Runners...to carb or not to carb?

I eat high carb every day, normally 300 to 500, sometimes more. I run twice on most days and don't eat any differently before long runs.

I eat what most would call "low Carb" and have no problem on my long runs. My main thing is to make sure I eat an hour before I run and hydrate properly. I find I have more trouble if I don't drink an electrolyte drink than not eating enough carbs. I'll eat a peice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and I'm good to go. All my long runs are over 6 miles. This week will be 10.

The night before a long run (usually 5+ miles) or a race, I'm all carbs all the time. Haha.

It depends on what works for you, but I learned the first time around training for a half-marathon that carbs are good. Experiment a bit and see what works. (:

Find what works for you. I carb load the night before and the day of races and long runs. My mom can run a marathon with just drinking a cup of coffee. I tend to get hungry on my runs if I don't carb load and it is miserable for me.

i am currently in training for a full...so i have learned thru trial and error that my carb intake is contingent on my mileage ....now, i dont know if others will agree but for ME i have been doing "bolus" carbs AFTER my longer runs (15-18milers) ...so within the hour after i run those longer runs i will load up and be good....i go into a carb starve prior to the run and my energy/stamina/speed is incredible. i have tried several different ways throughout my training and that is what works best for me.

I can't run low carbing. I feel sluggish and tired. My legs get heavy and I can't keep going past about 5 miles. After about 6 I start throwing up. Your body NEEDS a quick efficient energy source to run long distances. There's a reason sports recovery drinks are 4:1 carbs:protein. That's the ratio you need.

"carbing up" doesn't work for everyone. If I were a runner, it certainly would not work for me. I'm sure others can attest as well. I am among those for whom carbs turn more to fat than to energy. Doesn't matter when it is whole grain, potatoes, or processed.
I mostly limit my carb to those found in green beans, small amounts of carrots and corn.
Every time I have any sort of bread I feel it for days afterward. So I limit it to only when it is unavoidable.

There is no single "right" answer.
There are many people who run several marathons a year and constantly train but never lose fat until they reduce carb intake while keeping total calories the same.

And it is not true that anyone can be a distance runner. One must have a metabolism that is capable of converting carbs to energy not fat. There is a reason all the world class runners have almost no body fat. And it is not because they run a lot.

And it is not true that anyone can be a distance runner. One must have a metabolism that is capable of converting carbs to energy not fat. There is a reason all the world class runners have almost no body fat. And it is not because they run a lot.

While indeed true not anyone can be distance runner, opposite reason for the pro's. Everybody's system turns carbs into energy. In fact too many people go hard everyday and train nothing but their glucose energy systems, which isn't great for endurance.

Pro's train their aerobic system to burn more fat at higher effort, the carb burning comes naturally as intensity comes up. Something they have to watch for too. Because of limited glucose storage they too can go out too quick, run out of glucose stores, and "hit the wall" and performance suffers massively as muscle is torn down to convert to glucose to supply the muscles. You can still see that in the marathon contenders sometimes - someone went out too fast, not enough training or recovery, whatever. They hit, they slow.

1lb of fat at 3500 calories of energy, used about 50% of the time by a well trained marathoner, can get them through 2 marathons actually.
The limiting factor is the glucose stores that if done just right, can get them through 1 marathon at race pace.

They are lean on fat precisely because they are running. Ever seen marathoner come out of some injury time? They can get fat just like anyone else.

For me, it's not so much carbs as calories. I can't run more than 10 miles unless I up my calories a bit at least a day or two preceding my run. It could be a mental thing, but it just feels like a physical drain, like I have no energy... if I don't load up.

FTR: I ate at maintenance for a week before my half marathon in March to make sure I didn't have performance problems.

sorry to take over but how can you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar??

Workout in that zone. It's only good for weight loss if you remember that you only have to replenish the glucose stores by the time of the next workout, obviously not the fat stores that were used up.

While true that you will burn the same quantity of fat at higher intensities as at lower (say 250 calories worth), if you burned 500 total for 1 hr, you need only eat back 250 extra carbs before your next workout. If you burned 750 total at higher intensity for 1 hr, you still burned 250 calories of fat, but now you should really eat back at least 500 extra calories of carbs to replenish that. Or the next day cardio will be cutting into stores never topped off. Doing that day after day is bad news for muscle retention.

That's just a precursor to why it's alright to use the fat-burning zone (better called Active Recovery zone), actually up into the aerobic zone, as opposed to going all out all the time.

Which is what far to many do each and every workout, which isn't smart either. Your body learns to go for the carb burning first, not the fat-burning. Which if you do 30 min max each day, fine and no problem.
If your intent is to be a runner and do distance, you'll have a problem.

You can always start out with lower HR and whatever pace allows it, and you will get faster once the cardio-respiratory system starts maximizing. And less injury prone.
It's much harder if not impossible to start out with higher HR and max out, and hope to stretch that into longer distances somehow. And more injury prone for the pounding you give yourself.

So to train your body to burn fat easier instead of carbs, do about mid-Aerobic HR zone training. Once that stops showing progress in improved pace, then some higher end training is in order.

Here's great story of just how effective it can work. I took 2 weeks to see improvement. Mark here was much faster than me and much more trained on the wrong side, took longer. Same results though.

http://www.markallenonline.com/maoArticles.aspx?AID=2