Nutrition Deep Dive: The Evolution of High Carb Fueling

In this solo episode of The Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, Katie takes a deep dive into the fascinating evolution of endurance fueling and how high-carb strategies are reshaping modern performance. From the early days of marathon racing in the late 1800s—when athletes fueled with steak, eggs, whiskey, and even avoided water—to today’s precision fueling strategies of 80–120 grams of carbs per hour, Katie explores how sports nutrition has transformed over time.

Using recent breakthroughs in marathon performance, including two sub-2-hour marathon performances in the London marathon, Katie examines the major factors driving athletes faster than ever before: fueling, shoe technology, training advancements, recovery science, and evolving sports nutrition products. This deep dive focuses on the fueling and sports nutrition products. 

This episode covers:

• The surprising history of marathon fueling
• Why athletes once believed dehydration improved performance
• The discovery of glycogen and carbohydrate loading
• The rise of Gatorade, gels, and modern sports nutrition
• The low-carb/high-fat era and why many elite athletes have moved away from it
• How under-fueling still impacts many endurance athletes today
• The importance of gut training and individualized fueling
• Why modern athletes are prioritizing fueling over simply staying lean
• The future of high-carb fueling and endurance performance

Katie also reflects on how outdated “tough it out” mindsets still influence athletes today and explains why fueling is no longer viewed as separate from training—but an essential part of it.

Whether you're a marathoner, triathlete, cyclist, or endurance athlete looking to improve performance and recovery, this episode offers valuable insight into how fueling strategies have evolved—and where they may be heading next.

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hi, welcome to the endurance athlete journey podcast. This is Katie from Fuel to Run. I'm a registered dietitian sports, sports dietitian and running coach, and I'm one of the co-hosts of the Endurance Athlete Journey podcast. Today I am doing a solo episode. So it's going to be me doing a deep dive into high carb fueling. And so to give a little bit of background about this and kind of what exactly I'm going to be talking about, uh basically I'm going to run through kind of the history of carb fueling. So like a little bit of a history journey. I'm not too not too much of a deep dive into the history, but just a little bit of a brief history of fueling and kind of where we are today. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is because recently in the London Marathon, we had two male athletes go under two hours. I mean, it's incredible. And, you know, so we have like this, I don't know, just this amazing thing going on in marathon running right now and in running in general, but mostly kind of marathon running, um, where athletes are just getting so fast. And so before we even dive into the carb thing, I I think um the reason I will brought brought this up is because I think there are like a handful of things that are propelling athletes forward, um, that are helping athletes now break these like credible barriers. And um one of them is fueling and specifically this like movement of extremely high carb fueling. And I do think that's moving the dial quite a bit. So I wanted to talk about that. I think there's more than that. I mean, obviously, with the it's not just the fueling. I mean, obviously, it's not like all of a sudden we're fueling with more carbs, and that's allowing people to just based off of that alone run under two hours. No, it's like much more than that. There's shoe technology, which is getting better and better, helping people be faster, and allowing people to be able to run that in those incredible speeds for like an entire 26 miles. We have these, you know, shoes that are making huge difference in time. I don't think we would be where we are today with these times without the shoe technology. That's a huge factor. Obviously, the way we train is going to be a factor. So we're going, we have had some changes in just how athletes train, putting that training and physiology and knowledge of recovery and all of those things into practice. And athletes are just smarter about how they train. Um, there's just a lot more resources available for athletes to be able to train hard and recover better. That's a big piece of it. So we've got a few things. So fueling, shoe technology, the way athletes are training. You know, I don't want to dive into this too much, but unfortunately, I do think that probably there is a little bit of for some athletes, and I'm not saying this is true for those two men that became under two, um, but I do think that drugs, you know, could be a potential piece here. Again, I know that might get some pushback for that, but and I'd love, I mean, honestly, I really want to think that somehow marathon runners and and uh and and runners in general are clean and that they're all following the rules, but the reality is that's not true. The technology we have for drug, you know, evasion, um, you know, people are pretty sophisticated in the way that they take drugs and administer them, and there's there's a lot going under the surface that we don't know there, and so it's hard to say we will we probably won't know. And I know there was a lot of testing going on, especially with Sebastian Sale. Um, you know, so we'd like to really hope in our heart of hearts that there's that he's clean, of course. Um, but we don't know. I I know there's i uh it maybe not them, but there's obviously athletes that are kind of dirty in that respect, and I don't um and I do think that's part of why everyone's getting faster. It's not like maybe the main thing, but we have to acknowledge that that's the case and that I wish I wish running was innocent, but it's not. So there's there's a few factors going on there. Am I an expert in drug testing and drug um, you know, how that works? Not really, but I think it's worth mentioning um because that's probably sort of under the surface a little bit of what's going on here. Um but I do think that a piece of it, of course, is fueling. And so that's what we're going to talk about today because that's really where my expertise is. So I want to focus on that. So lots of things going into these really fast times, fueling being one of them. I thought it would be just fun to talk about what's going on here and where we came from and where we are now in terms of fueling, especially during, and just kind of go along a little journey, let's say, of of the fueling. So I have some notes uh I just want to look look at. So if you see me kind of looking at that, I did take some notes. Um what's interesting is you know, we really started picking up running marathons more popularly in the late 1800s, is kind of when the marathon became an actual race, an actual thing. You know, we especially mostly men at the time were running marathons, um, Boston Marathon, uh, the Olympics incorporated the marathon. So we we start to see this in popularity of this much longer race, 26.2 miles. And when and when we first started run, when humans first started sort of popularizing this longer distance race, we didn't know very much at all about fueling. In fact, arguably we were doing a lot of things very wrong. And so that that would be an interesting starting point. So let's kind of start back there in the late 1800s. Um let's go through the history. So what were people fueling with at that time? Honestly, like the pre-race strategy uh uh would sometimes consist of things like eggs and steak, and so the belief at the time being that you needed to fuel with protein, uh, maybe fat, uh, but the the idea of fueling with carbs, we just didn't have the knowledge at this point uh to say, like, you know, fuel with carbs. So athletes were actually fueling sometimes before races with um, you know, eating these high, high, I can even imagine having steak and eggs before my my marathon. Uh so that's that's an interesting little tidbit there. Um there, you know, water was, you know, obviously they would maybe drink water to coffee or tea beforehand. Um there wasn't like the aid stations that we have now. And so athletes initially were kind of like on their own to do whatever they needed to do. They didn't have these like perfectly nice aid stations with like little cups to drink from and like options for fueling. It wasn't like that at all. It was kind of like a free-for-all because mostly we didn't they didn't know what they needed. You just kind of ran and and hoped you would finish uh in in in one piece and not bonk, I guess. Um, sometimes athletes during this time frame would drink, you know, sometimes I would eat like sugar cubes. So certain people maybe realize that there's that sort of initial like experimentation that's going on of like, oh, and I have a sugar cube or something like that, I feel a little bit better. So there was a little bit of that type of experimentation. But you know, the funny part is when I was doing some research is that alcohol was actually something that was often offered along the course. So whiskey, brandy, you know, um shots of alcohol, different various types, uh, athletes would actually consume along their way in the marathon. So, you know, we know how bad alcohol is now. I'm I it's funny because I was um volunteering at the Colorado Marathon a couple of weeks ago, and I was coaching an athlete, and I was running, trying to find her along the way to find a run with her as she was finishing up her marathon, and there was a table there that somebody was offering shots, and I was thinking to myself, oh, like I don't think I could do that during my race, but I know people do still. Uh, but I don't we don't tend to ever see like the elite athletes, at least during the race when they're serious, having alcohol. I mean, I know there are some that maybe have an al piece, a little bit of beer afterwards, or you know, we kind of see that a little bit when people are sort of doing it for fun, but it's definitely not a recommended fuel source. Uh, but obviously it's still being offered along the course. And I think most marathons, if you're running along, you can find somebody giving away shots or beer. Um, but I don't generally think that's advised. Um, it's just kind of funny because it's it's still it still happens today. Uh sometimes they would have beef broth or, you know, even eat protein or meat during um, but most of the time there was just a whole lot of nothing being consumed during these marathons early on. In fact, um dehydration was actually sometimes considered a benefit because the coaches believed that actually water would weaken performance. So you can see where they kind of had it a little bit backwards where don't drink at all, because if you drink, you're going to actually weaken your performance, um, which may be there might be some truth to that if all you're drinking is water and you're drinking a lot of it. But um, for the most part, there wasn't very much knowledge. Um, and even in some cases, athletes who would stop to drink water, it was seen as a sign of a weakness. So, you know, if you stop to have anything during your marathon, it was like, oh, you're you're you know, you gotta tough it out. You gotta tough this out. You don't we marathoners don't consume anything. You just gotta do the race, see who's the last man standing. Um, so it's just interesting because I think that this is a extreme example, but there are certain things from our past that sort of pervasive myths that still exist to today that we're sort of overcoming. Um maybe I would also argue uh we've kind of swung in this extreme opposite direction from that more recently. And I'll talk a little bit about that. It's kind of like well, we went from like tough it out, don't drink anything, don't eat anything, to like let's stuff as many carbs as we can and hope it works, you know. So it's it's kind of swung the opposite way. Um, and sometimes, you know, there is this for for all of us who are maybe not elite athletes, we do have to consider balancing performance and health. And is it, you know, we'll talk about the high carb movement. And is that really healthy for us to be consuming that many carbs? Um, and and in but I think in most cases, like even though there's this high carb movement, you know, we still have a pervasive underfueling that's happening within the general athlete population. And so I I do want to address that. Um, because I do think there's a lot of this, I think this general early-on toughing it out mentality. I think a lot of athletes um kind of still have some of this uh mentality. So I just had a few examples of nutrition strategies from these early days. So early uh Tour de France writers would sometimes drink wine during their races. So think about how it would be incredibly crazy, I think, these days to see uh, you know, a Tour de France athlete drinking a bottle of wine or having wine, you know, big because they were so dialed in, you know, with their nutrition now and it's so competitive. I just think that probably wouldn't happen today. Um, you know, but like I said, marathonners once avoided water stations entirely if there were water stations. Uh and then the elite cyclists, even up to the 1990s, often underfueled and uh intentionally to stay lean. So the power to weight ratio, and that still actually happens a bit today as well. That's not uh completely gone away. So what happened in like the 1940s to the 1960s? We started to have a lot more research into fueling. So we actually started to have scientists just be curious about what's going on, what do we really need when we're running, uh, you know, what what's going on from a physiological perspective? And that's when we kind of discovered that muscle glycogen is a thing. So we m scientists actually found that there is a lot of sugar stored in our muscle and a little bit in our liver, and that when we exercise, we deplete that muscle that that glucose and then that glycogen. And um that's actually a big piece of performance. So we started to sort of put the two to pieces together of like carbs and muscle glycogen and hitting the wall and bonking, and so you have this realization that, oh, okay, when we're running longer distances, one of the limiting factors is glycogen. And when we deplete glycogen, that's associated with bonking. And so we started to discover that um and that the fatigue that comes with glycogen depletion, and that carbohydrates actually are the preferred fuel source for endurance efforts. So we're sort of starting to say, oh, well, you know, maybe initially we thought protein was important, uh, and then we're kind of coming this direction of like carbs are actually really important. Um, there's a a scientific understanding for that concept of hitting the wall. What does that mean? Well, it probably means glycogen is depleted. So in the 1960s, there is this realization that, oh, we actually need carbs, so carb loading starts to become popular. Athletes started intentionally eating more pasta, red, rice, potatoes, things like that before their events. But I don't think there was a lot of a lot of consuming things during. Um, you know, I think some athletes were kind of discovering, you know, there there wasn't any products anyway. So that's part of the problem is if you were going to take in something during, you were kind of reliant on basic foods like bananas or potatoes or you know, things like that to bring with you. There were no goose, there were no specialty products, not in the not in the 1950s and 1960s. There wasn't anything like that. So, you know, athletes who were discovering that carbs were helpful were kind of playing around and having things that they brought with them. Um and it was actually though in 1965 that Gatorade started. So they were from the University of Florida. The scientists there just decided to kind of make this sugar and electrolyte drink that they would give their football players. They kind of discovered that, oh, this is actually really helpful in you know, keeping them hydrated and delaying fatigue. And so that's kind of the the initial start of Gatorade and that concept of like having a carb drink mix during exercise is actually beneficial. And so that's the conception, uh, the beginning of Gatorade, and that's a kind of a cool history there. Um athletes, more and more athletes were sort of realizing the importance of carbohydrates, and researchers were finding that, you know, it's probably better, not it's probably better to have carbs and electrolytes in the drink mix versus just water alone in terms of um preventing things like hyponatrimia and heat stroke and helping athletes compete better. So they were actually helping, you know, at that point, we also kind of see a boom with the running back in the 1970s. There's kind of like this boom of running, like more and more people are running. You see women uh who are starting to run and getting into some of these uh marathons, even if they weren't allowed, and and you have this sort of like back at that point there was a big increase in like the uh popularity of running in marathons. And so you kind of all with that also see this like the science is growing, the those the understanding of the physiology and what's happening with the marathon is growing, and people are starting to recognize that they need to fuel and hydrate um during, not just before and after. Like I said, most people were sort of eating things that they could find easily or access, you know, the food items. And then it wasn't until about 1994 that um the company Goo, you know, the the gel goo, um, they have the gels that you can take. They actually started in 1994. So we start to see like products. This is when we start to see the sports nutrition um industry sort of start with different products that are available for fueling during uh activity. So I think goo is a big one. There's others out there that kind of start around this era of not only Gatorade um and with their uh drinks, but other types of drinks that we're seeing, and different types of sports nutrition products are starting to be developed to help athletes fuel better. So we see this happening. It's also the uh uh around the time that um sports scientists started to recognize that around this time, maybe late 1990s, early 2000s, hey, 60 grams of carbs an hour is about adequate. This is what we kind of would recommend most people do for fueling. Um, some of that is just based off of uh kind of where the limit is in terms of how much we can absorb. So in general, we can only absorb one gram of glucose per minute. So about 60 grams. If you add fructose in, it's about 0.8 grams per minute. So you can do about 1.8 grams per minute absorption of both together. And so that's a little more than 60 grams, yes, but there is a little bit of a limitation there. So I think generally it was like, okay, 60 grams, that's a pretty good amount per hour of carbs. And having some sort of mixture between maybe glucose and fructose is also helpful. So we're starting to recognize this, and athletes are starting to fuel a little bit more during exercise. Um, you know, but even then, I think pervasively, like not most athletes at this point, we're probably not generally getting 60 grams an hour. Um, partly because I think we're just learning about it and there is this sort of history of sort of toughing it out. But we also have in the early 2000s this this sort of realization that, well, yes, carbs are important, but we have all of this fat stored that we can use for fuel. And it's thousands of calories versus only maybe a couple thousand calories at most in a glycogen. Now we have an abundant amount of calories that we have for fat. And so a lot of people, a lot of athletes and even, you know, scientists and physiologists were saying, well, why don't we really focus more on tapping into fat stores? Well, can we can we make it so athletes can actually burn more fat and fuel that way so that we don't have to rely so much on carbohydrate because we have an abundant amount of fat. So it's really at this point we sort of see this high fat, low carb movement start to appear not only with uh the general sort of keto people that are just trying to lose weight or do it for other reasons. We sort of see this also sort of coming into the endurance athlete community. And around 2010, 2015, it's getting a little more popular with this era of athletes wanting to improve their fat burning capacity. Um unfortunately, with that, I do think that we, you know, there is this that sort of happens. A lot of athletes are experimenting with that and maybe realizing that there's a limitation. You know, you can burn more fat at the expense of burning carbohydrate, especially if you're just doing keto and and and fat completely fat adapted. You can't maybe tap into some of those higher intensities. And so for more elite athletes, I think there wasn't a tendency for many elite athletes to go that direction, although there's probably examples of some, especially in the um community of ultra endurance, but really that sort of there's a limitation with fat. So we're starting to realize, okay, maybe it's good to be more fat adapted, but we don't want to be, we want to be metabolically flexible, be able to use both fats and carbs, and we don't necessarily want to rely only on fat because there's a limitation with performance. There really is. There's no way you can be a high fat athlete and have, you know, run a sub two hour marathon. There's just no physiological way because it takes so much oxygen to burn fat, you cannot tap into some of those higher intensities and Burn be burning fat is physiologically, it's not possible. So I think that's kind of where, you know, there's this movement. Okay, maybe that works for some individuals, maybe it works for certain populations, maybe it works for more of the ultra-endurance crowd, but this isn't going to work for an elite athlete trained to train and run a really fast marathon. So we kind of start to recognize that sort of maybe, you know, late 2020, you know, between 2015 and now, you know, that's kind of being recognized. Some more research is coming out on that topic. Okay, we're not gonna, we're not gonna go that direction. That doesn't seem to be feasible. So let's really focus on carbs in terms of like carbs are king for fueling athletes. This is really where people are gonna see the most performance benefit. Um, so I want to bring that up, but I do think because of that like heart fat movement, there are a lot of athletes that are still sort of confused, still sort of following the advice of, you know, doing a lot of fasted training runs in order to be more fat efficient and maybe compromising their performance. And um, the other part of this here is that there is, I think, you know, back to my college days and a lot of other athletes experienced this is this desire to be thin or lean. And I think there is still that, even till to even today, of like, oh, if I fuel my body like during, before, during, and after, if I eat a lot of carbs, it's going to cause me to be fat, which isn't true. Um, but I do think like a lot of athletes still think that way. And so I do think for the majority of athletes are still underfueling because maybe they think if I don't eat a lot of carbs, I'll be able to burn more fat. Or they think if I eat too much during before, during and after, it's going to cause me to gain weight. And so I think a lot of athletes are leaving a lot of their performance on the table. They're not realizing their poor form performance. In fact, I even think back to my college days and I'm like, oh my gosh, if I had just known what I know now or implemented what I implemented now of fueling and really practicing some of this fueling strategies, I mean, imagine the athlete I could have been. I could have been so much better. And it's true. Like, I don't even know. It's hard for me to even think about the what I would have been capable of had I had this information and been able to implement it when I was in college and in my 20s. I would I just feel like I would have had so much better performances. It's hard because you can't go back and redo things. But I wonder if that's true. I mean, I'm thinking that's probably true for so many athletes and like, especially in the early 2000s, especially women athletes, like, gosh, we so many of us would probably have been able to perform so much better and have we didn't even realize our potential because we were intentionally underfueling thinking that it was gonna cause us to gain weight. And it's so not true, and it's it's sad, you know, because I think there's a lot of that from college coaches or from coaches in general, like, oh, don't eat that, or don't eat, you know, this, or don't eat carbs or something, and um you're gonna gain weight, and all of those messages. And it's just sad because it's so not true. And so now um, I think now we're starting to kind of recognize that. Like, oh, this is this is a problem. Like, obviously, there's people speaking out against some of the coaches that maybe were spreading that sort of message, and now we're realizing actually it's better to be maybe a little bit heavier, but be really, really well fueled than to be super light and underfueled. And so that is changing, and that's part of this. But I do think that messaging is still kind of around, and I do think that mentality still exists today. I think that like toughen out mentality still exists today a little bit. I have a lot of I have people I know that are maybe athletes that are a couple, you know, 20 years older than me. Um, that sometimes I think when I'm like running with them or or talking with them, and they're like, I'm only do two gels during my marathon. Okay, that's certainly not enough. But it's like, well, that's what I've done. That's always what I've done. I've never done, you know, I don't, this is what I do, this is what I've always done. Sort of that mentality of like, oh, why would I change it if it works? But it's kind of like, well, what if you actually fueled more? Like, maybe it would actually seem better performance, right? So sometimes I think we're in this mentality of like, this is what I've always done. I've always done 30 grams of carbs an hour and it works for me, or I've always just taken two gels, and it's like, well, you know, that might get you through maybe, but what if you actually ate more carbs? Would you be able to finish the race feeling strong or finish, you know, without kind of um sort of slowing down at the end? So it is interesting how there is this sort of mentality of like, oh, this is like the old school mentality. This is what we've all we've got to tough it out, you gotta, you know, you you know, you don't if you take too many carbs in, you're kind of weak or something like that. And and so um that's probably changing, but that's an interesting observation I've had of um some of the the runners uh who are maybe like you know, a little bit on the uh older generation. So uh I think that just kind of thinking about that mindset from don't eat too much to fuel enough to perform, recover, and stay healthy. That is the difference. We have this don't eat too much, you know, mentality that we're we're coming from from maybe the early 2000s and and and the tough it out mentality, and now it's fuel enough to perform, recover, and stay healthy. That's where we're headed, and I think that's great. Um uh I also want to make kind of mention this too, is that uh around 2015 to 2020, that's really is when sports nutrition is becoming, you know, you have these products that come out, but the actual concept of like individualized nutrition is starting to become popular. Sports dietitians are actually a career that, you know, people can achieve can do, like have a career helping athletes in an individualized nutrition. So this is kind of when this is starting to become more and more popular. We have you know the breaking two project of uh 2017. They did emphasize in that like the fueling and the individualized approach to everything they did, the physiology, the fueling, um, discovering that they could go beyond 60 grams of carbs and realizing that they had even better performance outcomes. So this is that's I think kind of where this momentum is starting with this higher carb era. And it's probably right around that time um realizing that that sub-two-hour marathon is actually possible. And so we're starting to kind of see this momentum building of of carb and the importance of carbs, and more and more athletes are thinking about how they're gonna consume more carbs during their races and fueling for training. So the modern strategies um that we're we're seeing now include like carb periodization or periodized nutrition. And I do talk about that topic um of periodized nutrition in our periodized nutrition episodes, but that is one thing that I think is really important to mention is that you know, maybe there is a role for doing some sort of low carb or fasted training or or high fat, you know, low carb approach in a puridized training approach, um, where you would do that kind of in the off-season and then maybe like add the carbs in and so work on being more fat adapted and then kind of changing it up. So there may be a rule a role for that sort of thing, or just even purizing carbs um differently throughout the training cycle based off of the intensity of the training, that kind of thing. The gut training is a big factor now. I think that's a topic that more and more athletes are interested in is like how do you train your gut to, you know, because maybe the limiting factor is 60 grams an hour, but you know, more and more athletes are finding that if they gradually sort of increase the carb content or the amount they can eat, and if they do so in a strategic way, they can actually consume way more than 60 grams because they've trained their gut to be able to tolerate that a little better. The precision with hydration. So now we have patches that you can wear that tell you how much sodium that you're losing and your sweat, and you can weigh yourself before and after exercise. You can get an idea of how much uh water you're losing, how much hydration you need, how much sodium you're losing. There's a lot more precision with that nowadays that you can really dial in exactly what you need during marathon training or during a race. Um, things like continuous glucose monitors can are kind of being utilized more and more now for athletes to be able to maybe see if like the carbs are enough or get an idea. Uh obviously, that's not gonna be of exactly a fuel gauge. And I've talked about that in our continuous glucose monitor episode, but it can be a way along with other things that you're measuring to sort of see like, is the fueling adequately? Are you getting enough carbs before and during and after training? And it is, it can be a tool that people are using now more and more in endurance sports. And now athletes are really doing high carb fueling of like 90 to 120 grams an hour, sometimes maybe even a little more than that, with the high carb fueling during races. And so we now understand that at least hopefully most athletes are starting to understand that underfueling really hurts recovery and adaptation. Um, energy availability like affects hormones and increases injury risk. So, like if you are underfueling, you have hormone disruptions, injury risk, like bone injury risk, and it can negatively affect performance. And so I think there's now more and more of understanding of like, no, we're not going to tell our athletes that they need to be leaner. We're going to help them fuel smarter so that they can perform better. And that in the end is going to be more important than maybe even body weight alone, you know, for most people. So let's focus, move away from being lighter is better to fueling more is better because that's really what we're starting to see is that maybe weight makes a difference in some contexts, but being two or three pounds lighter isn't really going to make a big difference if you're not fueling well. Uh, so we're starting to see that, and that's becoming more and more with like red S and relative energy deficiency and sport and more awareness around that. We're really seeing like, yes, underfueling is a recipe for disaster. And let's try to make sure we move away from that and move to more how do we fuel your body? Fuel is part of training and not really separate from it. So it's it's all a part of it. It's like the training and then the fueling go hand in hand. It's not like you train and then you fuel, you train and you fuel, and it's all part of your process. It's all part of the training. You don't leave the house for a long run without your fuel. You you how are you fueling during during and you're practicing your fuel just like you would practice anything, another part of the training for a marathon. It's all integrated, it's not separate. And then there's a lot more awareness, like I said, around Red S and chronic low energy availability. So just this like hopefully movement away from um being lean and that's better to being fueled, and that's where we want to go. So it's interesting all of these changes. And I think um the other thing we wanna I want to talk about too is it's not just those things. I think there's also changes in the science, the technology around the sports nutrition products. So uh we have different things like um superstarches, like some, you know, like you cand as the superstarch. We have the mortar and the hydrogels. And so these are just different ways of of getting carbs that maybe slow down the process of um, so you're not having these these simple carbs hitting the system. Like a superstarch would be maybe more digested a little bit more slowly and released a little bit more slowly into the system. So you're not having this a bunch of sugar all at once hitting your system and or causing like a high concentration of sugar in the gut, so that you have that digestive issue. The hydrogels are somewhat similar. The hydrogel kind of helps it absorb a little bit more slowly, get into the small intestine and absorb there. It's not sit, it's not maybe sitting as long in the um stomach, so you have less issues of like that GI disturbance. And so you have these like different types of ways of administering carb. We're realizing that the more often you fuel, like if you can have a little bit more often, it's better than having like a lot at once. So, you know, it probably wouldn't work well to have all 120 grams of carbs in one sitting. You want to sort of spread it out earlier and more often is better. So start early, fuel often, and that's a good, you know, strategy. We're starting to sort of see that, okay, these are all helping people be able to get more and more carb in, um, versus like, you know, some of the products before were so concentrated in sugar and and maybe didn't have the right formulation of like glucose versus fructose or things like multodextrin. And there's just like different, different fueling formulations with some of these products that are helping people be able to get more carb in. Um, you know, some of the superstarch drinks and things like that. You may be having like alternate, like different types of uh fuel, like maybe someone would do like a superstarch drink and a and a morton gel, or a, you know, maybe they would do like a fast-acting carb and then a a more like a slow-acting carb and and and combinations of different types of carbs help them be able to administer have more carb and it's being digested in different ways so that you're not overloading one trans like the just the glucose with just relying on glucose transport, or you're sort of having the carbs administered in such a way that it's not, you know, you're you're digesting it um more slowly, or you're getting like a a a quick burst of carb versus maybe a more slowly digested burst or amount of carb. And it's just like helping people be able to fuel and get more and get it, you know, in different ways. Um and so there's so many different pri products out there, and it's just it's just interesting because it it is allowing it, you know, uh athletes to get more. And I think the cool, you know, you see a lot of athletes out there like pushing for that. Let me give you a few examples of athletes. Um, with Sebastian Saway, it I did read somewhere that he had, and I try to do some research to verify this, so um, you know, I might be might be wrong about the exact amount, but that he had about 120 grams of carb per hour, um, maybe a little more uh during that marathon attempt or that marathon where he did under two. Um, David Roach is uh one athlete who is a really big proponent of high carb fueling and does talk a lot about the carb piece. And notably, like during some of his winning races with Leadville, he had, I think, upwards of 120 grams. I can't remember the exact amounts, but really pushing that high carb fueling. He talks a lot about it. You know, he has a YouTube channel, so you can check that out. But he does a lot, big advocate for the high carb fueling. Um, more recently, I was watching something on um the Coca-Dona 250 and Rachel, who won it, the woman who won't won it, she I think um, I don't remember, I don't know the carbs per hour or anything, but they were talking about how they were uh basically like dialing in her fueling and sort of how she had a team almost of people working with her to try to fuel better for uh the race and helping her um have that individualized fueling approach of like what are you gonna have during the race? And it's a it's kind of like an eating, they kind of described it as like an eating um almost like a race where you run, but you're also eating a lot. You're almost a eating competition in a way, because in those big races, those really long races, that's a huge factor. But talk about hitting the wall in a marathon, you have 250 miles. Like, how are you gonna minimize some of the damage that incurs, you know, when you're especially when you're underfueling and the muscle loss that must happen? Like you've got to kind of eat a lot to really like make it through a race like that and be able to finish. And so, you know, now we're seeing these incredibly long races. Um, you know, fueling becomes such a big piece of that. It's interesting because you're seeing this and more of a discussion about it. Um, but I want to sort of say, like, I think the the turning point now is okay, we're talking about this this change that's happened over the past, I guess, more than 100 years. Like, well, what, you know, from the late 1800s until now, we've seen this change in fueling, this change in understanding, the change in the science. Um the athletes are starting to realize, like, okay, if I take in carbs before and during and after, like I recover better, like I'm training, I'm able to perform better. Um, and now we're seeing this big push to like these high carb, 120 grams an hour sort of situation. But I think it's important to recognize that, you know, think about it. Is this something that all of us should be doing? Should we all be aiming for really high carb amounts during our races? And I think it depends a little bit because um, some of us like it depends on the intensity that we're training and running at, right? So the higher the intensity, the more carbs we need, the higher, the harder it is to get the carbs. Um, because the more intense we run, the more there's blood flow is kind of being pulled away from the gut to fuel our to to help, you know, fuel the muscles essentially. And so it gets harder and harder to fuel, get more carbs in. Um, but the more intense we go, the more kind of the more carbs we're burning. So it's an interesting thing. If somebody's just trying to finish a marathon, you know, maybe they're doing it at a fairly easy pace zone two, their needs for carbs are going to be different. They may not necessarily benefit from pushing carbs all the way to 120. So we have this like high, you know, the it's just like, you know, not every athlete may be, especially doing like a marathon, needs to have that much. But I do sometimes think like somewhere in the middle, maybe for most athletes, 60 grams is kind of the minimum. And the closer we can move to maybe like 80 grams, that might be a little bit better. But most of us may not be able to feasibly get to 120. I mean, that's a lot if you think about it. Like the athletes that are dueling that way probably have bottles, especially in the marathon. Like some measly athletes, they have all their bottles on the course. They have easy. They can like grab their bottle and put whatever they need, and they can put all their gels like taped to the bottle, and they have several bottles along the course, bottle stations where they have their individual, unique, you know, nutrition all dialed in in there. And the rest of us, I mean, I've had that a few times where I've had the luck, I've been lucky enough to be able to have my bottles on the course, and it's amazing. Um, but for the rest of us, we have to rely on what's on the course, what we bring with us, right? And so that could be a lot of carbs, you know, a lot of things to carry. So we have to think about that. The other thing we have to think about is the cost. I mean, um, some of these products are extremely expensive. Um I mean, like a lot. If you think about every day you're out fueling and then also, you know, the race and and having to take things in during your long run. I mean, it can get kind of expensive if you're taking, especially like Morton and some of these other products are a lot. And so I think then it does become a discussion of cost. You know, is it worth it to have to take some of these products or buy some of these products? Can you make some of your own? You know, some people I've seen videos of people making their own products. I think you can do that. You can make your own stuff if you can find uh something that works for you. I mean, some people rely on candy, um, maple syrup. You know, you can buy the maple syrup gels, but you can just buy maple syrup and put it in a little container and you know, like a you could buy one of those like little um flask things. I mean, there's ways to do it, I think, um to cut costs, but that is a piece of it. I think, you know, for many athletes, it be can't it can become a cost issue. Um, but I really do think like no, I don't think every athlete would benefit from 120 grams an hour. But maybe moving the dial, you know, if you're if you're only consuming 45 or 50 or 30, trying to move it up to 60. And if you're consuming 60, maybe see if you can go up a little bit higher. Um and just kind of see how that feels. It's all about experimentation. How do you feel? You know, what different products work? This is why you have to, it's just like training. You have to kind of practice these things day to day. You have to, you know. not day to day, but just like in your long runs and and you have to kind of see what works, see what combination of things work. Are there things that you can buy that are more cheap, like candy or um, you know, something like just honey sticks or something that you could maybe buy that are a little bit less expensive that you can incorporate to help you get there without the costs being so high. You know, can you some people like the idea of natural products. I mean, can you have things like dates and um I don't know bananas? Like that just seems hard to carry, but you know, are there things that you can incorporate that are more natural that still work for you without hurting your gut. So it's all about trial and error and experimenting to see what works for you. Um some people like something very sweet, you know, like the goose and different things out there that have very sweet tastes like you know I personally do enjoy maple syrup gels and I know they're like super sweet, but I do enjoy I I I'm just like a maple syrup fiend. So that kind of thing actually works well for me in combination with other products. You know, so you have to really try because you don't want to wait some marathon day and try to be getting 80 grams without trying different things ahead of time and then maybe looking at what's on the course, what's available on the course so you don't have to carry so much with you. If you like things like super starch you know drink mixes, how are you gonna have that on the course? That's something I'm thinking about because I've used those during training but it's like well then I'm gonna have to carry a bottle with me and that's a kind of a pain. So you know am I going to rely on only gels or am I going to actually try to carry something on the marathon course with me because I'm not gonna have bottles this time unfortunately. So you know these are all considerations that you have to think about when you're thinking about fueling um you know what what's available on the course, what do you have to carry with you? How much do you have to carry um whatever you're using during practice is it feasible to have it during the marathon or during your race or ultra marathon or whatever you're training for or your triathlon you know is there a place to drop back and grab stuff you know so there's just a lot of things that you have to kind of plan for and consider. That's why this whole aspect of sports nutrition is something you need to be thinking of from like day one when you sign up is like what's going to be your strategy, what are you going to use? How can you get the carbs up? Practicing it even during shorter training sessions and getting carbs in. So you can kind of know what it's like when you're running really intense. What's it like to take gels and other carb things is, you know, because the intensity during a long easy run is different than a short, you know, then intense you know interval run. So like trying different things, figuring out what works for you during you know post and also post workout. Um but really just seeing how, you know, maybe even just experimenting like how high can you go before it becomes evident that that's too much or you start to have GI issues. So it's really a that's kind of the fun part about it is just being able to experiment with different things and try different products and try um different amounts during training and kind of figure out what works best for you. And it may not be 120 grams and that may not actually be ideal for you either. So it's really going to be individual but it's probably more than 30 grams and it's probably more than two gels in the entire marathon. So let's kind of move away from the underfueling piece and just trying to and maybe not necessarily going to the extreme of the high high carb but maybe somewhere in the middle where it's 60 to 80 you know or or experimenting a little bit to see what makes you feel your best, what helps you get through your your training without you know bonking and coming up with a strategy for your race. And so that's really what I want to kind of advise people. I hope this was helpful to kind of go through a little bit of the history of fueling where we are now what might work best for you know maybe it isn't 120 grams of carbs an hour maybe it is but thinking about it moving away from this mentality of low low carb, no carb, you know, toughing it out, um not fueling at all and or or only having one or two gels or something like that and moving to more a little more than that um but realizing that maybe we don't need like excessive amounts either. So I hope that's helpful um just a little bit of my thoughts on the performances that we're seeing my thoughts on the carb piece obviously um and yeah feel free to reach out to me at uh Katie I'm at Instagram the dot running dot dietitian I think um at Instagram and and message me there. FuelTorun dot com is where I'm at um or my um website or my email is also Katie at fueltorun dot com um for email. So feel free to go ahead and um get a hold of me there and message me with questions or thoughts or concerns or comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it or any questions you have about fueling and thanks a lot. I hope this was a helpful a helpful uh thing to discuss.

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Bye that wraps up today's episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast endurance sports have a way of teaching us patience humility and resilience lessons that carry far beyond the workout progress in endurance sports doesn't come from shortcuts it comes from consistency discipline and doing the work when it's not glamorous. Wherever you are on your endurance journey keep trusting the process and honoring the work you put in each day. If today's episode resonated please subscribe leave a review and share it with someone to help on their endurance journey. Don't forget to join the conversation on our social sites to help build and foster a community where we all learn and support one another. We'll be back with more stories and insights from Coach Justin and Katie. Until then visit the podcast website at the endurance athlete journey dot buzzsprout dot com for more episodes from the Endurance Athlete journey podcast. Have questions or comments about the podcast feel free to send us an email at the endurance athlete journey at gmail dot com for all things coaching visit coachkady at fuel the number two run dot com and coachjustin at taboolarasta com again thank you for listening to the endurance athlete journey podcast and remember to find joy in the journey