How to Properly Consume Carbs Before a Race (If Necessary)
Ah, pasta dinner before the race. It’s not just an opportunity to bond with other athletes, it’s also the last remaining reason to think of spaghetti as a healthy food. Carbohydrate loading isn’t necessary for everyone, but if you’re one of those who benefit from it, it’s time to learn how to do it right.
Here’s the theory: Spaghetti is made up of carbohydrates, and your muscles love carbohydrates. They love carbohydrates so much that they store them in muscle tissue in a form called glycogen. Eating the pasta replenishes glycogen stores, providing the best possible shape for race day.
The unfortunate marathon runner who does not replenish her glycogen stores faces a terrible fate: hitting the wall. When you run, you burn calories from a mixture of body fat, small amounts of body protein, and glycogen. You ran out of glycogen and suddenly you lost your main source of fuel. Your brain will tell your muscles to slow down , and you will be one of those people racing down the street for the 20th mile, even if you felt great just a few miles ago.
Who needs a carbohydrate load?
Forget the marathon runners for a minute. What about the rest of us? Pasta parties are popular in team sports, but you don’t need to load up on carbs for short races or hours of play: your muscles can easily have hours of glycogen production. A rule of thumb is to consider a carb load for a race or effort that will last more than 90 minutes with moderate to heavy effort. Thus, marathon runners, triathletes, and anyone involved in hours of endurance sports need to think about their glycogen stores.
This means a huge number of athletes are off the hook: basketball players whose games are shorter than our cutoff. Baseball players whose games can last a couple of hours but still sit and stand a lot. Runners line up for 5K where they will work fantastically hard, but only for 20 or 30 minutes. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t throw a pasta party, it’s just that the goal is to build a team. If you don’t have a team, shrug your shoulders and say, “This is my racing week ritual.” No one questions the athlete’s rituals.
Another caveat: Carbohydrate loading is only necessary if you cannot eat while racing . Remember that we are simply feeding our muscles’ cravings for carbohydrates. You can put carbohydrates directly into the bloodstream by eating them. That’s what gels are for, those syrup packs that, while they can be disgusting, are easy to swallow on the run. Same idea as sports gummies (yes they are real ), energy blocks or chews, energy bars, and so on. Ultrarunner Dean Karnazes is known to order and eat a whole pizza during the 199 mile race. (The secret, he says, is to ask him to cut and then roll up like a burrito.)
Since most of us can’t choke on pizza while exercising, loading carbs is still important. We can only metabolize about 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour under the best circumstances. Less can lead to undernutrition (especially if you haven’t started eating before the end of the race), but more will not help and can cause nausea. Try different foods during your workout – yes, you need to practice eating. Then, when race day arrives, stock up on carbs as insurance.
How to properly carbohydrate load
You twist the pasta around the fork, and then wait, no. This is a little tricky.
There are several protocols that do maximize glycogen stores, and they work best if you don’t exercise otherwise. If you are already tapering to prepare for the race, they are perfect. (Rule of thumb for gradual descent: one day per mile of your target run. Thus, a marathon runner will gradually cut his workouts for 26 days prior to a run, and a half marathon runner about two weeks.)
A carbohydrate drink the night before a race will add some glycogen to your muscles, and a few days of high-carb meals are probably better, but we can improve that with a little physiological trick. An interesting fact about these glycogen stores: they are not fixed in size. In fact, you can make them hold on more.
The original carbohydrate loading protocol – which no one else does – started a week before race day. You should do a long workout to deplete your glycogen stores (such as running a marathon the week before a marathon) and then a couple of days on the Atkins Diet with 10% calories or less carbohydrates. (This is excruciating if you’re not used to it.) The idea was to drain your glycogen stores so that the next time your body saw carbs, it would grab them, kiss them, fold them, and want to store them up. and love them forever. In the three days leading up to the race, you should be eating 90% of your calories from carbohydrates, filling those increased glycogen stores to their maximum.
There is a newer method that gives similar results without pain and suffering: call it the Western Australia protocol . The day before the race – that is, on Saturday morning if you have a Sunday marathon – you do a short but intense workout that includes a 30 second sprint. This will make your muscles starve for carbohydrates, and for the remaining 24 hours you will treat them to pancakes and pasta. This is the easiest way to effectively increase your carbohydrate intake.
Listen to your own body
While carbohydrate loading can provide insurance against hitting the wall, it is not a guarantee – other factors can lead to fatigue, and dieting cannot solve the problems arising from insufficient exercise.
The practical side of carbohydrate loading involves knowing your body: can you eat while running? Can you avoid carbohydrates throughout the day without getting diarrhea? Do you like spaghetti at all? If you’ve decided to add carbohydrate loading to your toolbox for racing week, be sure to test it out in training first. Since each gram of glycogen requires your body to store two grams of water, some runners would prefer to avoid maximum stores. This makes them feel bloated and stiff.
There is also some doubt that women are getting the same benefits from a carbohydrate load as men. (Most of the research, sigh, has only been done on guys.) It seems that women can consume carbs, but in order to do so, they need to increase their calories , which can mean that they are eating 30% more food than they usually eat. Again, this is something to check before race day.
Some athletes are fortunate enough to go in the opposite direction: instead of replenishing their carbohydrate stores, they are training their bodies to use more fat than carbohydrates . (You will always use both; they just change the proportions.) It can take three weeks to get used to exercising on a low-carb diet, but if you prefer bacon to spaghetti, this approach is worth trying. For now – once again – you will try it well before race day.
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