A lot of the recent switch to “keep feeding at a rate of x grams of carbs per hour” stuff came out of the long distance triathlon side. I can remember hearing and reading about it 10 or 12 years ago in relation to the 5 hours on the bike and the first 20 miles of the run in the full distance events.
The motivation was negative then - “you’ll collapse if you don’t do it” - but they’ve turned it into a positive performance improver now.
On the running side it used to be “eat your own weight in pasta” the day before a marathon and have a massive bowl of porridge on the morning of the race. Then it went to Guapo’s “two eggs or a bit of oily fish” theory. Now the elite runners are back to the 150 ml drinks with 80g of carb at each drinks stop.
I certainly found it easy to switch away from the carb loading. Our running group would have switched from the heavy carb loading to taking nothing at all the morning of a long run. Dinner the night before at around 6pm then nothing bar water until after an 18 or 20 mile run the next morning. You’d still do the regular carbs in marathon though.
The motivation was negative then - “you’ll collapse if you don’t do it” - but they’ve turned it into a positive performance improver now.
On the running side it used to be “eat your own weight in pasta” the day before a marathon and have a massive bowl of porridge on the morning of the race. Then it went to Guapo’s “two eggs or a bit of oily fish” theory. Now the elite runners are back to the 150 ml drinks with 80g of carb at each drinks stop.
I certainly found it easy to switch away from the carb loading. Our running group would have switched from the heavy carb loading to taking nothing at all the morning of a long run. Dinner the night before at around 6pm then nothing bar water until after an 18 or 20 mile run the next morning. You’d still do the regular carbs in marathon though.
