!!
At least I would like to hear the details of her (eventual) success.
This is probably at least partly a cause for me - I am pretty sure that I am not getting enough salt in âstandardâ drinks, as I sweat a lot and it is fairly salty. Iâm still working on getting this dialed in, especially on longer rides.
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We delayed due to weather.
Sheâs going for it this Saturday starting at 10:30am.
Coming back to this maybe too late for you.
Another thing that really helps with nutrition planning for long rides is to train your bodyâs ability to use fat as a substrate for your effort. The better you are at this, the less calories you need to be eating per hour.
Sure, raising your FTP means that a you will be able to use less glycogen for a given power output, but you can also train yourself to use more fat for a given power output.
Long Z2 training helps with this, but so do things like riding in Z2 while fasted, and anecdotally, getting to the point in a ride where you feel like you are going to start bonking if you donât anything and then dropping the power and persisting for a while longer. Off the bike, this could mean eating only at meal time and not snacking, or some variation of IF.
Yes, you want to fuel as best as you can during the race, but it really helps if while training youâre not eating two gels every hour youâre on the bike, so that your body freaks out when it has no sugar immediately available to it.
In my bike packing trips (more like z1/z2 for 10 hours or so) I just put whatever into a top tube bag, usually triple chocolate chip cookies but this would do also.
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Correct!
My take on this idea:
Can Fat Adaptation Make You Faster?
Hi Alex,
I guess then, that you differentiate between sweetness and flavor? Because I would second that notion that I personally find it hard to just drink my carbs and nothing else. Maybe itâs the sodium, I donât know.
But it certainly is also the aspect of sweetness. If I mix Fructose and Glucose, the pure Glucose part isnât so much the problem, I guess. Since I use Maltodextrin for this and indeed - that is as flavorless as it also isnât sweet. But the Fructose (coming from addition of normal sugar as glucose+fructose disaccharid , i.e. sucrose) is making any mix definitely very sweet. And if you yourself take only Sucrose⌠isnât that awfully sweet for you? Can be as flavorless as you want to put it - but it is a taste. And in the case of pure sugar a very distinctive one.
The other part is that I definitely donât like the feeling of too much liquid sloshing around in me. Indeed - I myself are normally drinking very little according to my thirst.
So yeah - I wonder if that feeling and personal preference could be trained more towards pure liquid fueling and whether the amount of sodium in it can help.
Correct. Flavor intensity is often mistaken by folks as âtoo sweet.â If flavoring concentration is reduced, folks can often tolerate much higher sweetness.
For folks who still have issues with the actual sweetness, even when flavor is truly mild, adding sodium often makes the beverage more palatable.
Yes, the concentrates I make are very sweet, and always chased with water.
I know what you mean. Sugar alone does have a flavor, and I actually donât like it at all. Even when paired with table salt or sodium citrate. I generally use sucrose paired with some other beverage which has a flavoring added, like Gatorade. This flavoring even if only 10-15% of our total carbs are from Gatorade, tends to outweigh the actual flavor of the sugar.
My default is one scoop Gatorade, plus whatever sugar Iâm adding for the day, plus sodium citrate.
You may find that adding sodium to your beverages increases thirst and makes higher volumes of fluid more enjoyable to consume, even if the sloshy factor is not mechanically reduced. That has been my finding for sure, personally.
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Hi Alex,
Your article youâve written is talking about chronic low-carb, ketogenic diets in endurance athletes.
Iâm sure you recognize that this is a very different thing than eating a normal high-carb diet, but including training to be able to deal with situations where you donât have ready access to carbs. This is not the same thing as being âFat Adapted,â which doesnât really have a nice standard definition anyways.
In addition, your article is a little bit overly dismissive of the potential benefit of improving this in athletes (âRead: I can not think of anything resembling reality!â), especially given that the very comment we are discussing here is describing a situation where this is relevant for the athlete in question! I suspect because it is written for a target audience of triathletes, where this would be a more unusual situation, but that does limit itâs external validity to the topic at hand.
Unfortunately though, not having access to regular carbs is a common occurrence in ultra-endurance athletes, especially those doing unsupported events or training. Not many people are pounding a gel or two every hour for the whole Tour Divide, or PBP.
While I am not a sports scientist nor do I coach, I am a biochemist by training who is now a practicing physician who teaches critical appraisal of medical literature at a university, who does ultra-endurance riding as a hobby.
I have no problem with your article in the context it is written for, but would point out for others reading this that it does not really apply to the situation originally described in this thread.
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Very much appreciate the thoughtful response. And Iâll apologize straight away for having been so short in my response to you. I have a tendency to be longer-winded than desirable for most readers and have made recent attempts to curtail that. This will not be one of those attempts! And I sincerely apologize for the brevity of response to your suggestions, and for not clarifying a key point of agreement between us.
I think we do agree that it is sometimes worthwhile to do training that causes enhanced fat oxidation.
I think where we disagree is whether it is sometimes worthwhile to alter the diet in favor of eliciting an improved fat oxidation response, either in conjunction with training, or separate from it. My case is that it is not.
Can you explain why? Respectfully, this has not yet occurred for my wife or I, when we do 6 to 30-hr solo riding events, so Iâm just struggling to think of a scenario where Iâd let it happen. I will say that I have taken extraordinary measures to make sure that carb consumption remains possible. I say this out of complete respect for the fact that I have less ultra-endurance experience than many on this forum, and probably yourself. It is possible that I am overlooking something. Iâm interested in hearing your feedback.
If I am understanding your response correctly, it hinges on the idea that I am overlooking scenarios where fat adaptation of some level (as in, increased fat oxidation ability, achieved either via training or diet alteration), is a worthwhile goal, because there will invariably be scenarios where regular fueling with carbs is impossible, or doing so carries tradeoffs that outweigh the benefits of such fueling. Is that correct?
I am genuinely interested because at the time of authorship of that article, I racked my brain trying to think of a scenario where I wouldnât be allowed or able to fuel with adequate carbs. (assuming money is little object and that I have the financial resources to purchase equipment to carry supplies needed, which is a very real consideration for those on a budget.)
As I write this today, I still stand by that statement, but am completely open to being shown a scenario where the tradeoffs might be in favor of making diet alterations for the purpose of improved fat oxidation during exercise.
Clarifying point: I am absolutely for the use of long z2 training for the purpose of fat oxidation enhancement (among itâs many other benefits). Just not diet alterations. Yet! Convince me.
Thank you again for the incredibly polite and thoughtful discourse. I am grateful for your approach.
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I wonât be able to convince you about the benefit of diet alteration because I have never been able to find any evidence for the specific scenario I am trying to centre the conversation on, beyond the anecdotal level! But maybe I can make you think about it a bit.
For starters, the context I am thinking of where someone canât consume carbs regularly everywhere, relates mostly to my personal experience. I live in Canada. It can be hundreds of kilometres between population centres, let alone stores. And that is when taking major highways, let alone exploring some rural gravel roads. On some of my rides, it can be 200k or longer to even get to the next water source.
Bringing 12-24h of food with you to eat is difficult when you are used to eating once or twice an hour, even with energy dense foods, that is a lot of weight and volume, which is difficult to carry and can slow you down. If I can instead operate on a calorie deficiency for 8h, then fuel up quick during a stop and catch up, I save needing to bring like 10 sandwiches with me, which means one less bag/a few less pounds to carry on the bike.
In order for this to make sense though, your performance needs to not suffer from your decreased intake to a greater extent than what you gained by not trucking around 5lb of food. That means that you need to be able to increase the time you spend at your target pace without eating. So yeah things like Z2 training, increasing FTP all help.
But my position here is that if you practice riding in that state where you feel like you need to eat something to continue, you will get better at going longer without eating. Whether this is by training while fasted, or continuing to ride but slower when you start to run out of carbs, or maybe even some time-restricted feeding every once and a while. This is purely anecdotal as I canât find any study that looks at this (because this is not an important skill for most people), but I am not the only person to notice this.
Basically, if you take person A and tell them to ride as far as they can @65% FTP without eating anything, my position is that there are things person A can do that will increase this distance with training.
Obviously, it is preferable to just eat something rather than have to keep going. And that most of your training should still be properly carb fueled. But if you are in a situation where food is not readily available, or at risk of this situation occurring, then exposing yourself to this specific stress in training, at least sometimes, should be beneficial.
Even at least for the mental aspects of it. My muslim colleagues go like 12 hours fasting at work during Ramadan and do fine with it. I canât even go 4 hours at work without eating without my cognitive performance dropping off, having a sympathetic surge, and feeling like Iâm dying.
Mmmh, depends how you define âregular carbsâ⌠
I was always perfectly able to stop at regular intervals in gas stations, bakerys or super markets for my carb / calorie fixes. Either directly or loading up my bags for the hours to come. Ironically the most difficult time and place you can probably find to replenish your food find in the whole of Europe is France on a sunday, lol⌠It was even not a problem in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains.
So yeah, you wonât find many participants of Ultra races bringing a weeks haul of Gels for such events / places. But they ainât just live on the oil of sardine cans also⌠Thereâs bread, cookies, crisps, you name it, you find it.
Tour divide might not be the best example, I had multiple sleeves of Oreos and moon pies in a constant supply. Carb loading for the win! 
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The above summarizes my thoughts pretty well.
The weight tradeoff of carrying 100g carbs per hour for a 10-hr ride is 1kg, if done in the form of sugar.
My argument is that on very few courses (none that I can think of) would such a weight penalty not be worth it in terms of the performance enhancement it provides.
This does assume youâll be carrying the necessary water to get it digested.
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One other scenario that hasnât really been touched on is the percentage of DNFs in ultra events who withdraw because of gut issues. In my last (very small) 24-hr race, I couldnât help but notice a very strong and well-trained rider with severe GI issues who had to withdraw. Saw the same thing in other ultra-distance races this year. For people who find themselves in that situation or with a gut that tends to not cooperate after 12 or 15 hours of riding, the idea of being fat adapted and being able to perform well on just water / electrolytes may make a lot of sense.
I think the two primary causes for folks to look into LCHF diets and any other means of enhancing fat burning during exercise via dietary modification are:
- Undulation of energy with poor carb fueling strategy.
- GI issues with poorly managed hydration during a high carb fueling approach.
I posit that proper management of sugar ratios, fluid and electrolytes is a better option, and that virtually all athletes of any ability can continue carb consumption without disastrous GI issues if managed well, out to at least 20 hrs. Probably more like 30.
It does take time to calculate carb & hydration needs. And time to practice real-world implementation of those things in training and in racing. Those are real tradeoffs. If not taken seriously and not having taken the time to understand how to do it and troubleshoot it on the fly, yeah, GI issues are the result. And thatâs a race-ender in some cases.
Increasing fat oxidation may take less time & effort. Just donât consume carbs! Especially around training periodically. Not super fun⌠but practically and intellectually quite simple.
I think perhaps the best argument for sacrificing some carb utilization ability in favor of dietarily-mediated fat oxidation increases during exercise is: itâs a way to safeguard against tanked performance in the case of messed up carb fueling. Itâs just a safeguard that takes away from max performance ability. But the tradeoffs might be in favor for some folks. Probably not folks who are trying to win things, but for anyone just trying to finish, sure!
(honestly, most the âjust trying to finish crowdâ is going to be doing this in training half the time because they all so often vastly under-fuel their training anyway.)
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And what about Hammer Nutritionâs perspective that sugar is a mistake? I am trying to undsrstand why the current movement is directed at glucose/fructose so heavily, it doesnât make sense.
Also they have written regarding Perpetuem, âYou also need protein in your fuel, as roughly 10% of your energy requirements need to be fulfilled from protein. If you donât provide some protein in your fuel mix, your body will be forced to cannibalize the lean muscle tissue to obtain the amino acids from protein to satisfy that approximately 10% of its energy requirements. That will increase the amount of fatigue-causing ammonia to be produced and allowed to accumulate in the blood and muscles⌠this is something to be avoided at all costs. The fat component in Perpetuem helps to stave off hunger pangs, while also serving as a âcueâ of sorts to help the body access and use the vast amount of calories from fatty acid stores more efficiently.â
Yeah, sugar water works well for shorter events, like say less than 12h. By the time Iâve been riding 20+ hours though, just the thought of even Gatorade makes me want to puke. By day 2 or 3, sugar water just isnât happening.
And I donât think anyone actually plans to race long-distance events without regular carbs. Itâs more just not having food available (or perhaps being unable to tolerate food as suggested in another comment) can happen unexpectedly, and having some experience riding without 30+g of carbs every hour can be useful to get through that in an emergency situation.
Definitely envious of your regular population centres in Europe/much of the US. My planned ride this saturday has a ~200k stretch between âtowns.â
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200 km could be either a day (or even two) or just 7 hours - depending on terrain or surface. Certainly doesnât stop you from regular carb-intake. You just have to know how long you go between refueling possibilities and stock up accordingly.
I get (or guess) what you trying to transport though - having a) experienced being on low energy levels and being able to continue nevertheless and donât indulge in self-pity and succumbing into the situation and probably a bit more into b) being metabolically flexible to also have an as optimal as you can fat metabolism.
The latter is twofold:
- i) having a rather low VLa max which is part disposition, part can be trained. And the part which can be trained could be trained more efficient with low-carb rides. But this is still up for debate or rather, that is not for anybody and even for individuals which do indeed react in a positive way on this (and this is not everybody) you have to be careful with the dose of such rides. Result: when in doubt, donât do it. If you do, you may chase the 2 or 3 % and by doing this desturbing the 97 % you would have safe if you fuel yourself before, during and after your training rides.
ii) being metabolically flexible means just this - donât disturb your capability to run your glycolytic processes by trying fasted etc. rides (all the time). Instead, use it sparingly. Also here: when in doubt, just donât do it.
You might want to read some papers from Asker Jeukendrup if you havenât already. I consider him good input in that topic.
Here would be a podcast episode with him I can recommend: Are There Benefits to Carbohydrate Manipulation? With Dr. Asker Jeukendrup
Ep. 150 of the Fast Talk Podcast (Fast Talk podcast with Trevor Connor and Rob Pickels)