For marathon runners

muth3rluvx2

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130731888&sc=fb&cc=fp

It's an interesting article. Hope its helpful to some (not a marathoner myself).

LotusF1ower

Very informative article, thanks for posting this!

The calculator bit was also very intersting!!

FrenchMob

I hope that there's more to it that they're not getting into, as it's not that simple. By instructing her to eat 1900 cals of carbs before the race, is he assuming her glycogen stores are completely empty or full? If they're full, then carb loading that much is only going to be stored as fat. Other factors like terrain, heat & humidity, etc etc effect your energy usage. To simply say "you can store this much glycogen, your VO2 max is this, that means you can run a marathon that fast" is simply ludicrous.

Papucho

Thanks for the article, I've been running marathons about twenty years now, matter of fact I'm running the Marine Corps Marathon next week. It's an interesting article. It sounded to me like he was talking about potential results as far as carbo loading was concerned, and I'm thinking' he was assuming glycogen stores were starting at zero--empty. He did say she would require lots of training and grit to complete a marathon in the time he specified, carbo loading alone wouldn't be enough. Being a marathoner himself--a fast one, I'm sure he knows how many different factors can affect energy consumption. All in all I found it interesting, but nothing replaces quality training.

muth3rluvx2

Not to mention he's simultaneously getting doctorates at MIT and Harvard - and the formula alone was rather lengthy in his scientific report. So, I'd go ahead and assume the guy knows what he's talking about and for anyone that's questioning his formula, recommendations, etc - maybe follow the link to the full study and read it. It doesn't sound like light research though. The article mentioned needing a medical PhD to comprehend it. That's some pretty serious research.