I am about to start a series on nutrition for training and racing. Nutrition in this context is not what you eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner, but the water, fuel, electrolytes and other substances you consume during training and racing. means I’m not going to talk about pre- and post-workout nutrition.
This is going to be a long series and this is the first article in that series. Despite myself and the editors of Slowtwitch trying to dismantle my tendency towards dull academic framing, concepts and language can get pretty heavy as we get into this. It is a work inside.)
Most of what you read today is definitions and information that will help you speak the same language in the future. For example, calories are a measure of heat. The amount of heat required to raise 1 gram of water by 1°C. However, heat and energy are interchangeable in this context. As you know, calories are a way of quantifying the energy we expend, and that energy powers our muscles in the same way gasoline powers our cars. That’s because carbon and oxygen undergo chemical reactions in our bodies and cars to produce energy.
But I prefer to talk about grams of carbohydrates. All you need to know is that 1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 calories. When you write about 90 grams of carbs (as you’ll see later, I dispute that view), if you’re familiar with calories per hour (technically kcal/hr), 90 Multiply by x 4 to get the number in your language (360kCal/hr).
So here are some basics to get us started.
A calorie is a measure of energy. You need energy to progress in endurance sports. That energy has to come from somewhere. Thankfully, “energy” can take the form of stored “potential” energy or physical “kinetic” energy. Even more thankfully, for us and our sporting activities, the two types of energy are interchangeable and our bodies are essentially energy exchanges.
Your body converts stored potential energy in the form of organic molecules into kinetic energy through hundreds of interconnected molecular-mechanical systems inside. Your body burns things and uses them to create movement. Much like a car engine. Also, just like a car engine, your body produces a lot of heat while going through all these chemical reactions. In a purely physical sense, the endurance athlete is a bag of chemicals, organized into a soup-like mixture of compartments, all unique parts designed to propel the whole body forward as fast as possible. It has been.
An example of such compartments in your body are your muscles. Muscles move you. They use the fuel supplied to them to generate power (Caution: they are a weird type of engine that stores some of its own energy inside. , glycogen.Car engines don’t store fuel inside (more on fuel tanks later.) Bones are like drivetrains. It’s what connects muscles to the road and applies that force to something else to actually create movement. The cardiovascular system is like the fuel lines and fuel pump (heart). They fuel your muscles. Here we ignore 100 other functions of the cardiovascular system.
Your brain is like your car’s computer (if it’s newer than mine). It tells the rest of the system what, when and how to do it. Like the cardiovascular system, the brain also needs its own energy. Thankfully, our cardiovascular system is well protected by our bodies, so we rarely run out of energy. But the important thing is that when your brain runs out of fuel, your computer runs slower, and when that happens, so does the rest of your body, especially your muscles (engines). . and how to do it.
For now, let’s move away from the car analogy and return to energy. Each of these subsystems requires energy. Especially muscle and brain. If either one doesn’t get the energy it needs, it slows down. a lot. Also, neither your muscles nor your brain take in more energy than they need during exercise, so your fuel lines (vessels) must always supply enough energy to meet the instantaneous demands of your muscles and brain. not.
Now let’s go back to the car analogy and outline it.
――The engine is muscle.
–Your skeletal system is the drive system.
– Your mind is like a fuel pump.
–Vessels are like the fuel lines that your heart uses to pump fuel from your tank to your engine and muscles.
— Then there’s the fuel tank.
Let’s talk about the fuel tank. Because fuel tanks affect how we think about refueling. If you do not know the status of the fuel tank, you will make a mistake in refueling. For cars it’s easy. I have a tank. storing fuel. End of story.
For humans, it’s a little more complicated, as we have about four physical tanks. This concept feels a little new, so wear your seatbelts.
— There are 3 main internal fuel tanks and 1 ridiculously fine 4th tank. After all, that his 4th tank is no big deal.
— Tank number 1: Muscles have their own small internal tanks. It is rich in glycogen, which is sugar.
–Tank 2: Your liver is also a small tank. The liver stores carbohydrates. (If it’s acting as a tank. It does other things too, but more on that later.)
–Your fatty tissue is your fuel tank. As you can imagine, it has fat in it. Unfortunately, this tank is huge and all over the body, but being a slow-burning type of fuel, it alone cannot keep up with the engine’s demands. (muscle) has to work a little harder to burn it.
— Your saving grace is a 4th very fine auxiliary fuel tank. your gut. Below I will explain what I mean. It’s worth understanding.
Walk with me in your imagination for a moment. Imagine he has a 5 gallon bucket attached to the hood of a car. No, don’t use straps. Use duct tape. A 5 gallon bucket duct is taped to the hood of the car. Now imagine a hose running from that tank to the fuel pump. The fuel pump pumps fuel into the engine where it is combusted. That hose is the size of a coffee straw. You can fill a duct-taped bucket with fuel, but even with other tanks running empty, it barely provides enough fuel to keep your car going forever. Next to you, add fuel continuously to your duct taped food bucket tank.
You can go forever with it, but it’s a messy system to put fuel in your car. It scatters and everything catches fire. Hitting his 3/4 full tank of gas hard will splatter gas everywhere and you’ll end up doing the same thing. Crash and burn. Putting the wrong fuel in will clog the hose and slow the delivery of fuel through the few little hoses. If you put too much fuel and drive too fast, the bucket can pop off and even tear the hose from the fuel pump connection.
In the same way, when your gut is full, it rebels and stops you on your feet. Finally, ingesting anything that clogs the intestinal mechanism that delivers fuel to the fuel line prevents it from delivering fuel quickly. That means a full bucket and a higher risk of imminent collision and burns.
Let me pause here for a moment and introduce a new word that I use regularly. intake. The intake is what you pour into that bucket. Ingestion means swallowing what you put in your mouth and sending it to a duct taped food bucket. It acts as a nasty auxiliary fuel tank.
This is a silly analogy, but it truly represents how our bodies work during exercise. I’m here. The slow dripping or “titration” (meaning “slowly adding” in chemical lab terminology) of fuel from the bucket into the fuel line or from the gut into the bloodstream is called “absorption”. Absorption refers to the process of substances moving from the intestine to the bloodstream and is rate-limited by a variety of factors. The “everything” in the car analogy here is the little hose that runs from the bucket to the fuel line. This little hose actually represents all the cellular machinery that transfers the intestinal contents to the blood. transporter protein. fluid channel. cell membrane. All details can be saved in your imagination for later use.
It is this messy system that we humans operate. It limits onboard fuel (carbohydrates), uses a poor secondary fuel (fat) that only works for low speed driving or provides only a fraction of the energy needed for high speed driving, and the smallest possible auxiliary fuel tank. increase. Imagine. And the faster you drive, the more dangerous it becomes.
We put up with this fickle system because we have to. I need energy. it has to come from somewhere. The following articles will discuss specific energy sources and how to talk about, think about, and implement them.
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