Subject: RE: Calorie intake per hour for long events (3+ hours) Racing and hard training differ from lower zone training
The muscle carb stores of a man weighing 70kg may vary from as little as 300g to as much as 900g this is influenced heavily by diet and carbo-loading techniques. By contrast, the liver can store only around 70g, with a range of 0-135g.
A race of over 90 minutes of moderate-to-high intensity will certainly require glycogen supplies to be maximally topped up beforehand (as is evident from the above information ) If the race is less than an hour, and you have maintained a standard high-carbohydrate training diet, a final high-carb meal the evening before, as described below, should be sufficient.
Your muscle glycogen stores aren’t unlimited, and following two hours of continuous exercise they will have fallen low. If you can keep topping up blood glucose by eating carbohydrates and save glycogen stores until you need them later, you can delay fatigue.
The major factors to consider when taking on fuel during competition are:
• length and intensity of training / race;
• ease of taking on fuel;
• what can be tolerated. (as per earlier post )
A 70kg athlete should aim to ingest 30-60g of carbohydrates per hour, depending on the length and intensity of competition. A 60kg athlete should aim for 25-50g. Don’t wait until you feel hungry to eat and don’t wait until you feel thirsty to drink. Once you start to feel tired it is too late, and you will struggle to take on enough fuel to reverse the effects.
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