How can I apply this knowledge to fueling?
As you can see from Part 1, even at a moderate effort, it is possible that an individual can burn well north of 100 grams of carbs per hour. As you can guess, carbs use drastically increases during competition and can quickly deplete the limited carbs stores in the body.
This is why it is critical to fuel your training and racing and why it is incredibly difficult to completely replace the burned carbs during exercise. Not only is the sheer amount of carbs difficult to replace, but your body is limited by the rate at which it can absorb these exogenous carbs that you ingest. Within the sport nutrition community, it is currently accepted that the body can absorb and burn 90-120 grams of carbs per hour. Anecdotal evidence suggests this rate can be even higher. However, to achieve these high rates during racing, ingestion of carbs must be practiced during training.
How do we use this information to guide how much we should fuel? General guidelines have been well proposed by experts, such as Louis Burke. Her work suggests that fueling should be discussed in terms of absolute amounts and not scaled to body size or weight as they found that there is no correlation between body size and the amount of carbs we consume and burn.
While the guidelines are great places to start if you are new to fueling, each individual has their unique needs. We recommend starting with the general guidelines and building from there using the ecosystem of Carbs Fuel products. We have also created a fueling guide to help you establish a baseline fueling strategy using Carbs Fuel products.
See below for our recommendations.*
*Other considerations:
Carbohydrate mouth rinse
- Some studies suggest that even rinsing your mouth for ~ 10 seconds with a carbohydrate rich fluid can improve performance. It is believed that these improvements occur through the nervous system and not metabolic activity. Evidence suggests performance can be improved 2-3% in events that require high power output lasting between 45-75 minutes.
- Hot weather: during exercise in hot temperature, fluid and electrolyte loss will be much higher compared to moderate or cool temperatures. As such, consider using the Carbs Fuel drink mix in your water bottles to improve the efficiency of your fueling strategy. Not only will your bottles now support replenishing your fluid loss from sweat, it can now support electrolyte replenishment and deliver a high amount of carbs all at the same time with 500 mg of sodium per 75 grams of carbs.
- Cold weather: during exercise in cold weather, fluid and electrolyte loss will be significantly lower than in warmer temperatures. As such, having your carbs come from your water bottle may be less convenient and appealing. This is where fueling primarily using our Carbs Fuel Original energy gel may be a better option. This can still be paired with our Carbs Fuel drink mix.
- As you would train for your events, the same should be applied with your fueling. If you would like to be able to consume high amounts of carbs, then it is suggested to slowly increase towards your target amount that aligns with your fueling strategy. We suggest beginning with 50 grams of carbs or one Carbs Fuel Original gel per hour during your training and slowly increasing to two over time or 100 grams of carbs per hour, especially if your training is of moderate intensity or greater than 3 hours. This can be modified by adding our carbohydrate drink mix where you can fuel exclusively with the drink mix or pair the gel and drink mix to achieve your target carbohydrate intake that aligns best with your strategy.
- There is evidence to suggest that there is no correlation between the amount of exogenous carbs oxidized and body size. In short, fueling should be discussed in terms of absolute amounts and not scale to body size or weight. Focus on the duration and intensity of the activity as a guide for how much you should be fueling.
- Thinking about fueling beyond just the current session can be impactful when considering consecutive days of challenging training or racing sessions. Fueling well during a difficult training or racing session means that you will not only feel better when that session is over, but your performance in the subsequent days is less impaired. Furthermore, if you have other responsibilities outside of your endurance activities (being productive at work, household chores, being a supportive partner, or being a parent), fueling during your workouts means you will feel more energetic and able to tend to those responsibilities.
