High Carbohydrate Intake for Ultrarunners #237

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Trail and ultra runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe coop cast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach jason coop, and this
episode of the podcast tacklesone of the most talked about
aspects of ultramarathonperformance over this entire
year, and that is highcarbohydrate intakes, how we

(00:30):
might implement them and, veryspecifically, how they might
actually affect exercise-inducedmuscle damage.
I want to welcome on thepodcast today for the very first
time Itor Verbe, who produced areally cool paper that we
actually reviewed in ourResearch Essentials for Ultra
Running newsletter, the title ofwhich is the effects of 120
grams of carbohydrates per hourintake during a mountain

(00:53):
marathon on exercise-inducedmuscle damage in elite runners.
But since Itor is both on theresearch side as well as a
practitioner advising bothcycling athletes as well as
ultra marathon athletes, Ireally wanted to get his
perspective on the trainabilityof this aspect and how we can go
about training athletes toincorporate higher and higher

(01:15):
rates of carbohydrate intake.
So I encourage you listeners towait for that towards the end
of this podcast and we gothrough some very practical,
very practical sequence of stepsthat athletes can undertake.
If you happen to have a historyof GI distress and or you want

(01:35):
to see if some of these highercarbohydrate intakes are
actually tolerable for you,turns out that, just like any
other aspect of training,there's progressive overload
that we need to apply, there'sindividualization that we need
to apply and there's alsosituational awareness that we
need to apply when we're lookingat all of these different
solutions for athletes.

(01:56):
All right, folks, with that outof the way, I am getting right
out of the way.
Here is my conversation withItor Verbe, all about high
carbohydrate intakes and how wecan adapt to them.
Thanks for coming on thepodcast.
I had a different intro kind ofprepared for this, but with
some of the delays that we had,I think a better anecdote might

(02:19):
actually serve us, and it'sprobably one that it's not going
to catch you off guard, butit's definitely new.
I was discussing with one of mycolleagues, nick Tiller, about
some topics related to theresearch that you do just a
couple of weeks ago and hementioned that there is a review
paper that he and Guimierrecently wrote.

(02:39):
That should be.
Maybe it'll be published by thetime this podcast comes out and
if it is, I'll serve the linkup in the show notes and if not,
I'll just serve it up on socialmedia, but they're writing an
opinion piece that kind ofpostulates what limits
ultramarathon performance and,unlike marathon performance,
where we talk about, you know,the fraction of VO2 that gets

(03:01):
utilized and running economy,cost of running and things like
that fraction of VO2 that getsutilized in running economy,
cost of running and things likethat One of the big things that
they postulate is a limitingfactor in ultra marathon running
is muscle damage.
The muscle damage that occursspecifically during the course
of a race and then somehow showsup as a component of what
fatigues an athlete or somethingthat causes performance to

(03:23):
actually decline during a race.
And so the work that we'regoing to talk about, that you
did, where a nutritionintervention could potentially
alleviate muscle damage, isactually quite interesting,
because normally we think about,well, how do we prevent muscle
damage?
And we think about it from amuscular standpoint, meaning
we're going to strength trainand we're going to descend more

(03:44):
and things like that.
So the whole thing becamerather interesting.
But before we get into that, Iwant the listeners to know a
little bit more about yourbackground, because you have
this very particular backgroundthat is both in the scientific
world as well as very much inthe practical world and those
people like yourself are veryrare, where you're actually
working at the coalface withathletes.
So can you go over that alittle bit to set up this paper

(04:07):
that we're going to talk about?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, definitely.
So probably you have to talkabout my background, probably
should start on how you are,what you do, on your chill food
you know side foods when I wassurrounded by movement in my
family, really in my hometown inVictoria, in the south of the
past country, where you knowmountains movement, training and

(04:32):
sport is part of our backgroundand what we do.
So that probably led me intobeing elite cyclist by rider for
four years and obviously mywhole kind of life, 18 years old
and then four years of elitecycling, competitive elite
cycling I I hung hung out my mybike on just because of a little

(04:57):
kind of illness that I had, anddefinitely I saw an opportunity
to bring all my experiences asa bike rider into you know,
science or just going to theother side of being a staff and
trying to help athletes.
So I think I couldn't be thesame as I am, the same person or
professional as I am, if Icouldn't be racing and squeezing

(05:18):
myself for more than 10 years,probably since I was very young.
So in the meantime, you know, Istudied some engineering.
First.
I kind of gained up a littlebit with that Civil engineering
wasn't really my place and thenI started studying nutrition,
first as a main degree,university degree that I studied

(05:40):
and then quickly intophysiology and how that was
related with nutrition first,and then, of course, training,
very interested in how reallythe body works, how metabolism
is really impacting on potentialadaptations to both performance
, and then more recently intohealth as well and disease,

(06:01):
which is something thatinterests me quite a lot.
When I kind of retired fromcycling, you know, my
professional career started, youknow, like a roller coaster,
really like very quick andhaving always combining that
scientific, more academic workwith my practitioner in, let's
say in always in contact withthe athletes, especially while

(06:24):
trial running at the beginning.
And, of course, coming fromcycling.
You know, cycling and beingwith different teams has been
always part of my routine.
And now is the moment where I'mnot only working with a cycling
team, of course, with InertinAdios, but I'm combining both my
scientific career as aresearcher in physiology and
metabolism and advisor to otherathletes as well, not

(06:49):
necessarily only cycling.
So, yeah, again, I think thatis coming from my background, as
you know, my family and myenvironment always linked to
movement and exercise andtraining and competing, and then
moving more into that kind ofscientific practitioner, you
know, as as yeah, both, both attimes just to to support other

(07:10):
athletes.
So that's what I would saycould be a good summary of where
and so you also have like chopsin the ultra marathon world.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
And where did that link actually occur?
Because you grew up as aprofessional cyclist, you work
with a professional cycling teamin eos team and things like
that.
A lot of your previous work wasdone in cycling.
I got to know you through thecycling side and kind of
constantly keep my fingers onthe pulse within that community.
But then there, all of a sudden, at a certain point, your name
started to pop up, not only inthe research field which we're

(07:40):
going to get into eventually, Ipromise, on the ultra marathon
side but also as as a coach.
So like what facilitated thattransition?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
and I'm wondering if you can describe to the
listeners like that part of your, that part of your work life
right now, yeah, yeah.
Well, when I started with uh asa junior researcher, let's say
as helping others in that I wasintroduced quickly to trial
running and actually it probablysomething that we're going to
be talking later.
This is exactly how I startedjust doing some science in trial
running.
I was running the mountains.

(08:13):
That has been always a verypopular sport in Basque Country.
When I retired from cycling,you know, the first thing you do
is just okay, now I'm going togo.
It's mountaineering or hikingor, of course, running.
So I have been always verylinked to mountains and trial.
And then, of course, I havedone my main career as a
full-time practitioner incycling.

(08:35):
But I have never been away fromtrial running, always helping
some different friends justbeing racing or even more
professionally.
You know, I kept researching andin running and trial running in
the mountains.
And then I had the, you know,the biggest opportunity probably
of my life, which was to tomeet key and jornet and and have

(08:56):
the capacity to learn from himand the different projects and
and obviously that was amilestone in my life, obviously,
you know, as a child and youknow fan of you know trail
running.
You always, you know you havekill another as a and having the
capacity to work with him in adifferent project and get the

(09:17):
you know the content andconstant feedback and you know
information sharing with him,that was a milestone.
So I've been always, you know,leading to trial running and
that was a milestone.
So I've been always, you know,leading to trial running.
And, yeah, recently, in thecouple of last years, I was,
let's say, yeah, I made that astep of helping all their trial
runners as well from, let's say,physiology point of view,
advising them on how to improvetheir, you know, their training

(09:40):
techniques, nutrition, differenttesting and monitoring programs
that they should definitely,you know, kind of improve or
that could be an exit step forthem to perform better.
So, yeah, I mean essentiallyhaving always been willing to
try running and basicallythrough scientific and my own
practice, and then, just withKian, I was a milestone and then

(10:01):
always just helping all therunners to optimizing their
performance.
Well, it seems like it's eitherKian or Anton always just
helping all the runners tooptimize their performance.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Well, it seems like it's either Killian or Anton is
where it all comes back to.
Whenever I interview people onthis podcast in terms of how
they got into the sport and kindof what facilitated their
trajectory, killian is alwayssuper detailed in his
preparation, his training asyou're very well aware of and
his nutrition, so I'm surethat's been kind of a
fascinating insight, but maybewe will leave that for another

(10:27):
day.
So we're going to talk about apaper that you, that you're
recently the lead author on.
That has to do with highcarbohydrate intake and muscle
damage and, as I was trying toset up earlier, it's an
intervention that a lot ofathletes have started to take a
lot more seriously, not only inthe running world, but also in
the cycling world, and one thatI don't know if we ever thought

(10:49):
that it was possible, but it'sdefinitely become more topical
for a whole host of reasons.
Athlete success, the fact thatit's quote unquote extreme it's
difficult to manage from a lotof different aspects.
But where do you kind of comeinto this equation?
Because in order to prop upresearch, you have to, there has
to be some sort of catalyst,and I'm kind of what I'm kind of

(11:12):
?
I'm always kind of curious likewhat was that catalyst for you?
What was that catalyst for youin terms of wanting to put
together uh, researchspecifically to address this
question?

Speaker 2 (11:21):
well, that's a good question.
I think sometimes you yeah,yeah, I don't know, life is hard
to say when you start to thinkabout something but definitely
my own practices I think theywere already capitalists of not,
let's say, be conformist withwhat is published out there in
the scientific literature.
So I was myself as a by-writer,I was experiencing that little

(11:45):
change that I was proving tomyself that 90 grams per hour
wasn't definitely a limit whenit comes to at least the cat
comfort and the capacity toabsorb all that.
Then obviously we had thecapacity to prove that
hypothesis with a group ofdoctors in Basque Country that
they were already working onthat kind of research line, and

(12:07):
I joined them and we executedthose kind of researches and
research studies.
Sorry, and we started to seethat probably when it was
published, there wasn't, let'ssay, aligned with what the
practice, what was happening inthe practice.
Right, like athletes, they wereconsuming high amounts of

(12:28):
carbohydrates and that was kindof part of why, or part of that
equation, why speed andperformance was changing
slightly in trial running.
Then I think definitely acatalyst of that was that I
personally invested on a gasanalyzer very soon in my life
and then I spent a lot of moneyon that.
I personally invested on a gasanalyzer very soon in my life
and then I spent a lot of moneyon that gas analyzer and I had

(12:49):
the chance to start measuring bymyself a lot of elite athletes
and I started to plot my dataagainst what was published in
Scientific Literature and so Istarted to see that there was
kind of not an alignment onenergetic demands and metabolic
requirements, so carbohydrateoxidation from their energy

(13:11):
combustion or far oxidation withrecommendations.
And then I started to look intoliterature, of course, and some
other people like I've neverbeen a pioneer at all, I mean,
I've never invented anything Allthe people they were saying
that they were talking aboutthat, you know, years ago.
But I started to see thatdefinitely, you know, we could
restore more and potentiallywhat is behind carbohydrate

(13:33):
supplementation, carbohydrateintake wasn't only that kind of
energetic supply, but it wasmore like it was, let's say,
another layer of consequences offueling high carbohydrates
during the run or during thebike or on the bike.
So yeah, then obviously westarted to see how, by

(13:54):
experimentation, fueling highcarbohydrate intakes just by
feeling, yes, the generalfeeling of runners and bike
riders.
They felt better the next day.
They were kind of improvingtheir recovery in a way.
So we decided to say, okay,let's gonna definitely put some
you know, some science in hereand get some data and a proper

(14:15):
analysis of how that could be.
And we did the kind of researchbut yeah, that's what I could
say the the catalyst.
I think it was first of allfrom my own experimentation into
definitely that I started tosee a measure of metabolism by
myself and see that at least onthat high elite athletes sample
it was published in science wasnot aligned with what I was

(14:37):
seeing on my kind of daily workthe daily work.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
So it's interesting because what what once started
is this energetic problem haskind of moved into a recovery
problem and also in now withthis new paper, muscle damage
problem as well.
Right, or the solution to ithas moved to, has kind of moved
it into these new realms.
Before we get into the paper,what's's your hypothesis from a
mechanistic standpoint?
How high carbohydrate intakecan actually preserve muscle or

(15:11):
prevent muscle damage?
What's going on underneath thehood, so to speak, or what do
you think is going on underneath?

Speaker 2 (15:17):
the hood where I can answer that and give you a
statement.
Unfortunately, and that's youknow these common senses.
The more you know, the more yourealize you don't know.
But definitely there are likedifferent approaches that you
know.
All together they kind of comeup with a potential hypothesis

(15:41):
why muscle damage or at leastmuscle integrity is protected
with higher carbohydrate intakes.
I think one of them is just themuscle glycogen.
So muscle glycogen plays amassive role in muscle
contraction.
So let's say glycogen is notonly an energetic pool, it's not
only a substrate pool, butthere is some, let's say,

(16:03):
quality if I say that in English, sorry quality mechanisms or a
role of quality that is not onlyquantity when it comes to
energy, so that energy that isstoring glycogen is regulating
muscle contraction as well.
So when you deplete and this issomething that obviously you
know is there's some researchpublished and some data, but of

(16:24):
course I cannot say it's 100%proven.
It's just something that isgetting now published into
science and those hypotheses aregetting kind of discussed.
But it seems like the muscleglycogen is regulating muscle
contraction.
So it can be understood more orless.
It could be something like asyou deplete your glycogen source

(16:45):
, your muscle function is notthe same.
Okay, so it regulates thecalcium release by, you know, a
sarcopalmatic reticulum.
So you're never going to beable to contract your muscle
properly if you don't haveenough glycogen pool on your
muscle.
So there is a potential rulethat says, and it could make

(17:10):
sense, that lower glycogenlevels promote muscle damage
just because of the incapacityto contract properly that fiber,
the muscle fiber.
So that's one point If youdon't have the energy that is
required to muscle contractionand apparently glycogen has a
qualitative role in this wholemechanism you're going to create

(17:33):
more muscle damage.
So the nervous system, as youprobably know, loves glucose
more than over or fatty acids.
And we saw, and actually in oneof our paper we kind of

(17:53):
discussed, the fact that whenglucose is not highly available
around the muscle fiber, theexcitation and contraction
couple is not efficient.
So let's say the nervous systemdoesn't have enough glucose to
get that, that the mandate ofcontraction to the cell, so the

(18:16):
muscle cell can properlycontract and relax and keep
contracting and relaxing.
So it seems that the glucoseavailability, which is
essentially obviouslycarbohydrates, which has reduced
to the maximum just beforelactate, can play a role there.
And then of course there areother potential mechanisms that
you can think about.
I would say those two main waysof approaching the problem could

(18:40):
be related with carbohydratesupplementation.
Glycogen pool is not onlyquantitative but it can be
qualitative in the musclefunction and secondly, the
neuromuscular function, from theview of how glucose is.
Let's say, low glucoseconcentration can impair that
you know message that thenervous system sends to the
muscle.
Then, of course sorry just tofinish with this, but then of

(19:01):
course you just, you know, youcan talk about the lactate
capacity to, you know, keepsupplying energy into the muscle
cells, regulating nervoussystem, all that, and obviously
the more glucose, the morelactate we got as well, and that
is, I think it's regardless tosay that lactate is definitely
not the big game.
You know the, you know the badguy in there.

(19:22):
So I definitely think there'ssome room for that kind of yeah,
just to hypothesize aboutlactate.
But I'd say I will leave itthere for the moment with those
two kind of approaches.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's a great way, that's a great position to leave
it in An excellent mechanisticspeculation which we're always
curious about.
I mean, it takes, as you'revery well aware, it takes a
whole lot longer time toactually figure out what's going
on and how it's actuallyhappening than the athletes
actually will tell you hey, thisfeels better or this is working

(19:54):
for me.
We always want to get to theroot of it, because if we can
get to the root of it we canexploit the mechanisms even
further if we get to that routecorrectly.
But the athlete experienceusually leads the scientific
experience by sometimes an orderof a few years, depending upon
what we're actually talkingabout.
Okay, so again, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Sorry, just yeah, just one point maybe even to
summarize it all.
I'll leave it, you know, to thenext level of simplicity.
At the end of the day,contraction is very expensive
when it comes to energy demands.
Okay.
So if your energy pool in thecell is not enough, that
contraction is not going tohappen correctly.

(20:35):
So even if you know, on thatfirst layer of understanding
everything, if you don't havethe right energetic status in
the cell, that's not going tohappen properly.
Okay, so obviously then youstart analyzing that you cannot
absorb whatever 60 grams of fatsper hour on the run.
It's just different mechanismsand that needs to come probably
from carbohydrates or whatever.

(20:56):
But at the end it's as simpleas a matter of how you can give
enough energy to that cell forcontraction.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
You know it's really interesting, interesting, I just
thought about this.
As you're aware, there's a bigcohort of athletes that are firm
believers and adopters of usinglow carbohydrate availability
and optimize fat burning tofacilitate performance.
And, and one of the one of thekey anecdotes that they point
out time and time again and I'vehad these people on my podcast.

(21:28):
I don't particularly subscribeto it If for the listener, for
the listeners out there, they'reprobably getting a chuckle out
of this, but one of the keythings that they purport time
and time again is that they areless sore after a big long ultra
marathon or after big longtraining runs and things like
that.
Which is really interestingbecause it's kind of the
opposite of what we actually seefrom a scientific standpoint is

(21:50):
that when you have highcarbohydrate availability,
there's, in fact, less, but lessmuscle damage.
That compare and contrast isactually really like super,
super fascinating to me yeah,absolutely definitely.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
I think you know there is a point of that's a
great debate that we can start.
Of course I don't know theanswers of that, but I know that
part of, let's say, adaptingyourself to low carbohydrate
diet, for example, is exactlyadaptation.
So there's a long process whereyou finally adapt to creating

(22:23):
more glucose and glycogen storesfrom fat, so you improve your
gluconeogenesis, for example,and that's part of the whole
adaptation.
But in either case, I think itseems quite.
It seems for me not the debate,because at the moment the speed
that you need that is requiredto win, and obviously you're

(22:44):
going to create the muscledamage according to the sprint
or the speed, sorry, or thepower that you need that is
required to win, and obviouslyyou're going to create the
muscle damage according to thesprint or the speed, sorry, or
the power that you're putting inthe road, in the mountains.
You know is, from what I see,from what I have studied, is not
enough only with fat oxidation.
So you cannot compare themuscle damage and someone who is
running at, you know, absolutespeed, a higher speed, with

(23:08):
someone who is running at lowerspeed.
Uh, because of, you know, astructural and mechanic load is
can be completely different, andthen because the relative
intensity of the effort iscompletely different.
So sometimes we shoulddefinitely be a little bit more
cautious on those statements,because you know you can't do
everything.

(23:28):
Of course that doesn't meanthat it's the best.
I mean you can.
Of course we can now startrunning and working for a long
time, but that doesn't mean thatis the adequate thing to do or
the appropriate thing to, forexample, perform.
So there's something to saythat requires a little bit more
further analysis, of deeperanalysis, and why?
Where is that coming from?

Speaker 1 (23:48):
and we're not going to adjudicate that here.
We're going to talkspecifically about your paper,
okay, so let's get into it, thetitle of which it's this is in
nutrients and came out.
I mean, this came out a fewyears ago now, 2020, like right
yep, yeah.
So the title of it is theeffects of 120 grams of
carbohydrate intake during amountain marathon on

(24:08):
exercise-induced muscle damagein elite runners.
So the title kind of just tellsyou exactly what the research
is actually about.
But in essence you took threedifferent conditions and
compared and contrasted them 120grams an hour, 90 grams an hour
and 120 grams an hour.
90 grams an hour and 60 gramsan hour.
Can you walk the listenersthrough first off what the race

(24:30):
was, so they can kind ofunderstand the, maybe the
demands of what the athleteswere going through, and then why
you picked those very specificcarbohydrate levels to to test
on?

Speaker 2 (24:41):
yes, yeah, so it was a trial marathon, probably
similar characteristics toslightly lower altitude
accumulation than Serama, but itwas kind of a similar terrain,
so you can kind of understand orget an idea.
Geometers, of course, just amarathon and, yeah, quite a good
elevation.

(25:02):
I don't remember now the name.
Obviously is there in thenumbers of elevation 4,000
meters.
So it's slightly lower thanSagam, of course, but it's kind
of a similar race.
So that was organized by thewhole researching group in
Bulbos for this race.

(25:22):
So it's not a race that is inthe calendar, it's just a race
that was organized for this race.
So it's not a race that is inthe calendar, it's just a race
that was organized for thisresearch.
So obviously we wanted them toget exposed to what a marathon
looks like in a real mountainscenario, so real life, and
actually we organized the racewith the prices and all that.
So it was, like you know, likemotivating everyone 100%.

(25:43):
And obviously when you lookinto literature and you start
you know kind of deciding whatkind of groups you're going to
be organizing for your research.
So 60 was, let's say, theminimum dose that was
recommended for that amount ofvolume of racing or hours.
The total duration, 90, waskind of the upper range of the

(26:06):
current recommendations.
So 60 to 90.
And then the experimenter groupwas 100.
The reason why we selected 120was probably because of, let's
say, personal experimentation,but it was also you Some
literature already publishedthat it was correlating that
quantity with greaterperformances in races like

(26:27):
Ironman or long endurance events.
On top of that, it's lookingmore into the mechanisms of why
and how we absorb that glucoseand fructose and we convert that
into energy time.
We've had some data proposingthat the intestinal transporters
they could kind of, yeah, theycould absorb more than 90 grams

(26:49):
per hour.
So with this 1.5 grams perminute, we kind of, yeah, built
that hypothesis that could go upto two grams per minute.
So we decided to prove 120against 90 and 60.
Then, as you can imagine, thatis only a standing point at the
moment because you know, uh, we,we can see higher quantities

(27:10):
being ingested at the moment 150, 160, 180, even if you go to
most extreme events like theTour de France and you can.
On the bike, obviously we'reless, you know mechanical impact
and just a different positionand you can stroke higher
quantities.
But, yeah, at the moment wedecided to, okay, prove that
based on what we believe itcould be, and that's the reason

(27:32):
why we selected these threegroups and the athletes
themselves are good competitiveelite athletes.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
I think that kind of that doesn't need to.
We can't kind of like brushthat underneath the rug.
This isn't like the everydayweekend warrior middle of the
pack people.
These are really good athletes.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, absolutely, we had among the runners we had a
couple of world championships aswell In general elite athletes
that they were competing in, youknow, national, international
level.
So, yeah, by that time, thatresearch group obviously they
were working with a lot ofrunners, so they, you know, that

(28:10):
capacity to, you know, callthem and then get them into
participating was quite easy.
So, yeah, we decided to go tothat cohort of athletes that
they were obviously feeling thecriteria to be part of the study
.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
And we'll probably come back to this at the end,
but that may or may not impactyour thinking in terms of the
end prescription for the athlete.
In terms of carbohydrate intake, you're taking on athletes that
could potentially actually havethe capacity to oxidize this
carbohydrate based on theintensity that they can't that

(28:45):
they could run a trail marathon.
You move that back down to thepack and they might not need,
they might not have thenecessity to do that, based on
the intensity that they'rerunning, the duration that they
have and things like that yeah,definitely, and that's a really
good point, because sometimeslet's say well, science is not
always well understood.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
You know, sometimes we apply concepts or conclusions
from studies that are beingstudied or demonstrated in a
certain, let's say, amateurs andwe want to apply them for elite
athletes.
Sometimes it's just theopposite way.
You know, something that hasbeen proven in elite athletes we
want to apply it to weekendwarriors.
Something that has been provenin elite athletes, we want to

(29:26):
apply it on into weekendwarriors.
So in this and I think at thispoint, I think in this topic,
it's quite a risky thing.
I mean, if you don't have theresources to oxidize the glucose
and if you don't have themitochondrial function to
produce that energy, that highamount of carbohydrate is
probably is going to give you,it's going to bring you into a

(29:46):
danger position.
So obviously, if you are on the, if you are sedentary, you know
there is any, there's no, any.
It's pointless to say that it'sgoing to be harmful because you
are not even using that glucose.
But even if you're running butyou don't have the resources to
oxidize that glucose, convert itinto lactate, produce energy,

(30:06):
probably you're not going to getthe most out of them.
They're going to be not thebest idea.
It's not going to be the bestidea for you.
So in this kind of topic, I lovethat sentence of first prove
that you can do it and secondlyyou ask for resources.
Okay, so first you work on yourmitochondrial function, you
kind of demonstrate that in yourbody you can convert that

(30:29):
glucose into energy because youare running fast, because you
are producing that energyexpenditure and then ask for
resources, which is okay inintake or ingest carbohydrates,
energy, etc, etc.
So I think you are not going tobe able to get a benefit from
carbohydrates, especially highintake, if you are not able to

(30:51):
oxidize that energy.
And at the end of the day,obviously this is a very
simplistic way of looking atthis, but performance in
endurance, sport is mainlydetermined by mitochondrial
function.
Sport is mainly determined bymitre, from the function, which
is your capacity to basicallyproduce energy and do it with,
yeah, from different resourcesand different pathways of

(31:13):
nutrients or substrates.
So so, yeah, that's the pointokay.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
So you've got this group of elite athletes.
You contrive this race for them, contrive this trail ultra
marathon race for them.
You incentivize them to do,incentivize them to do well,
three groups 60 grams per hour,90 grams per hour, 120 grams per
hour.
You're doing blood draws afterthe race.
To look specifically, look atmuscle damage, synopsize the

(31:40):
outcome of all of that, what,what did you guys actually find?

Speaker 2 (31:43):
once it was all said and done, yeah, so, as you know,
in the scientific, in academiaand scientific world, you get
some analysis of the data, youapply some statistical rules and
then you publish accordingly,right, and then you discuss your
results accordingly and youdischarge your results
accordingly.
So I can only talk about whatit was above that scientific

(32:07):
criteria sorry, statisticalcriteria of being accepted as a
difference, and in this regardwe saw that, let's say, muscle
damage, muscle integrity, wasbetter on those consuming 120
grams per hour compared tocontrol 90 and 60 grams per hour
groups.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
We also saw that the internal load they accumulated
during the race was slower inalmost 120 and you're gonna have
to define you're gonna have todefine what you mean by internal
load to the audience, like whatdoes that actually mean and how
are you defining that?

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah, internal load was just applied by an equation
of intensity of the racecompared to hair rate as well,
and that was just a very simpleequation of how you calculate
that in arbitrary units.
So we applied that equation andthen I kind of discuss about
all things that are, all thoseelements or outcomes that were

(33:06):
below that statistical criteria.
But if you analyze them from,let's say, a realistic approach
what happened in racing you willsee that the racing density of
the experimental group 120 gramsper hour group was higher.
They run faster and they sawthe lower sorry RPE.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, lower rate of precision exertion yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Exactly.
Yeah, thank you, sorry, I wasjust stuck there with that.
So obviously that wasn'tstatistically significant for us
to claim that it's different.
But if you see the numbers ofthe amount of time that it
required them to complete themarathon and the intensity they
raised according to the maximumand etc.

(33:51):
You will see that.
You know some races are won byone to 30 seconds, so you will
see some minutes there.
Of course there is the rules ofyou know statistics and science
really, so we can't really saythey improve performance, but we
can see some tendencies thatobviously afterwards we have
been kind of proven.
Then, on top of that, wepublished a second study

(34:12):
intention I don't know if youare aware of that where we
analyzed the neuromuscularfunction.
Okay, so we put them after one,so 24 hours after the race we
kind of um, we brought them intothe Do the treadmill and they
started to run again, kind ofnot the automax but just as an

(34:32):
incremental test as well, and wesaw the neuromuscular function
by all the tests, like you know,the jumps and this kind of very
specific test of that trail.
Neuromuscular function wasbetter, meaning recovery after
24omuscular function was better,meaning recovery after 24 hours
after the varice was better,the lactate production was
higher, so meaningbioenergetically they had more

(34:54):
capacity to produce more lactate.
And secondly thirdly sorry theywere able to stay more time at
that maximum aerobic pace orintensity.
So we kind of obviouslyconcluded that recovery was
improved after 24 hours in themarathon in 120 grams compared

(35:16):
to 90 and 60.
So to summarize it all, we sawimplications in muscle damage
and recovery, some implicationsin hormones as well, like
cortisol, testosterone et cetera.
And then we saw functionalrecovery the next day by
improved neuromuscular functionand capacity to perform maximum
aerobic intensity or pace.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Which confirms the anecdote that the athletes were
coming to the table withinitially.
When they undertake thesehigh-carbohydrate programs, is
they perform better.
The efforts, the, any sort ofrelative effort sorry, any sort
of absolute effort feels easier,and after the workout or after
the race or whatever they tendto feel like they recover more

(35:58):
quickly exactly, exactly so alot of listeners out there are
thinking, hey, this is a lot,they can count.
Most people can do basic math.
I have a very hard time with it, but most people can do basic
math.
If I'm going to try to take in120 grams per hour, that's a lot
of gels.
That's a gel every 15 minutesor a gel every 12 minutes,

(36:19):
depending upon your particularvariety of gel that you actually
like to use.
What did you learn from any ofthis in terms of the athlete's
capacity to actually take inthat much carbohydrate during a
very high intensity race?
Is this something that isgenerally sustainable for them,
or are there people out therethat just have a harder time

(36:42):
doing it, at least within thecohort of athletes that you were
looking at?

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
So obviously, the first thingwe learned is that carbohydrate
absorption and, let's say, gutfunction, is very trainable.
Our gut, so our stomach, can betrained to digest food,
especially when you havesplagmic vasoconstriction, which

(37:09):
is what happens when you'rerunning, obviously You're not
thinking of digesting, you'rethinking of getting all the
energy to the muscles.
If you try to get a hamburgerwhen you're running, obviously
you're going to stop.
If you go to the toilet, that'sbecause the blood flow is,
let's say, directed to the mainactive tissue, right, the
muscles in that moment, and theheart, and you know the brain as

(37:31):
well but it's reduced intonon-important functions like
digesting food and absorbingfood.
So it's always a challenge toabsorb well, eat, digest, absorb
and deliver food into themuscles while you are running a
certain intensity especially.
Okay, um.
So the first thing weunderstood is that that process

(37:54):
is training.
The same way, you train yourmuscle and you make your muscles
more resilient.
You can train your stomach tohold, let's say, more volume and
you can train your intestine toabsorb more glucose and
fructose.
Okay, so that is somethingtrainable and that's where the
gut training concept, you know,arose in a way.

(38:16):
So that's the first thing.
And secondly, this is highlyindividual, meaning there's no
one rule, there's no 120.
There's no 100.
I mean the maximum amount ofwhat you can absorb is highly
individual, meaning there's noone rule, there's no 120.
There's no 100.
I mean the maximum amount ofwhat you can absorb is highly
individual and it should betrained and it should be
explored based on your personalcharacteristics.
Why?
As simple as you know, same asvolume of training is highly

(38:38):
individual, or the amount ofintensity that you can do is
highly individual, or the amountof time you need to recover
from a certain workout is highlyindividual, and there are a lot
of factors affecting that, frommicrobiota composition to, you
know, genetics, to yourmitochondrial function, etc.
To your current practices, etc.
Okay, so this is highlyindividual and, together with

(39:01):
this characteristic, it shouldbe done very progressively.
Okay so, the same as the firstday of training, you are not
probably doing six hours ofrunning.
You cannot start with 120 gramsper hour if you are not used to
it.
So that is a progressivetraining that you need to kind

(39:23):
of get used to, or get used toyour whole car, just to absorb,
tolerate and, you know, comparethat into those capabilities,
into everything.
So it is individual, it shouldbe very progressive, but it's
very trainable, okay.
Then of course, we are learninga lot.
We are learning about, you know, the training like once you are
trained to feel 120, how muchdoes it take to lose adaptations

(39:48):
?
We are learning about how tomanipulate that according to the
goal, why, you know, it's notalways 120.
Maybe it can be when you arerunning slowly you are able to
absorb more or less, or when youare running downhill, and then
you've got obviously a very bigvertical movement and an impact
against the trail.
You know it's always hard toabsorb and digest more food.

(40:09):
So we're learning a lot ofthings, but I could say this is
just a training and principlesof training are, you know,
individual, progressive, youknow a plan, et cetera.
All those concepts that weapply to physical training
probably can be the same wayapplied to gut training, which
is, get used to digest andabsorb nutrients, especially

(40:33):
carbohydrates, on a very high,challenging environment, which
is running.
Because, again, if you try toeat a hamburger full of bacon
and cheese while you're runningat a certain intensity medium,
high intensity probably you needto stop.
Okay, you're not going to beable to absorb that.
So that's what we.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
It's uh.
The concept of progressiveoverload always comes into mind.
This is one of the firstconcepts that you learn when
you're, when you start coachingathletes.
Irrespective of the sport thatyou're actually working with,
whether you're working in astrength training setting,
whether you're working in anendurance capacity or whatever
is that the load that you applyhas to eventually get greater

(41:14):
and greater in order tofacilitate further adaptations.
And, as a kind of thecounterpoint to that, the load
that you initially apply shouldbe in line with what the athlete
can actually handle when the atthe at that particular moment
in time.
So, if you just look at thestrength training example, right
, you want them to do a benchpress.

(41:35):
If they can't bench press 200pounds, you're not going to have
them start at 200 pounds.
You're going to have them startthat.
I'm sorry, I'm using poundsinstead of kilograms.
You're going to have to startthat.
I'm sorry, I'm using poundsinstead of kilograms.
You're gonna have to start at100 pounds or some fraction of
that and then progressivelyoverload them to 200 pounds.
It's the same.
What you're saying, or one ofthe components that you're
mentioning, is that it's thesame with the gut.
If you want to tolerate, or atleast try to tolerate 120 grams

(41:59):
per hour.
You don't start at 120 gramsper hour.
You you start at something thatis reasonable for you and then
you progressively overload tosome theoretical maximum that
you can actually handle.
It might not be a 200-poundbench press or 120 grams of
carbohydrates I don't know ifthat's the right physical
analogy there but the pointbeing is you're not starting at

(42:20):
the end goal.
You're starting at somethingbefore that and then gradually
working up to see what'sactually tolerable or how
trainable it is.
And one of the things that we'relearning that we can dive into
a little bit, since you have alot of practitioner experience
on this, is what are the timecourses for that adaptation?
We typically think aboutendurance training as being

(42:42):
chronic, meaning it takes monthsand sometimes years to reap
adaptation out of a huge volumeof workload.
It doesn't happen after hours.
Most of it, the vast majorityof it, doesn't happen after
hours or even days or sometimeseven weeks.
It takes months and years toaccumulate enough training
volume to make these bigdeviations in fitness.

(43:05):
What are we seeing along the guttraining side of it in terms of
that same progressive overloadprocess and what the time course
for those adaptations are andwe don't have to put a specific
number on it or a specific timeframe on it.
But is it long, is it short,short, is it somewhere in
between?
Is it reversible on a shortcourse of time?

(43:27):
Like what are your currentthoughts on there?
Because this is kind of alittle bit of the wild west
right now in terms of wherewe're at in, in terms of
understanding it yes, that'sanother brilliant question.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
I think you're definitely nearly today with
just the key questions, ofcourse.
And that's naturally the nextquestion, because once you know
that you can train capacity,obviously you start looking into
how much time do I need, howmuch time do I need to lose
those adaptations?
So you start looking intoperiodizing that kind of

(43:59):
stimulus to the body, right?
So your question is brilliantand it has been five, five, six
years now of, yeah, differentresearch, uh, to have the
capacity to somehow answer your,your question there.
So what we see is thatdefinitely doesn't require that
long as endurance capacity andit does require 1000 hours of

(44:22):
bowling per year.
But we, what we do now at themoment, is sorry.
What we know at the moment isthat it depends on your starting
point Okay.
So it massively depends on howis your, again, your capacity to
use that and your mitochondrialfunction, okay, and normally

(44:44):
the q1 body when it is good atdoing something, it's good at
doing almost everything, atleast when it comes to energy,
bioenergetics, okay.
So let's say, when you know,when we have these native
altitude, native bike riders,they are very good as adducing
oxygen, of course, they are verygood at endurance sport, but

(45:05):
when they have an injury theyare very quick, they are very
fast and recovering.
So they are almost very good oneverything you know like
recovery, healing and alsoperforming.
So this can be applied into howyou use energy is directly
correlated with how you'reabsorbing that energy.
Okay.
So if you are just killing yournet, of course probably you

(45:28):
will require less time oftraining, of that training to
get up and get adapted towhatever 120 or 150 grams per
hour.
If you are an amateur, say,runner, probably that is going
to require a little bit longer.
Okay, but let's say you'restarting from zero.
What we have seen is thatsomewhere between six to eight

(45:50):
or ten weeks can be more thanenough to go from a normal
capacity of absorption, whichcan be 30 to 40 miles per hour,
to 90, 120.
But that could be a reasonable,let's say, period where you can
really get those adaptations.
Trey Lockerbie.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Two to three months.
Two to three months just tokind of put it in a box there.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, it could be.
Yeah, exactly, it could be thatOn this, there is a really good
researching group that is goinginto detail of gut function and
all that in Monash University.
They are guided by, they areled by, ricardo Costa, which is
all of them.
They are like a big inspirationfor me, because obviously I

(46:33):
don't have those resources to,you know, put into proof or my
hypothesis, but they are doingsome of those studies and I
think, yeah, I can recommendeverybody to get their names.
And what Monash University isdoing is publishing everything
related to gut challenges andgut training and all that.
Then, another thing that we haveobviously we have never

(46:56):
published because it's hard toget the resources, just to get
another study on that, but whatwe have learned is that at the
same time you create adaptations, you lose adaptations, the same
as in trading, okay, so how youprioritize that?
Because obviously it's notsustainable to spend 12 months
per year fueling 120 grams ofcarbohydrates a week and you

(47:20):
need to prioritize those efforts.
Of course, you know, and youneed to prioritize them
according to your training load,according to your intensity.
You know, not because that isgood, it's something you're
going to say okay, every weekI'm going to eat on every
session, 120 grams per hour.
That is another topic that wecan, of course, discuss.
So, just to be able tovisualize that it's very

(47:41):
relevant.
How much time does it take tolose those adaptations?
And what we have seen is thatin two to three weeks you can
lose that capacity to move onthat high and top end quantities
.
So you probably could be ableto absorb 60, 70, 80 without
problems, but you're going tostruggle with 90, 100, 120.
Okay, so that is kind of a yeah, the losses of adaptation you

(48:02):
can see within that range.
But once you are trained andyou lose those adaptations, the
comeback is faster than theprevious.
Let's say, a training Okay, sowe in another couple of weeks,
four to six sessions, you canalready be on those 120 pounds
per hour comfortably beingcomfortable from that
perspective.
I don't know if I explained itwell.

(48:24):
Sometimes maybe my English canbe misunderstood, but that's
more or less the.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Here's what came to mind that I think will help
describe it for the users.
I'm going to use an analogythat kind of borders the time
frame for adaptation and thenalso the time frame for
reversibility, both on the longside of it and on the short side
of it.
So on the long side of it wealready have talked about this
this is training, right.

(48:52):
So training takes months, ifnot years, to build up and it's
also very resilient, especiallyespecially at the lower end.
You know ultra marathoncapacity, that we're talking
about the D training process.
As long as you have a very, avery modest amount of dose,
maybe 50% of your normaltraining, you can hold on to the
vast majority of theadaptations that you, that

(49:12):
you've made for a relativelylong period of time.
People always get paranoid thatif they have a training
interruption due to injury,illness, work, travel kind of
whatever it is, that they'regonna lose their fitness in the
matter of several days.
And that's the fact of thematter.
Is you really don't.
You can put them on a treadmilland do a graded exercise test
before and afterwards and theywould test exactly the same.

(49:33):
They might feel worse, butthey're going to test nearly
identical.
But my point with that is isit's a chronic adaptation, it's
and it's very robust.
You look at the other side ofthe spectrum, something that
we've talked about on thispodcast a lot and is and is very
well researched, is heatacclimation and acclimatization,
which tends to be a very quick,very acute process.

(49:54):
It takes just several doses toget a very robust response, and
that robust response kind ofgoes away pretty quickly on the
order of two to 3%, maybe a dayis what most of the research is
indicating.
This gut training seems to sitalmost in the middle of where it
takes several weeks, if notmonths, to facilitate a

(50:16):
reasonable improvement in it,whether that's from 60 to 90 or
90 to 120 or 50 to 70, whateverkind of your, whatever your
level is, and then to lose ittakes a couple of weeks, as you
were mentioning.
The reason that that'simportant and the reason that we
want to try to get somerealistic timeframes for this
maybe not exact, but realistictimeframes for this maybe not

(50:36):
exact, but realistic timeframesfor this is because you can't do
everything all of the time andsometimes it's counterproductive
to work some component oftraining more than you need to,
and you also want to giveyourself enough runway to do
that as well.
The something that you mentionedis also quite interesting is

(50:58):
that there does tend to be agroup of athletes that have more
consistent GI issues and thispops up in the literature.
This pops up when you work withathletes.
When you work with a big cohortof athletes, like I do, I
definitely have athletes thatare more that are going to have
more GI issues during races andhave them more consistently,

(51:20):
versus the ones that are justbetter at it.
Right To your point earlier,they're probably better at a lot
of other things, and one of thethings that I'm taking from
this conversation into mycoaching practice is that for
the athletes that are in thisformer group, that they tend to
have more frequent GI issues, isjust to give that adaptation

(51:40):
process a longer period of time.
It's still not several months,but it might be three months,
maybe even four months to wherewe're kind of constantly working
things on the long run.
We're constantly trying tobuild things up just to give it
a little bit more time ascompared to the more adaptable
group that I know is not goingto have a lot of GI distress.

(52:01):
I was wondering if you hadanything to add to that.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
No, I think that's correct.
You know you do in severaldifferent let's say, exposure to
altitude or heat, or fueling,or volume or strength.
You have responders,non-responders, and then someone
in the middle.
So, according to what you'vegot with you, what kind of
assets you've got in front ofyou, you need to be flexible

(52:26):
with timings, with the dose thatyou are kind of applying to
them.
So that applies yeah, it's arational or logic to gut
training and we have seen thatdefinitely.
Then I don't know if it'spointless to say, but I think it
is worth just mentioning thefact that to have a proper,
let's say, gut function, there'ssomething non-negotiable, which

(52:48):
is the gut health.
I mean you need to have astrong gut health.
It's hard to define thatsomewhere else, especially
because science is not very,let's say, at the moment it's
not very clear what gut healthmeans, but for sure it means
different symptoms upper andlower GI symptoms.
So without having a healthy gutand that is related to

(53:13):
obviously a of probiotics, ofstress you know this of micro
how to say sorry, micro, yeah,yeah, sorry, but anyway, just a
little illnesses because of theimpact of, of the gesture, of
the running, for example, you'renot going to be able to absorb
all that okay.
So the first rule is you need tohave a proper gut health, and

(53:36):
that is something that is notvery common, unfortunately, at
the moment, and that's probablybecause of the quality of the
diets and quality of theproducts that we are generally
consuming is not good enough orthey have some kind of
disruptors that are affectingour gut health.
So that is another thing.

(53:57):
Sometimes we think someone isnot a responder, but the reality
is that non-responder is comingfrom his or her habits really.
So just by reducing those andimproving the quality of the
diet and improving that gut,that's going to help massively
on what we thought wasnon-responder.
Maybe he or she is responder,okay, but they are getting kind

(54:19):
of, they are getting capped orblocked by all the practices
that are not helping that.
But, yeah, definitely.
Just to summarize on your point, yeah, as every training, you
just need to apply the samerationale to the athlete that
you are trying to help or makeadaptations to.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
So I'll use another.
I'll use another analogy.
I think it will resonate withathletes with altitude because,
once again, we've studiedaltitude for decades now and
have what I feel are really goodpractices in terms of when to
do altitude camps, how long todo them for, who are the right
candidates for it.
Which is to your point of whoare the responders versus

(55:02):
non-responders or low respondersversus high responders.
We won't get into that pedanticdebate today, but one of the
things that helps kind of teasethat out or filter that out is
we just do blood paneling, wejust use blood biomarkers to
determine if an athlete is agood candidate for an altitude
camp, and if they meet certaincriteria and all of the other

(55:24):
timing works out, then great,we'll do the altitude camp.
And if they don't meet all ofthat blood profiling criteria,
then they're not a goodcandidate for that.
And then essentially, you'recreating the what we're
describing right now as theresponders or the non-responders
group, based on their owninternal biological snapshot.
At that time there probably is agut equivalent to that that we

(55:48):
have yet to.
You know, we might have goodpractices for right right now,
or we might have good likeinklings for, but certainly not
as robust as the altitude piece,which is very well established.
I can absolutely see thattranspiring over the last few
years where if we want to do agut training intervention, we
know that it's more effective,our person is more likely to
respond to it if they have acertain biological state going

(56:11):
into it, akin to the red bloodcell profiling that we do with
athletes, as before we do,before we potentially do
altitude camps.
I can absolutely see that beingthe case in the next few years
where we have some sort ofqualification criteria,
essentially to have athletesundertake yeah, yeah, we are not
quite there yeah, I can see it,though that's what I'm saying.

(56:33):
I can see it exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Yeah, I think it's going to be a good next step for
in the gut, training advicesand fueling, compartmentalizing
advices and beyond that, toguarantee or to do kind of what
we call performance and healthkind of issue.
You know how performance ismanaged with health and how
sometimes executing performanceis not necessarily related to

(56:57):
having a good health.
But yeah, I think that'sprobably a good next step.
That's something we are lookinginto.
It's very hard to say you knowroot panel or you know certain
amount of, let's say, accountsor hormones are related to the
gut function.
I think that is going to behard to say, but we do have some
biomarkers that they arerepresentative of the gut
function.
I think that is going to behard to say, but we do have some

(57:17):
biomarkers that they arerepresentative of the gut
function.
At the moment we've got well,obviously, just the feeling.
You know like a scale ofsymptoms and how you are feeling
from the.
You know they are validatedscales of symptoms from the
upper body, lower body, whetherit's diarrhea or urge to vomit
etc.
But going more into objectivedata, different biomarkers that

(57:41):
are representative of gut damage, some others that are
representative of gut absorption, which are related to
fermentation.
I think you may be familiarwith the spiked hydrogen or
methane.
I think you pronounce it likethis you may be familiar with
the spiked hydrogen or methane.
I think you pronounce it likethis.

(58:01):
So they are all provincialbiomarkers that we kind of all
together they can give you akind of an equation of where you
are, and that's, at this point,something we're using in the
practice.
So we are kind of assessing ourathletes' gut function through
different elements.
You have to say, okay, fromwhat we understand, you are in
the low, middle or higher rangeof kind of gut function.

(58:22):
What I would like to open uphere a discussion is around
microbiota tests, the potential,let's say, claims that we do
see at the moment, especially insocial media, but they are not
necessarily precise or valid.
Or let's say, we do see at themoment, especially in social
media, but they are notnecessarily precise or valid.
Or let's say sorry, I don'tfind the word, but I would say

(58:43):
that they are explaining whatthey claim to be explaining.
Okay, yeah.
I got it so microbiota is suchan unknown thing for us that we
those days I read that we knowmore about the space than about
our microbiota.
That was quite funny, becauseprobably we know very little

(59:03):
about how our bacteria anddifferent kind of life that
we've got in the gut iscoexisting and producing
products and using substratesfor the coexistence with our
ecosystem.
We know very little and theproblem and I'm not an expert on
this, don't get me wrong pleasebut what I see, the potential
limitation or my reservationstowards this kind of analysis,
is that we are measuring.

(59:24):
We are not measuring function.
We are not measuring.
If we were measuringmetabolomics, for example,
you're measuring what a friendof mine says, the, for example.
You're measuring what a friendof mine says the science of
reality, but you are notmeasuring.
We are not measuring on thosetests.
We are not measuring that.
We are not measuring function,product byproducts or

(59:46):
metabolomics.
We are just measuring geneticsof those bacterias and of course
they are going to be altered bymany factors, but we don't
understand at the moment thatcorrelations with the function.
So when we are there, when Idon't know, hopefully in some
years or maybe someone isalready working on that, all
these in research, for sure theyare working on that of

(01:00:06):
analyzing the function of ourmicrobiota bacteria, so how all
those metabolites are improvingor are impacting on performance
and health.
Then we will be on thatposition to really assess how
you know that, let's say, gutfunction is for every athlete.
And the same way we are usingblood panels or HVMAS or

(01:00:28):
different biomarkers to assessaltitude adaptations or even
your capacity to perform onendurance events.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah, I mean I was just going to go to the
performance or the training loadpiece of it, because that's the
thing that I'm really wrappedup around as a coach is
prescribing the right trainingloads.
We use all these surrogatemarkers for things and really
that's what they are is.
It's just a constellation ofsurrogate markers for what we
think impacts what we'reultimately trying to affect.

(01:00:58):
And you know I use a battery ofof monitoring variables to help
guide me on load managementprocess or load management
practices.
So heart rate variability andmood and soreness, subjective
measures, subjective measures,sleep, things like that.
That all of those thingscombined help me to say, okay,

(01:01:22):
I'm going to do X amount of loadmore, or I'm going to do X
minus 10% amount of load more,or whatever.
It kind of helps me titratewhat I think should be going on.
The same thing might beemerging in this parallel world
where we're actually trainingthe gut.
But, the hypotheticals aside,let's try to wrap this up with
more of like a really practicalthing that athletes can do.

(01:01:43):
A lot of athletes are looking atthis saying, okay, I want to
try to increase my carbohydrateintake that I'm going to deploy
during whatever race, whetherthat's 50 to 70 or 60 to 90 or
90, 120 or whatever.
We can try to make this asuniversal as possible, and I
want to deploy a trainingstrategy in order to help
accomplish that right.
I'm now here.

(01:02:04):
I want to be up there.
I need to exercise some sort ofprogressive overload that we
talked about earlier.
What are some practicalguidelines that we can take
athletes through, just in termsof what that progressive
overload might actually looklike and then how they actually
practically implement it?
Is it more carbohydrates at thesame feeding rate, Is it
breaking up or is it increasingthe number of feeds per hour,

(01:02:27):
trying different substrates out?
What general guidelines and andthings would you actually take
an athlete through, being thatyou're a coach and a
practitioner as well?
If we are trying to titratethis up and to see if there are
any sort of upper limits, whatcan we leave the listeners with
in that regard?

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yeah.
So I've got a littlepublication in my website where
I used to write some posts thatis completely blocked or
forgotten by me at the moment.
I've been already two yearswithout publishing there.
It's just a website in Spanish,but I did write some posts in

(01:03:05):
English and exactly this onewhere I propose kind of a
methodology or a model just tostart from zero or 30 grams and
finish or train up to 120, thatwas published in my website in
the book for science.
You can just find there 120.
It was published in my websitein the book for science.
You can just find there.
But of course there are many.
It's very simple, same astraining.

(01:03:26):
It's very simple but at thesame time it's very complex.
So at the end of the day, youjust need to be able to increase
your exposure to carbohydratesand volume progressively from
zero to your target.
How do you do that?
Obviously it needs to yourtarget.
How do you do that?
Obviously, it needs to beprogressive.
So what we kind of map out whenwe started with all this is

(01:03:49):
that first of all, the stomachis the first barrier of that
digestion and absorption.
So the way the stomach getsadapted to absorb higher volumes
is exposing the stomach tohigher volumes.
So what we know from a stomachis that it's highly flexible and
adaptable.
Okay, actually, we know thisfrom these, let's say, eating

(01:04:10):
challenges.
Yeah, I don't know, likehundreds of hot dogs and all
that they train for that.
Yeah, so they train theirstomach to hold more volume of
food.
Okay, obviously this is acompletely different thing,
because when we are running, wehave no blood, so the gut
function is compromised and thenwe've got the movement.

(01:04:30):
But to work on those, or set theproper foundations of gut
function, you first need to beable to tolerate high volumes.
So you can start with, if youare not drinking, just by
drinking a little bit more onthe run and getting high volume,
let's say, foods.
And you can use, for example,even fruits that are not ideal

(01:04:50):
you know they are not ideal toget 100 grams, but they are high
volume foods that it's going tochallenge your gut to be
absorbed, and they have somefiber, et cetera.
So you start with the, let'ssay, the low intensity, medium
intensity runs and you startgetting more, more volume.
You start practicing yourhydration, more volume of food,
sorry, you start practicing yourhydration just by setting up

(01:05:14):
proper windows.
What we have seen is thatprobably 20 minutes windows.
They work the best and that'sbecause the gastric emptying
works depending on how youcontrol the kind of the bus, the
bushing sensor, let's say,which is just kind of the ending

(01:05:35):
part of the stomach.
So if you have enough volume,then that gastric emptying is
going to happen.
But if you are very frequentand the volume is not enough in
your stomach, that gastricemptying story is not going to
be efficient.
Okay, so what we have seenthere's some research problems
there is that probably windowsof 20 minutes.
So every 20 minutes adding somevolume into your stomach

(01:05:57):
improves the gastric emptyingand it's you and it's related to
less gastrointestinal symptoms.
So you could start with highvolume foods and drinks,
especially working on that, notfocusing on the grams of
carbohydrates but more focusingon, let's say that, volume.
This is a phase that is quitefast.
In two weeks or three weeks youcan probably arrive to a good

(01:06:18):
comfort.
And then you go into, let's say, the small intestine, how you
are absorbing the glucose andfructose, and this is just a
matter of training ourtransporters to get stimulated
by more exposure to glucose andfructose.
Okay, so the more they areexposed, the more mechanisms

(01:06:38):
they're going to create toabsorb more.
So the more they are exposed,the more mechanisms they're
going to create to absorb more.
And that happens to, you know,sglt1, which is the glucose
transporter, and GLUT5, which isthe fructose transporter, and
potentially GLUT1 and GLUT2 thatare, let's say, other helpers.
So on that second phase you willbe focused more into okay, high
carbohydrate content by usingcan be gels, it can be bars, it

(01:07:02):
can be these gums or little, youknow like semi-solid options,
and you're going to goincreasing that quantity.
So for a couple of weeks I'msitting on 60 grams per hour.
If that is all correct, noproblems.
Maybe you introduce them on ahigh intensity interval training
.
Well, you know, the gutfunction is more compromised.

(01:07:23):
So you are, you know,challenging yourself with less
resources to absorb all that.
Once you are, you reach aplateau of, you know, being
comfort or having some gutcomfort there.
Then you go into 80, 90, andthen it's just a matter of
exploring the quantity, you know, with different gels, different
options, always trying torespect that the volume is the

(01:07:44):
number one thing.
You have to train and you alwaysneed enough fluid to get that
food and to protect the bloodthat is around around the cup
and then progressivelyincreasing with that time in the
that I was telling you, every20 minutes, try to put, let's
say, if you are doing 90 gramsper hour, 30 grams every 20
minutes, so you improve thatvolume, capacity of tolerance

(01:08:07):
and that goes into yourintestine and transporters.
They, they work out and again,that's a matter of exploration.
And then how you, how, ofcourse, how you refine your race
strategy is just a matter ofselecting how you refine your
race strategy is just a matterof selecting the right products
because, as you probably haveexperienced, not all the
products work for everyone, forwhatever reasons, because there

(01:08:29):
is a percentage, say pullingthere, of flavors, textures,
additives, et cetera, that youknow, not X brand is going to
work for everybody and someone.
They maybe they prefer tochange flavors to be more salty,
less sweet, etc.
Well, that's a matter ofalready an exploration where you
are able to absorb 90, 100.

(01:08:49):
That goes out kind offine-tuning, same as, let's say,
I don't know shoes or materials, you've got the fitness, but
now you're exploring kind of thenext level which is adequate
products for your purpose.
Okay, so the order here isexploring kind of the next level
, which is adequate products foryour purpose, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
So the order here is actually kind of is really
interesting to me, so let me tryto really quickly encapsulate
this.
It's like a two and a half stepprocess.
Yeah, the first step you'rechallenging you're essentially a
challenging anatomy right thevolume of food stuff that your
stomach can take.
You kind of don't care aboutthe gastric emptying rate at

(01:09:22):
that point.
This is your time to eat yourdouble bacon cheeseburgers, as
you've alluded to on your runs,because you're not trying to
optimize for that.
You're specifically challengingthe anatomy of the stomach to
handle large quantities ofvolume, or large quantities of
volume, just big, massiveamounts of food, right?
Or larger amount of food, justa larger amount of stuff.
You then go through thatprocess, which is a couple of

(01:09:44):
weeks, a couple of weeks long,and you're kind of in your
example that you gave.
Then you optimize for gastricemptying and you're trying to
challenge on what essentially isabout chemical side of things
or transporter side of things,and this is the rate of
carbohydrate that you cantransport along the gut walls,
and in that order.
So it's anatomy first, volumefirst and then the transporter

(01:10:05):
second.
And I mean I can very easilyenvision the process that the
athletes would go through inthis, and it looks dramatically
different across both of thosetwo steps and I just tried to
describe it, but I'm going totry to do a better job right now
.
During the first one, you'rejust eating larger volumes of
food than you're normally usedto eating, and where that comes

(01:10:25):
from, you kind of don't care,because you're not optimized.
In fact, it's probably betterthat you're not optimizing for
it, as you've mentioned, becausethat's a specific adaptation
that you want to get.
Once you felt that you've gotthat adaptation, hey, I felt
kind of pukey after eating mydouble cheeseburger and now I
can tolerate it just fine.
That's a great litmus test.
Once you feel that you'vegotten that, then you can go

(01:10:46):
back to your more quote unquoteoptimized nutrition plan
whatever that is gels, gummies,drink, combination of all of the
above.
And then you're working onessentially the rate of intake
through whatever means you wantto do every 20 minutes, every 15
minutes, kind of whatever it is, and you're titrating that rate
up from there in that specificorder.

(01:11:06):
Is that a fair encapsulation ofwhat's going on there, aitor?
Exactly, Exactly, yeah, and ofcourse you know there are some
other factors, like you know thefamous glucose and fructose
ratio, you know the texture ofthe different options, so that
is kind of a topic of discussionwhere you are already there
into 90 100 grams per hour buthere's the thing with that,

(01:11:27):
though I think a lot of athletesout there and I'm nodding my
head because you know, maybe I'mguilty of giving this advice or
even usually using it myselfwe've kind of gone to the
optimization side too earlywithout looking at this
anatomical adaptation that couldbe occurring in advance of it.
That helps facilitate thetransporter side of things.

(01:11:49):
That's why I think the trainingpart of it becomes so
interesting and once again, touse a training analogy, we go
through this ad nauseum ascoaches.
Do you do volume first andintensity last?
Do you do intensity first or doyou do volume last, depending
upon the race setup?
And like the sequence ofstimuli that you can apply to an

(01:12:10):
athlete, we think makes adifference.
That's why we try to periodizethings and I'm going to leave
that debate for another day,whether that matters or not
things, and I'm gonna leave thatdebate for another another day,
whether that matters or not.
But what you're proposing hereis that along the gut adaptation
part of it, there is a, thereis an order that we need to at
least think about in terms ofwhat comes first and what comes

(01:12:32):
second of course, but that's thehuman being.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
You always feel appealed by what is exciting and
nobody's probably more basic.
But it's working.
You know, we are running atfour kilometers, four minutes
kilometer, and we are wearingthose suits that are done to run
250 or 245, you know.
So we always feel very excitedby all those things.

(01:12:55):
But, yeah, it's pretty realitythat we should start by all
these say less fancy things, andeven something that I didn't
mention how you eat off the bike, off the run, like off the
training, impacts massively onyour gut absorption.

(01:13:15):
So what we know is that the dietthat you are consuming is
predisposing I don't know ifthat word is right, but
predisposing your capacity toabsorb and digest different
foods.
So, of course, if you are andthis is something that has been
proven in different animals sowhen the content of a certain
nutrient is abundant in theirdiet, the mechanisms to absorb

(01:13:36):
that nutrient are bigger.
So obviously, if you stay Idon't know two months just
eating fats, your capacity toabsorb carbohydrate is going to
get compromised and, on theother hand, if you, for example,
never use fructose on yourdaily routine, you're going to
struggle with absorbing fructose.
So not only what you do, let'ssay on the run on the bike or

(01:14:00):
around training, but you know,on your do.
Let's say on the run on thebike or around training, but you
know, on your normal, let's say, meal planning, that is going
to impact your, your capacity toabsorb.
So again, let's come back tofoundations.
It's not about that gel thatlooks amazing and that the
people is taking on all hiswinning, or that is not the part
that you know he learned yournet is eating when he's winning

(01:14:23):
utmb.
It's more about the foundationsof that, or how you really get
the basics well and yeah, andthat's always hard to explain,
because we want immediately thatyellow bar, because we believe
that makes the difference rightit happens in nutrition, I think
, more than training.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
I mean, we tend to have a shortcut society.
This is going off, thisconversation is going on the
rails pretty quickly.
We tend to have a shortcutsociety where we want immediate
results, but it happens way morenutrition than in any other
area.
And I do think that thisphenomenon of I had gi distress,
my distress.
My solution to that is to use amore advanced product or chop

(01:15:04):
up the rate at what I'm doing it, or whatever it is.
I'm going to move to a hydrogel.
I'm going to take in half ahydrogel every 10 minutes or
whatever.
And I think that your pointabout going back to the
fundamentals, which we alwaystry to focus on in coaching, is
really important here within guttraining of is let's just first
work on the volume of food thatyou can, that you can tolerate,

(01:15:25):
just from an I'm calling it ananatomical standpoint, I don't
know if that's the rightvocabulary, but just let's just
work on that first and that andthen from that now we can
titrate what types of productswhen we're ingesting them, what
the rate of those products are,what the volume of those
specific feeds are, all of thatother stuff.

(01:15:45):
But fundamentally let's work onthe volume proposition first.
I just think that's a reallypractical take-home for a lot of
athletes, especially a lot ofultra marathon athletes that
experience GI distress during arace and they're trying to
alleviate it somehow is train it, but use some sort of
systematic training component.
Or some sort of systematictraining component.
There's some sort of systematicprocess for that training.
Don't just try to work on theend solution for it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
This has been amazing .
We're going to have you comeback on.
Well, we will have you comeback on.
We talked about it offline in acapacity that we have yet to
divulge and won't divulge onthis one, so it's a tease for
the audience.
A couple months time we'll hearfrom my tour again and we'll
banter about some other stuff,but before we let you go, is
there anything else you want toleave listeners with in terms of
what athletes can do to helpkind of solve this problem and

(01:16:35):
explore some of these morehigher carbohydrate options that
tend to be creeping up?

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Well, yeah, I don't know for sure.
You know we could have spenthours here just discussing,
talking about this excitingtopic, but no, I think we were
pretty much on everything.
In general.
I think this is very, you know,same as in training.
I think own aspiration is partof what we as individuals, as

(01:17:00):
athletes or coaches, we have todo and, as always, science,
which is a great resource andI'm a scientist for that reason,
but it's not a sad word, youknow and I think in this
carbohydrate or fueling topic orthis area, there is a big

(01:17:22):
boiling on a big part ofself-exploration and that is
probably the best way ofunderstanding what feeds
yourself or your runners or yourathletes.
So, of course, the more you canmeasure like we were talking,
you know, scales of perceptionor by markets or whatever, the
better you can understand that.
But at the end of the day,there is a lot of value on that

(01:17:45):
self-exploration and you know,just trying different products,
different protocols, differentquantities.
So I could encourage everyoneyou know, waiting to improve
that, just to get out there, andby using well, it's hard to say
common sense, because commonsense sometimes is the least
common of the senses, but it'sthe rationale that we have been

(01:18:07):
discussing here, to go andexplore about how they can
tolerate higher intakes ofcarbohydrates and how that is
impacting on their mood, ontheir performance, on their
recovery, you know, day afterday and potentially on
adaptation.
So it's a very, let's say,restorative, if you want to call
it area, and I would encourageeverybody to go out there and

(01:18:31):
explore with Common Sense.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
Great place to leave it there.
I'm going to drop a link in theshow notes to your website, but
where else can listeners learna little bit more about the work
that you're doing?

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
well, unfortunately I'm not a very, let's say,
productive, uh, content creator.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
That's fine we've got a lot of content creators out
there that are unproductive, soyeah, well, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
Yeah, I don't have a lot of content.
That website unfortunately is alittle bit late.
You know there in a couple ofyears ago that I'm not writing
some posts there.
We've got a little project thatis called MedHab.
Unfortunately, that is mainlyin Spanish.
So if you are a Spanish speakeror you're trying to understand
or learn Spanish, definitelywe've got a little podcast that

(01:19:16):
we are creating some contentthere.
It's just a narrative podcast.
We are just telling the stories.
It's not a conversation likelike yours, it's more just a
different, different, let's say,format and the rest, yeah, I
don't know.
My twitter probably is the bestplatform where you can follow
me, where I'm a little bit moreactive than you know any other
platforms, and that's everything.

(01:19:37):
I don't know.
Maybe I should think oncreating my I don't know another
website or another podcaster,but at the moment that's enough
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
I mean you're going to be doing enough in the coming
months.
I can see the writing on thewall, so maybe you think time is
going to be your limitingfactor there, which it tends to
be for everybody.
I appreciate it, appreciatecoming on the podcast and I
appreciate you helping solvethese problems for athletes,
because it's one of the biggerones out there yeah, okay, thank
you very much for uh calling meon.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
Yeah, thanks for the great time all right folks,
there you have it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
There you go.
Much thanks to itor for helpingus to unpack this aspect of
high carbohydrate intakes duringracing and how we might adapt
to them during the trainingprocess.
For one, as a coach, I amabsolutely taking away some of
the things that we got to in thelatter part of this
conversations, where maybe theright path to train the gut is

(01:20:32):
to first challenge the anatomyand then challenge the transport
side of the equation, in thatorder, in order to facilitate
alleviating GI distress orhaving or trying to increase the
rate of carbohydrate intakethat we want to take in during a
race.
These are things that athletescan actually start exploring

(01:20:53):
right now.
I know it's getting into theoff season and there's a lot of
talk about that, but trust me,next year in the racing season
is going to come around veryquickly, and the need to start
training and training the gut isgoing to start coming around
quickly as well, and these arethings that we need to actually
keep an eye on, because it's notan instantaneous adaptation.

(01:21:13):
It does take several months ora few months to actually train
the gut properly and to get allthe nutrition systems in order.
So I hope that you guys outthere all take that to heart and
have some and have some thingsto work on, whether that is
whether you're working on themin December, january, february
or any of these months, any ofthese months coming up.
If you like this podcast, pleasefeel free to share it with your

(01:21:36):
friends and your trainingpartners, and maybe the coach
that you're actually that you'reactually working with.
As always, this podcast is freeof any sponsorships or
advertising, and that is one ofthe reasons for that is because
we can talk about anythingnutrition wise.
We don't have to be beholden toany one brand or another.
So the best way to support thispodcast and support this work
is just to share the love.
If you have a training partneror somebody in the space that

(01:21:59):
you think would find value outof this, go ahead and send them
the link, have them consume thecontent, and that helps us out
tremendously over here.
All right, folks, we are back onour regular scheduled program
for the winter.
I'm done traveling for at leastthe short-term time frame, so
expect these podcasts to bereleased weekly.
We're going to have a greatschedule coming up during the

(01:22:21):
winter.
We've got a number of fantasticguests already lined up.
Appreciate the heck out of eachand every one of you listeners
out there and, as always, wewill see you out on the trails.

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High Carbohydrate Intake for Ultrarunners #237

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