Sports Requiring Endurance

Endurance athletes spend long hours in training and competition, a fact that underlines the importance they place on consumption of adequate calories to fuel the activity and sufficient fluids to sustain body temperature. While endurance-trained athletes have a wonderful capacity to burn fat as a source of energy and use fat as the primary source of energy during endurance events, it is their ability to stay well hydrated and store carbohydrate, as glycogen, that are the critical factors in endurance. While athletes have a phenomenally high capacity to store fat (and have all the necessary aerobic enzymes to metabolize it), there is an inherent limit to how much glycogen (stored carbohydrate) a human can store. Since this stored carbohydrate enables a more complete oxidation of fat for energy and is the primary fuel for higher intensity work (as with the high speed “kick” successful endurance runners have at the end of a race), endurance athletes can't afford to let it run out. This is precisely the reason so many endurance athletes consume large volumes of pasta and other carbohydrates before a race. However, how the carbo hydrate is provided can influence how well the glycogen is stored. While endurance athletes can effectively process carbohydrates into stored glycogen, this process takes time and water.

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