20s and early 30s, but I’m racing faster than I ever have in my mid 40s now (where does the time go!). Adding appropriate fueling to training leaves me able to come back day after day even better than I used to be able to.
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A book for the sports industry? That’s fine. Jus’ saying’
Not fueling related, necessarily, sorry
Blummenfelt chundering yet again in a race today. Wonder if super high carb has anything to do with it?
I don’t think it’s that but in some races he somehow get his GI sideways on the bike.
You are assuming I go to glycogen depletion, but that’s almost never. I didn’t say that i don’t use carbs, most of my workouts are short enough that I have plenty of stored glycogen on my body. It would be a different matter if I was doing lots of workouts over 100 min, but that’s not the case. It’s only 1x per week that I go over 100 min in a single workout. So before and after 100min (where I may take a banana after a 70 min swim before a 30 min run), I have immediate access to real food that humans are evolved to eat anyway (vs sugary sports drinks. gels, bars etc). There is plenty of glycogen stored on the body when the workouts are short enough. My recovery is not impaired, because I am able to train 700-850 hrs per year living off real food outside of my training sessions.
I don’t think most people (non athletes included) have good personal systems on what they ingest through the day to recover and rebuild their bodies and fuel for the next three day rolling horizon. I don’t think the big picture is in workout fueling, the big picture even for a 730 hrs per year athlete is the 22 hrs per day outside of training and what goes in and the timing of what goes in to keep up consistent training and life performance.
Looking just at in workout fueling misses most of the picture, just because there are 22 hrs in a day. Those 22 hrs set up the 2 hrs of training. The idea is to improve the physiology over what we do both in the 2 hrs of training per day and the other 22 hrs per day.
I am 60, train 800 hrs per year the last 6 years, work at a tech company (very few of us at that age that even can keep up the grind), still have a six pack and aside from a few crashes that resulted in major limitations to my control over my left leg, am able to do sport reasonably well. N=1 but trying to point out that it’s a full lifestyle system, and high carb in training alone is not a magic bullet.
Earlier this week I did two larger training day (50km xc ski 3:23, 1400m climbing) plus 2500m swim, next day 35km xc ski, 2:24, 1100m vertical, plus 30 min on bike rollers and 20 min weights). The two day total was roughly 7.5 hrs for which I consumed two bottles of Gatorade and two granola bars . The rest was just real food outside of the workouts. The next day, after the two days I was good to go with “regular training”.
I am not sure putting large quantities of refined carbs through our bodies repeatedly in daily training sessions is the best long term path for organ health and that’s the factory that helps us rebuild and recover daily through life.
In terms of recovery context I’d put the time XC skiing hammering the body halfway between a ride of that duration and a run of that duration so it was a big training load off just 2 bottles of gatorade in workout (I also had water and a granola bar per day and was going moderately hard averaging just over 4 min per km with a ton of climbing and descending)
