Quote:
Originally Posted by kstreeter513  .... All the info stresses that the sooner you eat the better. They say even waiting fifteen minutes to eat lowers your muscles ability to store extra glycogen by 50%. ... |
Here is my take on it.
My first thought when reading this was : why would you
want store extra glycogen? Bodybuilders work hard at doing this before competitions, because they want their muscles to look puffed out. But does this make sense for a runner?
As a runner, most of your calories come from fat anyway. After the first 15-20 minutes, your body switches to keytone burning mode. Glycogen is only needed for those intense uphill runs, when your exercise becomes anaerobic. But for the most part, it will be aerobic, meaning that either fat or glucose can be used for energy. So the extent of glycogen depletion after a run is questionable. And there is no need to carry more glycogen around with you than you have to. Remember, each gram of glycogen attracts 3-4 grams of water. As a runner, you really want to keep it lean-and-mean.
Having said all that, some carb in a recovery drink is a good idea and you need to bolus for it. But I wouldn't worry about the first fifteen minutes after exercise. Thirty - sixty minutes seems to be the window of opportunity. Fifty grams of carb is a lot - much of it will simply be stored as fat anyway. I would put more focus on getting sufficient amino acids to the muscles. And I would be encouraging the muscles to burn fat more efficiently.
