The role of carbohydrates in endurance sport is now universally accepted as being an essential tool in not only race day but also to support training and recovery. It wasn't always so. Now with some pros seemingly taking in 120g per hour the game has shifted from the days when we were told the gut could only handle up to 60g per hour Carbs are the bodies go to fuel for moderate and high intensity exercise. We store carbs primarily as glycogen in muscle and liver tissue. In well trained athletes we have enough stores to last around 90mins to 2 hours of hard endurance work. Depends on the intensity but it is possible to 'bonk' when beyond 2 hours - trust me when I say its not fun when you are 50 miles from home! We don't just burn carbs and at lower levels of effort we do have a dual fuel system from fat stores so fo super long easier effort its a different picture. Race pace efforts though do rely heavily on carbs as the main fuel. The old 60g per hour was based in the fact that older sports nutrition products were single source sugars but moderrn science now gives us a plethora to choose from and recommendations now are 'up to' 90g. A caveat here is you have to practice the intake to allow your gut to be 'trained' to do its thing so having a race nutriton strategy needs built during training. What to ingest is highly personal but for most people a mix of fuel sources is likely to work best. Some products really do irritate some but others can hoover up anything with no ill effects. For day to day your intake can vary but typically for endurance we are looking at anywhere between 5 and 12g of carbs per kg of bodyweight per day. Matching intake to activity is good practice so basically on hard days you eat more. There are a couple of apps out there that can do this fo you - Fuellin being the best known. You can do a 'train low, compete high' protocol but if you have ever tried to do a v02 session straight out of bed in the morning you will know it isn't that smart. In simple terms you have to eat and drink enough to support your level of training.

In architecture, if there is no space you just have a pile of bricks. In music, if there is no space you just have noise. In training, if there is no space you just have fatigue.

I was just listening to the radio, and heard something interesting that feels applicable to pretty much any sport. Anton du Bec, of all people, the ballroom dancer guy from Strictly… “When you perform, that mustn’t be your best or hardest effort. The hardest effort must be the one you’ve done in training, the one you know you’ve done before”. I thought that was a great insight- it’s something I used to coach in kayaking, and it seems to me it works for most endurance sports too. So- what’re the quotes you carry around with you?

Here we are at the end of January and, if you’re anything like me, you’re still getting bombarded on social media with messages from coaches who promise to help you smash your 2026 goals. Every one of them seems to have the secret to coaching and training me across a range of sports and events. But they don’t… This got me thinking about ‘what is training?. I’m pretty certain that if I asked 100 people that question; what is training? I’d get 100 different answers. Most would be around sets and reps, and sessions and maybe microcyles and mesocyles. Some might even talk about zone 2 and mitochondria and the Norwegian method and lactate testing. That’s fine, but that’s mostly how they train and not what is training?. Here I’m more interested in the process of training and what, generally, happens to our bodies when we go through that process. Very simply training is change; whatever we do starts a process of stimulation and adaptation which leads eventually (hopefully) to an improvement in performance. With regard to endurance adaptations we are talking about actual structural change. Capillary beds have to be created, the walls of the heart become stronger, there will be changes in our lungs which allow us to take in more oxygen, arteries and veins become wider and more elastic, muscle fibres may change type. That’s just the physiology side (although there’s no such thing as just physiology). By exercising our muscles and movements become more synchronised and coordinated thus making the above processes more efficient and effective. And the most amazing thing is that these processes start on your very first session. Our instagram coaches will tell us that only they have the secret way for you to train and they will have a system or a hack that’s better than anyone else. However, the truth is that there is a timeline for each and all of the above changes. There is a rhythm of working and recovering, stimulus and adaptation ,so whatever you do to shortcut the process your body will ignore it and quietly get on with whatever it was going to do in the first place. This is slightly different for everyone but we know that eg ligaments and bones take far longer to adapt than your lungs. Just be aware that achieving deep aerobic fitness is a multi year process.

Today's top quality quote from our coaches meeting from Alister. How do I improve my triathlon running? Learn to swim young wo(man).