For years we now have believed that ninety grams per hour is a seemingly legendary higher restrict for secure and helpful carbohydrate consumption in triathlon and every other sport loopy sufficient to endure for 3, 4 or twelve hours. There have at all times been whispers that this could be the restrict, however they slip by way of the cracks and do not stick in our recollections.
The priority most of us share about consuming an excessive amount of carbohydrate in coaching is that it’ll mess with our intestine, so we goal decrease to be on the secure aspect. It is a delicate stability between avoiding portaloo whereas conserving blood sugar elevated sufficient to enhance efficiency. Balancing GI points and never bonking. It has been handled as sacrosanct that should you handle to devour 90 grams per hour, your solely threat is abdomen discomfort, and definitely not hypoglycemia and bone spurs.
However take a person whose career is to dash for five seconds, twice a day, whereas pushing a 600-pound sled, and put him on a 15-year-old entry-level Trek street bike for six and a half hours. The results of placing a gorilla of a bobsled on an outdated bicycle for its first century journey for 15 years? New ranges of hypoglycemia and hunger, even with trade crushing excessive carb consumption charges. He was capable of keep away from GI misery and nonetheless handle ongoing hypoglycemia whereas consuming 117 grams of carbohydrates per hour, though his report low cardio health left him with little capability to burn vitality
With out bowel coaching, these carb consumption charges had been a robust neutralizer of the trade dogma that 90 grams per hour was an nearly legendary supreme that works for anybody doing endurance sports activities. A catastrophically unfit particular person with out bowel coaching managed to realize hypoglycemia and no bowel issues on 117 grams of carbohydrates per hour. Both he occurred to be a weird double-outlier in his capacity to burn carbs with out cardio health and keep away from GI misery at absurd gas charges, or there should be some gaps within the literature.
This spawned a deep dive into the literature for the good thing about us all. I needed to know. And this deep dive into many years of gas and hydration analysis was with comparatively recent eyes, having been principally uninterested up till that time in my tutorial profession.
These recent eyes had been additionally extremely motivated to grasp all of the components concerned. The bobsled driver was me and that is my story.
Years of anaerobic coaching got here with an amazing capacity to burn carbohydrates and nearly no fats oxidation capacity. Pleasant reminder: oxidation means burning issues as gas to your physique’s vitality output. I had no health, and thus nearly no capability above resting metabolism to make use of fats as gas. Whether or not you are within the keto camp or the high-carb zealot camp, or someplace in between, it is usually agreed that prime fats oxidation capability is a key indicator for endurance sports activities.
The flexibility to burn gas aerobically is vital to endurance sports activities, and I have been coaching and sedentary my cardio health way back, as most bobsledders do. When you’re not acquainted, being intentionally sedentary outdoors of coaching is performance-enhancing in velocity and power sports activities like bobsled. It additionally takes cardio health to all-time lows.
I got here after nearly 4 years after the decathlon as knowledgeable bobsledder. I weighed 61, 225 kilos and 10% physique fats. I squatted nearly 500 kilos and deadlifted nearly 300. That is the one the place the barbell goes from ground to overhead in a single fell swoop. I bench pressed 400 kilos.
I regarded prefer it. And most of all, once I was on that Trek, I felt prefer it.
I had damaged my foot 6 months earlier than the 2018 Winter Olympics and went from being an Olympic hopeful in bobsleigh and loafer in Michelle Howe’s triathlon and biking to attempting dearly to carry her wheels, in a single day. Biking was the love of the previous, which I instantly resumed once I retired from skilled velocity and energy sports activities.
I knew from earlier exploits a decade earlier (on the identical Trek 1200) that if I rode that century I’d be hungry. I believed I knew from preliminary analysis that 90 grams was the higher restrict for most individuals. However I used to be determined and knew this century can be as a lot an consuming contest because it was a pedaling contest. So I packed what I believed can be overkill. Greater than potential to devour.
I completed in 6 hours and half-hour. It took all of me. I had about 2.0W/kg FTP on the time and there was a ten% hill the place I distinctly bear in mind my bike momentarily rolling backwards between a few my pedal strokes. My cadence was momentarily adverse. Yikes.
For that fateful journey, I had deliberate to devour no matter my abdomen would enable. I did simply that. And I used to be completely ravenous at many factors throughout my journey and much more so on the finish of the journey.
Here’s what was consumed:
~115 grams of carbohydrates per hour
2 no matter snickerdoodle cookies. Presumably different issues.
800mg caffeine (see: bobsleds)
~7000mg sodium
Numerous liters of water. I misplaced rely with 40 miles in. I used to be already in a world of damage. It was about 30 miles earlier than I simply rolled backwards? second on the hill.
~500 energy per hour.
It was in the course of that journey that I spotted many times that I wanted I had introduced extra carbohydrate gas with me. Hypoglycemia would not even start to cowl my expertise. The crash was actual.
Opposite to each main textbook and angle standing by a significant vitamin journal, I might have, and fortunately would have, used extra gas. By the point I used to be carried out, my intestine was utterly empty. Lovely plot. Craving empty energy. I skilled no issues with bowel cleaning, abdomen cramps, satiety, sloppiness, nausea or belching. I used to be nice. Simply ravenous and thirsty.
That mentioned, for many individuals, intimate private expertise with abdomen issues makes them afraid to get wherever close to these gas consumption charges.
Nonetheless, it was through the journey that I spotted that 90 grams per hour completely needed to be bullshit because the higher restrict of utility for many individuals, and it was definitely bullshit by way of intestinal tolerability.
Both I will need to have been an outlier in intestine tolerance, or the analysis wasn’t as clear because it appeared.
The issue needed to be considered one of implementation and technique, and I used to be lifeless set on discovering out what Id been doing that had allowed such excessive consumption charges within the face of a decade of persuasive claims that nobody’s intestine might tolerate greater than 90 grams of carbs per hour. It seems that there have been these sorts of anecdotes about excessive capability to devour gas for the reason that Eighties. They’ve been largely ignored by the scientific neighborhood. Herd mentality has been robust amongst my scientific friends.
I might have, and fortunately would have, used extra gas all through the journey. I feel Id have been capable of go sooner if Id had it accessible. And I had exceeded the present trade commonplace, rising the higher restrict of carbohydrate consumption by 25 grams per hour, or nearly 30%.
In fact, I used to be a particular case by way of carbohydrate oxidation. I actually was an inefficient carb-burning gorilla. However my intestine feeling wasn’t particular. The intestines are usually not greater or extra absorbent simply since you bench press so much and eat kilos of protein day-after-day. I hadn’t labored out the abdomen. I hadn’t been monitoring my glucose:fructose ratio (one thing that is sometimes acknowledged to be vital whenever you’re approaching 90 grams per hour, not to mention 120 grams per hour), and I would just used common sugar. Virtually 1 liter of standard sugar, thoughts you.
A whirlwind of a yr later, I co-wrote a e book on gas and food regimen for vitamin athletes. It is a bit dated by my requirements now, however by trade requirements it is nonetheless a decade forward.
Together with my beloved contrarian spouse, Michelle Howe, endurance coach and dietitian (who reads all my work and pokes dozens of holes in my claims, my reminiscence, and my tales and is at all times proper), I hope to negate the necessity to learn that e book by to offer you all the required data and essentially the most up-to-date data on our YouTube channel and thru articles like this one and the numerous that comply with. Labored exhausting day-after-day on an app that additionally does all of it for you and coaches you to the proper gas.
Most significantly, throughout that yr of studying and writing, I started to realize a clearer view of the panorama of the endurance sports activities vitamin world as I consulted with an rising variety of endurance athletes on their race plans.
Since that fateful yr, my endurance-enhancing analysis has transcended my PhD analysis space in each skilled expertise and coaching, and Michelle can nonetheless beat me to the punch on just about any fueling and hydration subject she chooses. That is saying one thing, since I used to be knowledgeable bobsledder, I constructed a bobsled coaching facility, and my 300-page doctoral thesis was about the way to push a bobsled sooner. Michelle has turn into knowledgeable in triathlon, ranked high 5 within the nation within the professional nationwide time trial and has turn into a board-certified specialist in sports activities dietetics. Suffice it to say, we have taken a number of steps ahead out of the gas and hydration darkness of our days driving our aluminum Treks with uncomfortably unlubricated chains.
We hope to deliver our experiences to your world of gas and hydration in order that it is a bit more manageable, accessible and most of all less complicated and simpler to do proper. Particularly whenever you’re simply beginning out. It should not be the black field it was for me once I first switched to endurance sports activities. The analysis is prepared. There ought to undoubtedly be some private trial and error, however it should not be overshadowed by worry, doubt, and uncertainty.