Although I normally wouldn't do a second threshold run in one week, I really wanted to experiment with some homebrew energy gel, and today was the only day I could do it in the near future. The full story on the energy gel will be detailed in the next post - but the short version is that I've been looking into nutrition, specifically how to fuel for endurance events, and have had my eyes opened somewhat.
Today's run was a repeat of what I did earlier in the week. During that previous run, everything felt generally fine until about mile five, when I could tell the wheels were starting to get squirrely. Then around mile eight, I pretty much bonked and had nothing left in the tank, unless I really wanted to make recovery absolutely miserable by way overdoing it. But then again, I didn't bring any water or anything with me.
So I bundled up in my cold weather running gear (complete with newly gifted blinky lights, and a headlamp that we've had but I never actually used), 4 x 8 oz bottles of water, and a 5 oz flask of homebrew energy gel. I was concerned about the gel and its fluidity, due to the temperature. I started out thinking I'd take some every half mile along with a swig of water - but quickly realized that due to viscosity, squeezing it out of the tube was so distracting that I'd be better off taking some every mile instead because that would minimize the distractions. I'd just end up taking more, thats all. It ended up working decently well - I thought I had finished with the majority of the gel consumed, but once it got into the house and warmed up a tad so that it wasn't all stuck to the walls of the squeezable flask, it turned out I only eaten about half of it. Oops.
Regarding how well it worked - most definitely an improvement. I felt fairly strong throughout the whole run - going up hills were not as fatiguing, I recovered faster, overall HR was decreased, had no problems with bonking out. If I was out of gas last time, this time I'd say I finished stronger and still ha probably 1/3 of a tank left. Enough to push the pace up for a few miles at the end if I was running a full half marathon, but not so much left that my overall pace could have been significantly faster
After reviewing the results, two thoughts come to mind. Having something to top off energy glucose stores during exercise definitely helps with maintaining a fairly strong feel throughout - and the gatorade I've typically been having in the past was helping far more than I ever thought. I always considered it primarily hydration and electrolytes, and it is both those things - but I didn't realize the tremendous effect that the sugars in it also have.
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