Taper week and the carb load.
What the heck does that mean?
In a nutshell:
When you taper, you reduce the amount of miles you run prior to the race, it rests your muscles.
When you carb load, you are eating more carbs than usual so your muscles can store it.
Your muscles store glycogen for energy and glycogen comes from carbs.
Generally, your body stores only enough glycogen to have energy for about 90 minutes of exercise, so when you are going to be running continuously for around 4 hours, your body needs extra or you will hit the dreaded "wall."
When you taper and carb load together, your muscles are resting and all the extra carbs you are eating are being stored as glycogen to use as energy on race day.
The only time to indulge on carbs, right?
Yummy carbs to consider:
bread
pasta
pancakes
cereal
rice
oatmeal
bagels
pretzels
graham crackers
fig newtons
dries fruit
potatoes
beans
cliff bars
power bars
Carb loading starts 3 days prior to the race.
That's today!
Here are my sources in case you want to delve deeper:
runningtimes.com
runnersworld.co.uk
active.com
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