Posted by Cris (24.66.94.141) on November 05, 2003 at 14:19:20:
In Reply to: Training/performance question posted by Nigel on November 05, 2003 at 11:43:41:
Nigel, before looking at ways to improve fat burning as your cure, it must first be determined that lack of fat burning is the problem.
a steady state test with a metabolic cart will give an indication of fat metabolism in the RER values. have this test done if possible.
Although 70 to 100g of carbohydrate per hour and more seems like a lot, (about 400 kcal per hour) that much sugar concentration may be retarding gastric emptying. You may in fact be dehydrating your self by taking in this amount of carbohydrate, again, you may not be, this would need to be tested.
What is your water intake durring races?
have you measured your blood sugar throughout an endurance training ride? measure every 20 minutes and see what the values are.
measure your lactate at the same time. At times a short test to discover various lactate thresholds or balance points does not correlate with lactate at a given power output/ heart rate over three hours. test this.
An important point: when an athlete “Bonks”, it is not from lack of fats, but lack of glycogen. At the time when you feel light headed it can be from low glycogen or dehydration (or both) and sore legs from dehydration, acidic muscles or from trigger points in muscles.
I understand you may be saying that if you could use fats more, you could spare glycogen, but to decide on fats as the problem, you must gather more data.
I’ll be back with more thoughts later