Why Long Runs and Long Rides are important and how to get the most from them

The PDF below is a followup to this earlier article by Dr Keith Livingstone about how to get the most benefit from your training.  Long Runs and Long Rides

To learn more about Dr Keith, the Author of HIT, please go here.

Here is Dr Keith Livingstones book on Lydiards principles.

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About this website

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

Long Runs - Long Rides and their effect on fat and carbohydrate metabolism

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your time. I recieved your e-mail address from your website after reading Keith Livingstones book on Lydiards principles. Am so very happy to be able to ask you a question

In the book Lydiard principle recommends doing long runs with no carbs. I'm a cyclist trying to use his principles, and on the bike a long equivalent ride would be 5hrs or so. Would you recommend going this long also without carbs? Can only manage 3.5hrs at the moment but am working on it.

All other areas look as though they can transfer across ok :)

Many thanks Gary, take good care Clarence 

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Gary:

Clarence, rather than muddle about trying to explain what can be quite confusing; especially since what we are saying seems to run counter to "mainstream" advice, I decided to ask the author of the book, Dr Keith Livingstone, to do the honours of providing the answer.

As an aside; Keith and his twin brother, Colin, were born in Kenya and raised in New Zealand. In their 20's Keith and Colin were more like rockets than runners. While I can claim to have done some training runs with Keith, I saw mostly his rear end while he set about innocently wasting me!  Keith was one of the most promising 5 and 10km runners during the 70's but he chose study over running which was a good decision - I guess.  Keith is a bit of a bright spark and he knows his exercise physiology back to front, especially as it applies to running and cycling.

For a little more about Keith, the Author of HIT, please go here.

Just one further comment from me: What Keith explains below may appear to be running contrary to what most mainstream nutritionists and exercise physiologists tend to advise - like loading up on carbs here, there and every-where.  I think the root cause of this dissonance in advice is because the food industry has captured academia and the media: Research that sets out to prove the benefits of hi-carbs gets the funding and the ones that produce findings in support of carbs gets all of the publicity.  The rest get buried - if they ever get off the ground in the first place.  Over 70% of academic studies never see the light of day and fewer than 10% of these ever get published in a peer reviewed journal and then only a few of these get into the popular press - and this is after the funding bias in favour of carbs has done the first weeding out!  You see; the food industry want you to buy highly priced super-processed foods (if you can call this food!) that are made from super-cheap stuff like soy, corn and wheat extracts.  There is no money to be made by trying to sell you a corn cob.  The money is in taking that raw 10 cent corn cob and converting it into several sports gels and selling them to you for 2-5 bucks each.  Got the idea?

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Keith:
In my book Healthy Intelligent Training, I advised runners that they SHOULD NOT try to do their long runs by running the last few kilometers by sucking on carbohydrate gel sachets, etc.

Why would I say this? Surely that heavy-legged, wooden feeling we get as the last of the accessible carbohydrate stores gets used up isn't desireable, is it? Well, in a circular way, yes- it’s extremely desirable. There’s really no better way I know of to get the body to switch its attention to conserving glycogen (stored muscle sugars in endless chains of glucose molecules) than by taking that tank to ‘empty’ a few weeks in a row in long efforts until the body then says “But hey- I can MAKE more of this stuff by stripping down fatty acids into glucose by another route!”

(“Triglycerides”, which are often represented as “bad fats” by people who should study and think more, can be considered “Three -glucoses”. With a twist of a bit of each end, and a ‘yank’ between each section, done in the machinery of the slow twitch fibers’ mitochondria, in each of those fatty acid molecules there are a few potential high-energy glucose molecules once they've been cleaved off and re-badged.)

A body trained this way on the Lydiard principles will soon adapt, and the “heavy-legged, wooden feeling” doesn’t occur at all in long runs over two and a half hours any more. In fact, one starts to move along at very good high-aerobic speeds on a mixed-fuel of carbs and fats, just about as efficiently as on carbs alone. This leaves decent stores of muscle glycogen that can be accessed late into a long aerobic race like the marathon, or late into a competitive ride, without the need for “gu-gels”, etc. If you train to get super-efficient on dual-fuels, and hop into a race , you can always “top up” within the race for a superlative result (maybe a big negative split!). However- practice it once or twice outside a race just so that you don’t have any surprises on race day!

So if we can find a way to ‘train’ the body over a number of weeks in incremental steps to strip down the nearly endless supplies of free fatty acids floating around, and re-badge the ‘triglycerides’ that make up a high proportion of accessible fats within the muscle cells into glucose for higher-power output, then we’re using the metabolic portion of the slow twitch fibers to supply ready fuel for our fast twitch fibers that supply the power necessary to move anyone at much faster than 4m20s Km speed.(8.5 mph for a runner).

On long runs, we should make an effort to stay hydrated , because glucose needs a fair bit of water around it to get into the system. The way to get things going when running is something like a 3.5 hour run with the first 90 minutes at slow jogging pace, and then do a normal 2 hour run on top of that, and see how good you feel at the end.

On long bike rides, the trick is to never go off the small front ring on a road bike, and ‘spin’ for as long as possible at low intensities, with the heart rate quite low, near only 65% intensity on the Karvonen Heart Rate scale. (Gary explain this.. it’s in the book- I’m going to bed). (Gary’s advice: Read the book!)

On other rides through the week that have different purposes to the fat utilisation purpose of the long ride, naturally enough we go at sustained intensities that are higher, to our level of training and tolerance.http://hitsystem.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/book3.jpg

The great, and very very big Miguel Indurain, one of the few multiple winners of the Tour de France, gave Lance Armstrong this low-intensity tip as more or less his ‘secret’ to conserving muscle glycogen. On the big front ring, we can push higher speeds for sure, but it’s done by utilising higher power output that tips the scales towards more fast twitch fibre use, and thereby ripping through glycogen stores. Since we do much the same amount of nett work for a given distance, whether we do it with high speed and high power, or whether we take it a little steadier, the small front ring and lower heart rate will make sure you’re using slow twitch more, thereby stripping down those triglycerides and free fatty acids in the mitochondrial energy factories without touching your glycogen stores much.

As a rule of thumb, the more strength or power required to turn the pedal, the more the likelihood you’re recruiting fast twitch and using glycogen, and vice-versa with respect to the far more aerobically efficient and fuel-efficient slow twitch fibers.

So if your ego can handle fat weekend warriors with spare tyres passing you on the waterfront, start there, but also be prepared for the odd granny to go past. Then you’re really doing it well, and after your fatty acid metabolism kicks in, you’ll find you can go a very long way without the need for carbs.

HOWEVER- always have some carbs on hand just in case your system isn’t quite right one day and you ’bonk’ thirty kilometers from home! I’d also suggest eating every couple of hours after about 5 hours if you do longer rides; toasted sandwiches of cheese, ham, and tomato were perfect fuel for me when I did a few all-day charity rides several years ago, as well as a water-pack with grape juice (alkali, full of potassium) diluted by about 1:3 with water. Fruit juices such as apple or grape are alkali (= good!), whereas orange juice is too acidic and can muck up your stomach quite badly. Any fruit drink should be diluted to roughly 6g sugars/liter (6% w/v), or less on hot days.

Keith Livingstone

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About this website

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

How much vitamin C should an athlete take to keep healthy?

It is the common experience of many athletes to finish an exhausting event like a marathon or iron man triathlon and feel surprisingly good; only to crash several days later going down with a virus an injury like tendonitis or feeling very depressed and tired or all of the latter. This may be fully or partially due to the delayed effects of the extreme oxidative stress suffered during the exhausting exercise (This can be either from competition or heavy training). In many cases, such as multiday events there is the added stress of sleep deprivation which hammers one's immune system.

"A practical way to reason is that, if a person carrying out heavy exercise feels that he or she has colds too often, he or she could (should?) try vitamin C.

The doses have been about 0.5 to 2 grams per day in the controlled trials and that kind of doses are safe for ordinary people (and cheap). In the US nutritional recommendations they consider that safe range goes to some 2 g/day. That is a conservative limit in my opinion, but with the current knowledge, I do not think it makes much sense to use substantially larger doses even though I consider them safe.

If we assume that the oxidative stress caused by the marathon would b protected against by higher vitamin C levels in the body, I think that the time scale would be initiation a few days before and continuing a few days after the marathon (one or two times per day I would think)". Harri

(Excerpt from correspondence between Gary Moller and Harri Hemilä, MD, PhD,Department of Public Health,University of Helsinki, Finland. Dr Hemilä is one of the world's leading researchers into the benefits or otherwide of substances like vitamin C and vitamin E).

Dr Hemilä's impressive work in this area makes fascinating reading.

With what we know about free radicals and how they are generated during exhasting or intense exercise, it would make good sense to anticipate excessive oxidative stress to your body and take preventive measures, if you are doing heavy training or have an exhausting competition coming up. This migh also apply to work and personal situations that may be emotionally as well as physically exhausting.

Using Dr Hemilä's advice as our guide, here is my guidance:

• If you are doing exhausting training take 1-2,000mg of vitamin C per day
• If you have a history of frequent colds, take towards the upper level (2,000mg)
• Take 2,000mg per day over the 2 days before an exhausting competition and for 2 days afterwards
• If you are taking Wagner Ester C, then you could reduce these guidelines to 50% and you will probably get the same protection or still better.
• Regardless of vitamin C supplementation, take a daily Super Smoothie that has red berries and whey protein added and eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.
• Go to sleep before 11pm every night and be out of bed by 7am
• Get plenty of sunlight on your body to boost your vitamin D levels. Get a blood test of your levels.
• An athlete requires more minerals and B group vitamins than most
• Other antioxidant food extracts like high potency garlic extracts could be added to the diet
• Have recovery days within your training schedule and take 3-5 days rest after an exhausting competition like a marathon.

I will be posting some guidelines about use of vitamin E which is currently a confused and controversial matter.

Nutrition Advice for Endurance Athletes

Nutrition Advice for Athetes

The following advice is gleaned from various presentations I have made on athletic conditioning.

• Let's start with what some “experts” recommend: “Here are some examples of foods that make good pre-competition meals:”
• White toast with margarine, honey and banana
• Muffins or crumpets with jam and margarine
• Creamed rice and tinned fruit in syrup
• Pancakes with yogurt and tinned fruit in syrup
• Pancakes, sugar or maple syrup and tinned fruit
• Spaghetti on white toast, with margarine
  Low-fibre cereal e.g. rice bubbles with milk and tinned fruit
• For those people who tend to be nervous before an event, a liquid meal replacement may be better tolerated than solid food.

In my opinion, these are very unhealthy guidelines that will do nothing to enhance the performance of the athlete on the day and may, over the long term, cause serious health problems including gum disease, tooth loss, digestive disorders, arthritis, dementia, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. A diet that is saturated with refined flour and sugars along with accompanying preservatives, colourings, trans-fatty acids and the rest do no good at all.

Energy sources during exercise

For all practical purposes, there are just two energy sources during exercise:

Fats – unlimited supply
Carbohydrates (CHO) – about 1.5 hours

As exercise intensity increases, so does the proportion of carbohydrate used - Intense exercise rapidly depletes these limited CHO stores

Signs of CHO depletion

• Fatigue
• Aching, heavy legs
• Difficulty changing gear
• Yawning, lack of concentration
• Bad temper
• Hypothermia
  

Conserve CHO stores by

• Training fat usage
• Replenishing CHO as you go
• Low intensity, steady-state pacing
  

General dietary recommendations for athletes

• Reduce intake of processed carbohydrates, including honey and sugar
• Reduce intake of processed grains, especially white flour
• Reduce potato consumption
• Reduce intake of highly processed foods
• Reduce intake of hard animal fats
• Reduce intake of carbonated drinks
• Reduce fruit juice consumption
  Reduce or eliminate reliance on caffeine drinks
• Eat more leafy greens and coloured veges
• Choose whole grain foods
• Eat more nuts
• Consume more quality oils
  Eat fish 2-3 times per week
• Eat marmite/vegemite daily
• Eat more raw fruit including berries

Supplementing
By following a healthy diet as outlined, a moderate approach to supplementation is all that is required to maintain optimum health and physical performance. There is no need to go overboard with supplementation. There is good evidence for adding the following extras to your healthy diet, if you feel so inclined:

Glucosamine and chondroitin powder - This will help protect your joints during periods of high wear and tear.Buy the powder – not the pills - these are over-priced and supply insufficient ingredients to be effective
Omega 3 oil - Such as flaxseed, olive and fish oil has a long list of health benefits that grows by the day and proving essential for athletes. During periods of low exposure to the sun such as during winter, or when confined indoors, such as when in hospital, have additional vitamin D in the form of 1-2 teaspoons of cod liver oil per day (Cod liver oil is a rich source of vitamin D).
Multi Vitamins - Principally the water soluble ones including vitamin E, vitamin C and all of the B group
Multi mineral - Chelated minerals are generally the most readily absorbed. Our soils and the foods that are grown in them are insufficient to meet daily needs of minerals, especially for athletes. An athletes needs more, the most important being magnesium and calcium.

Supplementation is recommended for those in heavy training or when recovering from ill health and I also recommend a daily nutrient-packed Super Smoothie.

Nutrition during endurance training sessions (longer than 2 hours)

• Learn to consume fluid sufficient to match fluid losses - Not too much and not too little. (1 Kg weight loss measured immediately after exercise = 1 liter of water).
• Train your system to use body fat during training by exercising once a week for longer than 1.5 hours without consuming any CHO and by having a diet that is low in refined CHO.
• Practice eating on the run 1x/wk and during morning sessions so that your stomach gets used to the sensation, if your competition demands eating and drinking on the run.
• Experiment with a cut down Super Smoothie. Keep it cool and out of the sun. Better still - make it up as you go.
• During a very long session, try stopping partway, have a few sandwiches, if you need to then continue on.

Example: Auckland to Wellington non-stop road race (Early 1970’s)
There was a direct relationship between competitors’ placings and daily calorie consumption. The lowest and most inconsistent calorie consumers did not finish or came well behind. It was won by Max Telford. Max consumed up to 14,000 calories/day. Max’s primary source of calories was Sustagen liquid meals which is similar to the Super Smoothie but not quite as good!

Nutrition during endurance competition (longer than 2 hours)
Note: You should have practiced this many times in training to ensure you can get through competition without suffering digestive upsets.

• The harder and more violent the exercise, the less fluids and solids it is possible to consume without digestive distress.
• Experiment with formulations and concentrations in training to settle on what works for you.
• Last three days prior to competition may include some extra carbohydrates, but remains essentially your healthy diet.
• Do not eat any heavy foods within 3 hours of running
  Have a Super Smoothie and/or sandwiches >1 hr before competition and another cut down Super Smoothie 15 minutes before starting. Cut down Super Smoothie every 1hr of running.
• Go easy while stomach contents settle – especially if running on a downhill
  ½ hr rest with food & liquid every 3 hrs – But don’t get cold and seize up!
  

If you hit the “wall”:

• Get extra carbohydrates on board
• Glucose drink
• Super Smoothie
• Hot, sweet cup of tea
• Rest ½ hour and/or do an extended period of power walking or other less strenuous exercise while energy levels are restored
• Check that you are not dehydrated/over hydrated?
• Are there signs of hypothermia/hyperthermia (Refer to my E-Book on Hypothermia and Sport)?
• Are you going too hard and depleting glycogen stores too fast?

My Blog and E-Publications have heaps of additional and detailed information about nutrition for sports and general health. Search for them (include the archives) and have a good read. The E-Book, Training for a Marathon by Lorraine Moller and me is probably the best start. If your question remains unanswered, then you will just have to send me an email and I will do the best I can to assist.