It’s not what you can do for 5 minutes, it’s what you can do for 5 minutes after five hours. As endurance athletes, we know that our endurance – our physiological and psychological ability to endure, to keep going as the hours tick up in our event – is fundamental to our performance.
‘Durability’ is an emerging concept in exercise physiology, and, more importantly, we think, a critical factor in endurance training and performance. In our 2021 paper, we defined durability as an athlete’s resilience to the effects of prolonged exercise on their physiological profiling characteristics – the thresholds we use to inform pacing strategies, programme training sessions, and monitor training load (1). Subsequently, durability has been proposed as a crucial factor in endurance performance, as it defines, physiologically at least, our ability to stave off the upward creep in effort required at a given speed or power output as exercise progresses...
I wrote a blog about the recent research assessing the effects of ingesting carbohydrates at very high rates, >120 grams per hour, during endurance exercise (1, 2). My view of the literature, as discussed in the blog, is that there isn’t yet any compelling evidence that ingesting carbohydrates at these super high rates will improve long-distance triathlon performance, or that it’s worth the logistical hassle and risk of gastrointestinal upset. Indeed, there’s even some evidence that carbohydrate ingestion at rates above 90 grams per hour accelerates muscle glycogen depletion and impairs performance (3, 4).
In this blog, inspired by an engaging Twitter thread authored by Prof. Tim Noakes and Iñigo San Millán, I'll delve into the metabolic outcome of ingesting 120 grams of carbohydrates per hour. Through this exploration, I aim to reinforce the...
Take charge of your performance with proven training programs and workouts, adjustable to your needs, in the Endure IQ Training Squad.
LIMITED OFFER
Get the latest Brew Up newsletter from Endure IQ's founder, Dr. Dan Plews.