Posted: February 19, 2005

Science of Sport: Training Transformations and Kenyan Sports Nutrition

The Running Research News Weekly Training Update

Hi Everyone,

In his fascinating novel about the nature of love, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Paulo Coelho writes "Every day, God gives us the sun."

Clearly, Paulo has never lived in Michigan in February.

But Coelho also notes that we are given - on a daily basis - one moment in which we have the capacity to change the things that make us unhappy. Coelho contends that many of us pretend that we are unaware that such moments exist. Some of us seem to believe that we really don't have the power to transform our lives; we think that today will be like yesterday - and of course like tomorrow, too.

But as Paulo says, "...if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment."

Since August, I have had to pay the kind of close attention Coelho is talking about. Both of my parents died within a short span of time, and as a result it became very easy to let grief become incapacitating. Over the past six months, the feeling that life contains very few of Coelho's magical moments has been relentlessly present.

But if I deny that I am living in the midst of an extraordinary world which contains transforming moments, I would also have to disavow the idea that I can be in communion with other people. I would be refusing to find what Coelho calls the "spark of God" in everyday life, a spark which I am certain is there. I would not be able to give my parents' love to others. And so, I do pay close attention, and each day does have a magical moment for me, an instant when sorrow gives way to a miracle.

Magic can occur whenever we allow it to enter our lives. In our athletic pursuits, there can be a magical moment almost every day, a true chance to transform what we are doing. These moments are often very fleeting, and there are no rules which govern them, but they are extremely important to us.

A magical moment might occur during a sustained, hard run, in that instant when you decide to bear the pain and keep on going for another mile - instead of dropping into a more-comfortable intensity zone.

It could happen when you retire for the evening, when - alarm clock in hand - you decide to rise at six o'clock the following morning for an hour of great running - instead of staying nestled under your warm, fitness-fighting blankets.

The almost-alchemical moment could occur when you decide to give yourself a break and take a day off - a furlough from training that you have been needing for a long time, or it could happen when you make the decision to include regular strength work in your overall program.

Magic takes place when you complete one more hill rep than you have ever attempted before, or when you complete some wide-open sprints on an even, grassy surface.

Magic is always present on a day when you decide to avoid counting miles or minutes and instead make the decision to enjoy each and every step of your run.

Magic can occur in that moment when you suddenly decide to stop worrying so much about your training - and instead choose to focus on all of the good things you are doing.

Magic is always close by, ready to be acknowledged. It can enter your life today.

Changing the subject just slightly, I would like to tell you that one of the neat things about my job is that I get to keep track of the rate at which scientific information about training moves toward coaches and athletes. At times, this rate of infiltration seems to be agonizingly slow.

I was reminded of the lethargic absorption of scientific information by the athletic community this past week as I read an article e-published ahead of print for the European Journal of Applied Physiology. The story, entitled "Nutrient Intake and Performance during a Mountain Marathon: An Observational Study," described research carried out by a group of investigators from the Geneva University Hospitals in Switzerland.

Basically, the Swiss whitecoats analyzed the within-race nutritional practices of 42 Swiss marathoners who took part in a very rugged, mountain marathon which took an average of seven hours to complete. What was really striking about this study was that most of the runners - even though they were engaged in one of the roughest physical challenges of their lives - failed to meet standard nutritional recommendations during the race. I won't go down the long laundry list of nutritional miscues, but I do want to mention something that happens all too often in marathon running: The majority of the runners took in less than 30 grams of carbohydrate per hour during the race. I know that the addition of italics may make me sound a bit hysterical, but it has been known for decades that the marathon (especially the seven-hour marathon) is a glycogen-depleting competition - and that proper sports-drink ingestion can ward off many of the ill effects of glycogen wipe-outs by giving the leg muscles "something to turn to" for fuel as their internal supplies of carbohydrate run low.

The phrase "proper sports-drink ingestion" is key, because haphazard use of sports beverages won't get the job done. For most runners, I recommend an intake rate (through the use of sports drinks) of at least 40 grams of carbohydrate per hour during workouts or races lasting for about an hour or more. It's easy to tell if you are getting your 40 grams. Take a popular sports drink like Gatorade, for example: The stuff has a 6.3-percent carb concentration, which simply means that 6.3 grams of carbohydrate are present in every 100 milliliters of the potable. Thus, if you ingest 630 milliliters of Gatorade every hour as you run, you should be in pretty good shape (remember that 630/100 X 6.3 = our magical 40 grams). 630 milliliters is of course .63 X 33.9 = ~ 21 ounces, which you can swallow in four, separate just-more-than-five-ounce doses over the course of each hour of running (remember that a regular swallow of fluid is usually close to one ounce).

Some other sports drinks have a higher concentration of carbohydrate, often around 8 percent - or 8 grams per 100 milliliters. As you can readily see, reliance on an 8-percent quaffable would require the imbibement of just 500 milliliters (~ 17 ounces) per hour to meet the minimum carb-intake rate, making the process a bit easier. However, you also need some fluid to prevent dehydration, and the average emptying rate from stomach to small intestine in the marathon runner is about 600-700 ml. So, the Gatorade plan would be fine, or you could drink the 600-700 ml of the higher-carb sports drink and have even more carbohydrate rushing through your blood to your muscles. Moving above 40 grams per hour to your sinews is not a bad thing; 40 is just our minimum. Of course, it is important to practice whatever plan you choose repeatedly before bringing it into play in your big race. Don't forget, too, that you should never mix sports drinks with water as you run - or top off your sports-drink consumption with a welter of sports gel (or even a smidgen of the stuff).

While we are on the topic of sports nutrition, I would like to mention that the January-February edition of this Update's big sister, Running Research News, contains a key article on how elite Kenyan runners actually eat; this issue will be available for downloading by RRN subscribers on Tuesday, February 22. In the brand-new study described in the RRN story, Yannis Pitsiladis of the International Centre for East African Running Science in Glasgow, along with Mike Boit (the former Olympic medal-winner), Vincent Onywera, and Festus Kiplamai from the Department of Exercise and Sports Science at Kenyatta University in Nairobi have documented the complete dietary intakes of 10 top-level Kenyan runners (including world champions and Olympic-medal winners) over a seven-day time frame during a period of heavy training inside Kenya.

This paper by Pitsiladis et al is an eye-opener which contains three extremely important, "take-home" messages for endurance runners concerning their nutritional practices - and an additional, highly valuable "bottom line" regarding training. One of the three nutritional pointers revolves around a very magical number for runners - "600". The first person who correctly identifies the message involving "600" will receive a free copy of my e-book, Great Workouts for Popular Races. Please send your answers to me at owen@rrnews.com For example, you might write, "Owen, the answer is that each runner must eat 600 kilograms of kidney beans over the course of the year to keep muscle-glycogen levels high."

Incidentally, the champion Kenyan runners described in the new investigation were running "only" 75 miles per week, but that is not the major message regarding training. The key training correspondence concerns a much-smaller number - "23". You'll enjoy unraveling these mysteries when you read the article.

With very kindest regards,

Owen Anderson