I really wanted to discuss this because the fallout is all over the internet, I see people commenting on Sam Long’s workouts all week bringing this up and trying to teach him to be careful about eating “junk food” on his long rides.
First of all I want to make one point :: There is an end of the road for every athlete in the top echelon of competition, it would be cool if there wasn’t and somehow the 70 year old guys were the fastest because they were training for 55 years consistently, but it’s not like that. Lionel is 37 in a sport where you can stay on top being older because of the steady state efforts and lack of risk and punch. That being said, what does the end of the road actually look like ? Well insulin resistance in the leg muscles is for sure a part of it. Most people probably don’t quantify it in that way, from the less studied perspective they just say “man I just don’t have that X factor anymore” or an onlooker will just say “he is just not as strong as he used to be” But under the hood insulin resistance particularly in the muscles of the legs is one of the big contributing factors.
The fact that becoming insulin resistant leads to performance decline suggests a need to periodize carbohydrate consumption and this in fact makes it MORE IMPORTANT for these guys to eat lots of carbs on the bike and at the gas station during the rest stops (contrary to what the idiots commenting on Sam Long’s strava posts say).
We know already about GLUT4 and we already know that it is an insulin independent transporter which means for all intents and purposes that there is not a significant spike in insulin when the carbs are consumed (even in bolus doses) during or immediately after exercise above LT1.
However, when you take the same bolus dose of carbs on the rest day or on a rest week, or like lionel was saying in the middle of the night because of cravings… this does come with an insulin spike and is in fact able to eventually overwhelm the aerobic metabolism of even the most seasoned athletes and diminish it or even grind it to a halt.
Granted the levels of aerobic stimulus are so high in the professional ranks of cycling these days there are probably guys that could take a willy wonka magical 7000g of sugar in a single pill capsule and still not have their latent aerobic ketosis shut down… for the aging masters athlete on 6 hours per week… the number is much smaller. If you bolus dose carbs outside of the so called glycogen window or outside of being on the bike… there is a cost.
This cost in terms of reduced insulin sensitivity and increased insulin resistance has to be weighed against the energy demands of the sport. Some guys like lionel are doing 6 x 15m threshold sessions and have a massive FTP so in terms of their dietary needs it’s A LOT of carbs which may not be possible to get down after the ride within a reasonable time frame to achieve energy balance or glycogen replenishment.
So what does this mean for an athlete eating a donut at the gas station? It means that this is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL in order to maintain energy balance and to refuel during the appropriate glycogen window. A rider that is thinking, oh well the gas station only has junk and I only eat the highest quality Himalayan blueberries which are in my fridge 2.5 hours away from here, that doesn’t work in practice because the glycogen window is now and eating 3kg of blueberries every training day wouldn’t be realistic. It would be better if you had a team car with the highest nutritional carb sources rather than getting a 7/11 donut, but the donut is much better than eating nothing and missing the glycogen window.
This is why the emphasis on fueling on the bike is so important, this is why the TDF guys are drinking 120g carb per hour even on the easy days of the TDF, because they know that they are periodizing their carb consumption AND because they know that it gets them a head start on the massive mountain of pasta they will have to eat before bed time.
So what is up with Lionel ? Well he alludes to it in the video. Basically he developed a pathological eating habit likely associated with already having a very positive relationship with carbs on the bike, remember when you are doing 6 x 15m @ 390w as your threshold day and then running in the afternoon there is nothing on this earth, not your wife, not your kids, not your god, nothing that can sustain that kind of energy demands in a healthy way other than sugar. So these guys develop these eating habits around it, start suffering… bottle up… hard interval coming… bottle up… climb coming… extra gel…
They do it because it works, but where this becomes an issue is when they are facing life related stressors and try to take benefit from the bottle in an absence of exercise or absence of GLUT4. Then you end up with guys sweating their workout tomorrow or the race in the coming days, slamming candies in the middle of the night with a pathological eating disorder associated with improper periodization of their sugar intake. This is what Lionel has/had and this is why sports are for the young, because kids can literally do this and see a positive improvement in their glycogen stores and still sleep like a baby, master riders not so much, they see insulin resistance reduced LT1 and impacted sleep.
As an interesting extension topic :: What aspects of diabetes would be beneficial to elite endurance athletes ?
