Our man at Lucozade is back!

Our resident Sport's Scientist, Matt Furber, offers his opinion on the week gone by and how the runners should be approaching the count-down...

Hi guys, right time for my second blog, I hope that you are all eating enough carbohydrate in your diets! Now it time for -

'Carbohydrate consumption during ultra-endurance running'

Carbohydrate is the main choice of fuel for you muscles, brains and central nervous system. When you run out of carbohydrate your body struggles to function. You have got about 2000 kcal of carbohydrate stored as energy in your body, which is enough to fuel your running for about 90-120 minutes of continuous running.

Once you run out of carbohydrate your body has to rely on fat as the main energy supplier. Fat has a much higher oxygen cost relative to carbohydrate, therefore you have to slow right down to get enough oxygen into the body to produce energy to fuel you muscles, hence the phrase 'hitting the wall' - running out of energy and having to slow down.

By supplementing carbohydrate while you run you will increase the amount of carbohydrate available to to muscles therefore prolonging time to fatigue. In ULTRA endurance running this is of utmost importance for without supplementing your carbohydrate levels your chances of completing the challenge is very slim.

The question is HOW MUCH?

During exercise your body can absorb approximately 30-60 g of carbohydrate per hour, with you stomach being able to process approximately 1 g of carbohydrate per minute. By consuming up to 60g of carbohydrate per hour you will be prolonging fatigue, improve endurance and increase your enjoyment of the event as you will not be in as much pain! Consuming anymore than this and your body may not be able to absorb it, so it will sit in your gut and could cause stomach upsets.

However, everyone is different. One of you may be able to consume 60g of carbohydrate per hour whereas another one may only be able to consume 40g. Therefore your target as ultra endurance runners is to work out the maximum amount of carbohydrate your body can absorb without feeling bloated or getting any stomach upsets. As with everything I am going to talk about, try it in training, do nothing new on the day of the run.

Those of you who have not tried carbo gels, they are a great tool for runners. Each gel has 30g of carbohydrate in, therefore can give you a great hit of carbohydrate. We will be supplying you all with Lucozade carbo gels on the day so I would suggest to train with them so to let your body get used to them in advance. Isotonic sports drinks contain approximately 30 g of carbohydrate in as well. Jelly babies, wine gums, bananas, glucose tablets are all other great ways of getting carbohydrate on board whilst you run. If you do want to use these, work out how much carbohydrate there is in each sweet you take so you can work out your carbohydrate consumption per hour.

Work out a strategy that suits you, I would suggest combining a couple of different carbohydrate sources as this will decrease boredom as you will have something to look forward to. It also will decrease the chance of getting stomach upset as well, as you will not be overloading you stomach with the same source of carbohydrate each time.

You want to take carbohydrate onboard at regular periods - every 15-30 minutes or so you should consume another hit of carbohydrate - 'little and often' is the rule that you should follow. By doing this you will decrease the chance of stomach upset, and have a constant slow release of energy throughout the run.

Next week.....the effects of dehydration and how to combat it!

Hope you all managed to get another week of quality training behind you!! Keep up the good efforts.