Originally Posted by
GhostRider62
You bring up a valid concern for me. I've read many studies on the topic and my conclusion was to not start on the heavy carbs until 30-40 minutes into a long ride (4 hours or more) and to only replace the glycogen that I was using, relying on non-insulin mediated transports. How much time at an endurance pace does it take for GLUT4 to bring glucose into the muscle cell and the resultant glycogen ultimately oxidized ...? The question I never found an answer to was whether consuming an amount of carbs exceeding one's output from oxidation of glycogen would impact insulin response.
Two of the best ultra endurance athletes that I know said they prefer to run a little lean, meaning to err slightly on the low side. That is the conservative side of the question whereas the big drink dogma has us fueling up before rides, drinking 200-400 calories per hour on relatively short rides, and then tell us we need recovery drinks.
I don't know the answer but am surprised how many T2 diabetes are in the cycling community. (Tim Noakes is the Goo Doc, right?)
Yep, that was his name.
Watching Froomie in the background right now - they train to take 100gms per hour, so they are subjecting themselves to this situation often. Race days, training days - probably for the better part of the year.
Like others have said, these guys can burn more that we can, require more & can process more. The avg joe will just be bloated with extra blood sugar and heavy insulin response. For some of us, that = bad outcome.