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Lead Stories: Saturday, July 19, 2008

Preserve muscle sugar for speed and endurance

Posted August 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 PM by Martha Jones

Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Hydration, Race Prep & Recov, Health & Fitness, Exercise

How fast you can move and how long you can exercise intensely depends on the amount of sugar (glycogen) stored in your muscles. The same rule applies in all sports: when muscles run out of their stored sugar supply, they require more oxygen and you have to slow down.

Fluid is less important than muscle sugar because dehydration will not cause you to slow down until your blood volume is reduced. As you lose fluid from sweating, interstitial fluid stored around cells is released into the blood to maintain blood volume. When you compete is sports at a very high intensity, your muscles run out for stored sugar long before your blood volume is reduced, and you slow down from lack of muscle sugar before you slow down from reduced blood volume (Sports Medicine, April- May 2007).
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Marathon Cramps: Part II

Posted June 15th, 2007 at 7:15 PM by Jim Fortner

Section: Running & Training, Nutrition, Hydration, Training Tips

Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor. Make sure to also check out his own personal running and advice site: “Jim2’s Running Page”.

runner cramp.jpg If you have found a regimen to avoid cramps during a marathon that works for you, stick with it. Don’t listen to the “naysayers” who try to tell you that you are doing something wrong or unnecessary.

I found a regimen that stopped my marathon cramps after suffering them in several races. It wasn’t simply one “silver bullet”. But a combination of factors.

I believe that the primary cause of cramps during a marathon is over running it … trying to run a pace that you truly aren’t prepared for. Obviously, the solution(s) for that is (are) more intensive training and/or better race planning and/or execution.

However, assuming that you are adequately trained for your race plan and that you execute your plan properly, then I also believe that there are other factors that come into play, especially when you are running “on the edge”. These “other factors” include your potassium and sodium stores going into the race and the intake of electrolytes during the race.
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ASK FLASH: Questions regarding nutrition, diets, supplements and more…

Posted March 31st, 2007 at 1:41 PM by Joshua Flash Gordon

Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Supplements, Columns, Ask Flash

Need advice? Injured? Confused? Overwhelmed? Bored? ASK FLASH!
ASK FLASH is a free advice column to help you with all of your running, fitness and nutrition inquiries. To ASK FLASH — simply fill out the form at the conclusion of the column.

—— —— —— —— ——

The most frequent topic that I get asked about is nutrition. We are all in search of ‘the perfect food‘ or ‘the ideal diet’ to complement our training.

Furthermore, many runners, and athletes in general, are looking for the ‘quick fix’ or supplements that will lead to certain improvement. It is a topic worthy of considerable discussion, but also one that can be difficult to fully grasp and/or resolve.

However, there a few fundamental concepts (that many of us are already familiar with) that everyone should keep in mind:
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Studies: Caffeine can help athletes in both endurance and sprinting events

Posted March 29th, 2007 at 4:00 PM by Martha Jones

Section: Nutrition, Supplements

It has been established for more than 50 years that caffeine helps you exercise longer in events that require endurance.

Recently researchers at Christ Church University in Canterbury, UK, showed that caffeine also helps you in much shorter events. Trained cyclists raced one kilometer (0.6 mile) on three times, in random order, after taking 5 mg of caffeine, taking a placebo, or taking nothing.

Their speed, mean power and peak power were more than three percent higher after taking caffeine (Journal of Sports Sciences, November 2006).
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Does your heart get tired when running and/or during other types of exercise?

Posted March 26th, 2007 at 9:59 AM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Health & Fitness, Exercise

A healthy heart is so strong that it is almost never a cause of tiredness during exercise.

Tiredness during exercise comes from your muscles. They run out of fuel or out of oxygen. Skeletal muscles use both fat and sugar for energy.

When your muscles run out of their stored sugar supply, called glycogen, they cannot contract and function adequately. You feel tired, your muscles hurt and you have difficulty coordinating them.

On the other hand, your heart muscle gets energy directly from fat and sugar in your blood and even from a breakdown product of metabolism called lactic acid. It is virtually impossible for the heart muscle to run out of fuel unless you are starving to death.
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Scaling the infamous “Wall” Part II: Raceday

Posted February 1st, 2007 at 3:00 PM by Paul Petersen

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips

This is the second and final installment in “Scaling the infamous Wall”. Make sure you also go back and read “Part I: Marathon preparation”.

The big day has finally arrived and its time for you to run the epic marathon! You have preparedfor several months, weeks, and days; setting yourself up for success by training with a plan, tapering effectively, living healthily, carbo-loading, and calculating your true pace. You are ready…SO DON’T BLOW IT!!

Months of hard work can be negated by a poor raceday strategy and/or by overlooking seemingly “minor details”. Conversely, running smart will complement your training and go a long way towards producing the optimal, marathon experience. Below are five raceday tips that have greatly enhanced my own racing and are capable of doing the same for yours.

1) Hold back on the first mile. Often runners go out way too hard and burn off precious glycogen. Remember that pace you calculated from the “scouting race” in Part 1? Go out 10-15 seconds slower than that for the first mile. With all the excitement of the start, it will take a conscious effort to accomplish this, but your legs will thank you around Mile 20!
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Scaling the infamous “Wall”
Part I: Marathon preparation

Posted January 30th, 2007 at 2:00 PM by Paul Petersen

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips

I vividly remember my first marathon. I can still visualize the preparation, the excitement and anticipation, the effortlessness of the first half of the race … and the pain and agony of the last eight miles!

I hit the “Wall” during my first marathon, and I hit it hard! By the brutal end, my pace slowed by nearly two minutes per mile, and my second half of the race was 16 minutes slower than the first. Parents covered the eyes of their children as I lurched by them, and grown men wept at the sight of me. It was ugly.

I’d like to say that this was an isolated incident, but it happened in my next three ‘thons as well. Finally, I decided enough is enough, that I was either going to learn how to remove the Wall, or stop running marathons altogether. Needless to say, I preferred the first option, and began studying up on how to scale the Wall.

First, what is the “Wall“? Our bodies are primarily fueled by high-octane glycogen (carbohydrates) during a marathon. The other fuel we use is fat, which uses oxygen less efficiently. Our bodies tend to burn off the glycogen first, and once that is depleted, it will switch over to fat. This causes you to slow down, feel fatigued, and hit the “Wall”.
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Crunch Time: Optimum nutrition for runners

Posted January 25th, 2007 at 8:00 AM by Christopher Jack

Section: Running & Training, Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Race Prep & Recov

Find yourself dragging through those morning runs? Your 10k pace not where you want it? Sprinting toward the porta potties on race day? There could be an easy fix and it all starts with your diet.

Every runner’s training regimen, regardless of experience level, should have a focus on proper nutritional maintenance. When and what you eat can significantly affect your workout and performance will suffer without the proper balance of nutrients.

A common mistake made by runners, especially those early morning warriors, is running before fueling up. Without the proper nutrients in your system, your body will suffer from lowered glycogen and blood-glucose levels; depriving the body of essential energy and sustenance.
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Low-carb, high-fat diets negatively affect performance

Posted November 17th, 2006 at 12:00 PM by Martin Kennedy

Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Race Prep & Recov

A recent study from South Africa, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, shows that eating a low-carbohydrate diet slows extended sprint performance of cyclists. Competitive bicycle racers ate a high fat or high-carbohydrate diet for six days followed by a high-carbohydrate diet for one day and completed time trials on their bikes. Then they ate the opposite diet for six days followed by a high carbohydrate diet for one day and repeated their time trial. Diets did not affect their times or power output for 100 kilometers (62 miles), but the high fat diet slowed their sprint performance over one kilometer (0.6 miles).

Muscles get their energy from sugar and fat stored in muscles or from the bloodstream. The limiting factor in how fast an endurance athlete can exercise is the time it takes to transport oxygen from the blood in the lungs to the muscles. Muscles require far more oxygen to burn fat than to burn sugar for energy. So when a muscle runs out of its stored sugar, called glycogen, it becomes less efficient, hurts, is difficult to co-ordinate and slows you down. Read the rest of this entry »

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Negative Splits: Use Them to Perform Better in Your Next Marathon

Posted September 25th, 2006 at 3:25 AM by Jim Fortner

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips

race clock.jpg A note from TFS: Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to The Final Sprint. Make sure to also check out “Jim2’s Running Page”, his own personal running and advice site.

Negative splits are the time proven way to best run a marathon. All “experts” and most experienced marathoners that I am aware of recommend targeting negative splits of 2-3%.

The problems with a race plan that is based on positive splits, even small ones, are: (1) faster consumption of glycogen, which means that your body becomes more dependent on fat for fuel earlier in the race; (2) you reach your AT/LT earlier in the race, so a greater portion of the race is spent running anaerobically, i.e., the wall arrives earlier and harder; and (3) it allows for less margin of error in case you miscalculated your ability on race day or any of many other variables bite you in the butt. You wind up running a greater percentage of the race in the less efficient mode, which exacerbates your late race “decline” and can lead to a hard crash.

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