Protein During Trainings/Races

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This is one of the try 'em and see which works for you. Many people do it on carbs only and many also prefer having protein mix. Don't take someone's word for which will work best for you, try it out yourself and see which your body seems to prefer.

I've used the perpetuem on long bike rides and found it really gentle on the stomach. The one thing i hate about chowing down on Gels is the insulin spike that you get from all the sugar and the feeling of crashing you get about 30 minutes later. I don't think it's lost on the Gu people the fact that you need to buy/eat tons of of their gels in order to keep from crashing during a long ride/run.

So if I was doing 3 hour long rides in the weekend and 2.5 hour olympic distance races, should I use the HEED and Hammer Gel?

Or will I need sustained energy or perpetuem?

i use HEED as my drink of choice for pretty much anything up to HIM racing. have not gone longer so cannot say on that.

i have another drink here called outlast, in vinilla, it has some protien in it, and while i love ths tuff, i cant say whether that makes a diff or not.

Everyone is different. I find my body doesn't like straight carbohydrates so I use the gels with protein and the drinks with protein right from the beginning. It seems to give me a better workout vs. using something that is only carbs and electrolytes (which tends to make me draggy). I also pick products with as low a sugar content as possible as the higher sugar products also make me draggy.

HEED has 25g of carbohydrates per serving.

if doing a shorter, higher intensity race, be careful of the protein.  I have been a big fan of using accel gels (20g carbs/5 g whey protein) and they're fine in training intensity, but make my stomach cramp up in races. 

someone else already mentioned to find something that works for you and this is a trial and error kind of topic. 

... and perpetuem has 54 g/serving

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Edited by bachorb 2009-07-14 9:07 AM

You don't NEED it.



Some do.  Some don't.  Using protein helps some feel more 'full' than if they took carbs alone.  That can be very helpful when racing or training for long durations.  On the negative side, protein can cause some people more GI issues.  And drinks with protein tend to taste worse when warm (though that may be somewhat individual, as well).

Edited by JohnnyKay 2009-07-14 9:20 AM

In regards to the statement regarding perpetuem tasting like sour soy milk after 3 hours in the heat. Perpetuem  will spoil in 2 - 3 hours depending on the heat. Rather than mixing it all and carrying just mix the first bottle and carry extra powder and mix the rest on the road. Works great for me.

I use accelerade (sort of like perpetum based on the descriptions above) and I think it def helps me on 2 hr+ rides and 1 hr+ runs. I feel like it also helps me recover faster.

Just wish it tasted better...

Johnny, I typically agree with you and find your posts to be spot on with my line of thinking. But why would you say that you don't need protein during longer efforts? The research I have reviewed indicates that your body will begin to cannibilize protein sources within the body if you do not consume an appropriate amount during longer efforts.

When you say you don't NEED it, do you mean that a person can do without it during a long effort? I certainly agree with that. But do you feel consuming protein during longer efforts presents no benefit?

Just wondering.

Mike

Well, yes, I mean that you don't NEED it, i.e., can do without it.  Carbs are all you NEED.

Post-exercise, protein would obviously be quite useful for recovery.   But I don't believe it's likely that your muscles can 'rebuild' themselves during exercise.  I also think that there are studies showing that protein oxidation for exercise bouts of 6-12 hours are little different than at rest (but don't recall where I saw that, so can't vouch for it entirely).  As far as I know, there are no good studies showing performance benefits to using protein during exercise.  But I would guess if you were doing some multi-day adventure racing (or double or deca IM), you would probably want to get some protein (and fats) along the way.

The only reason I would go out of my way to incorporate it into long training/racing was if I found it helped keep me feeling more comfortably 'full' than racing on carbs alone.  I've not had a problem digesting protein the few times I have used it during training/racing, but haven't noticed any big difference in how I feel from just taking carbs.  My preference is to reduce variables when possible so, for now at least, I'm going without protein unless I discover a problem with just carbs at some point.

Good response -- thanks for your thoughts. I actually was all carbs on any distance or time of event/workout until this year. I decided to try protein during workouts and like you, I do appreciate the way it seems to keep my hunger at bay during workouts. Obviously I don't take it to rebuild muscle during workouts, but a couple of manufacturers do claim (like Hammer for example) that ingesting the proper amount of protein during a long workout will stop your body from breaking down muscle tissue to metabolize the protein.

I really haven't noticed much of a difference in performance. I drink Infitinit and call it good.

Mike

Fuel sources in the body work in easiest to get order.  These are:

1) Glycogen.

2) Fat stores (which have to be taken by the blood stream to the liver, converted over to usable glycolytic form, and then redistributed through the blood stream).

3) Muscle proteins (which also have to be converted to glycolytic form).

If you get to the point where you are scavenging muscle proteins, your body is almost ready to shut down.  And it has ways of protecting itself so you typically don't get there - bonking, cramping, passing out, etc.  No amount of taking in protein is going to change the bodies natural pecking order.  Generically speaking, fast fuels first (glycogen), slower fuels next (fat stores), degenerative fuels last (muscle scavenging).

How do you take "the rest of it"??

Do you just mix it with a bottle that has plain water a few hours into the ride?

I emailed Hammer Nutrition about it and this is what they said...

Yes, Perpetuem can be your sole source of nutrition.

But lets just look at your food and fluid separately for a moment and then we’ll put them together.

As a guideline, I would recommend around a bottle per hour of fluid. But at your weight, if you hydrate well before the ride (say have a bottle in the hour before the ride) then I think that two bottles will be fine.

Perpetuem – for your weight it is recommended to use 2 scoops per hour. However it is my experience that people often do well on abit less, and we are trying to keep your costs down, so I think you could start with 1.5 scoops per hour. There are a couple of ways you can do this.

1. You could mix 4.5 scoops of Perpetuem into one bottle of the drink bottles and top right up with water. You then know that you have to drink a third of the bottle per hour. You will also need to have a third of a bottle of water per hour as well.

2. You can mix the Perpetuem into a thick paste and carry it in two of the little gel flasks in your pocket. You know that you have to get through a flask every 1.5 hours. You will also need to drink to drink water as well, at the rate of two bottles every three hours. I think it tastes better mixed as a paste.

Everyone is different, but alot of people find they do well on just Perpetuem and water. There are others who like some additional electrolytes so in addition take a couple of Edurolytes per hour – I do this in summer or if I am doing along event. Others (like my husband) don’t like the taste of Perpetuem, or just want a little variety on long rides, so they add abit of gel to each flask as well.

Perpetuem is a soy based product, so it is quite different to what we are used to using on the bike. I am the first to admit that for some it is a bit of an acquired taste! Others like it from the first swig. But it is such a great product that I’d encourage anyone who wasn’t keen on the taste to persevere as you do get used to it and it will be worth it. Perpetuem contains some protein, electroytes and some fat, so this is where it differs from gel and sports drink which are almost always pure carbohydrate with some electrolytes.

This is what a new customer said in an email to me today about it:

Tried the Perpetuem for the first time today out cycling. Interesting stuff. After 3 hrs of hard effort in the Waitakeres I wasn't feeling at all hungry which is unusual for me.

Either the Perpetuem works extremely well or I wasn't working nearly as hard as I thought I was!

This is a fairly typical experience with Perpetuem J.

You can use Perpetuem on shorter rides if you wish. The only proviso is that you may find if you are going hard ie over say 80MHR then you may find you are better on HEED and/or gels. Some people can still digest Perpetuem at higher heart rates, others can’t. The reason for this is that when the body is under working load, blood is diverted from the stomach to other areas of the body.

So if I wanted to mix some later on in the ride, say 2 hours in, what do I do.

Basically I want to know how you carry the powder on you? Do you put in in a small tupper ware container? In a spare drink bottle in your cycling shirt? Wrapped up in sandwich wrap type of thing? Obviously I want to travel light, but don't want to make a mess with it when I'm mixing it 2 hours into the ride.

Ziplock snack size and a bento box or tri top pocket.