Are Glycogen Depleted Long Runs Right For You?

Audio Transcript

Danny: Hello everyone. Today, we have a great question about depletion runs from Patrick.

His question is, “What are the benefits of a glycogen depleted long run, and how should you prepare yourself for them? Should you carbo-load the night before, or just eat a normal meal?”

Great question and one that we all are intrigued by.

I’m going to answer the second question first. Should you carbo-load the night before or just eat a normal meal?

The answer would be neither.

I think most of us eat carbs to begin with some amount each meal, so you definitely want to cut those out.

If you want to have a normal meal the night before, for me if I carbo-load, if I’m going to run say a long run on Saturday morning, I’m going to not take any carbs after lunch on Friday.

No carbs in the afternoon, no carbs in the evening and no carbs the morning of the long run, Saturday morning, so almost about 18 hours of no carbs.

Definitely not carbo-loading, definitely not having carbs the night before.

For a glycogen depleted run, I prescribe water.

Wake up Saturday morning and have some water. Don’t take coffee if you’re a coffee drinker. No banana either. Personally, I don’t take anything.

You want to get the run done with and out of the way because you’re hungry, so you get up, have a glass of water or two, head on to run, and the only thing you fuel with on the run is water.

Save the carbo-loading meal for after you run where you want to. You’ll be so depleted and you’ll want to have a lot of carbs after the run; a lot of protein, stuff like that.

Back to part one of the question? What are the benefits of a glycogen depleted run?

The main benefit is you want to burn fat and it teaches your body to burn fat more efficiently.

One article I read is, to burn the same amount of glycogen compared to fat, it takes two calories to burn the glycogen, where as it takes eight calories to burn the same amount of fat.

You’re thinking you’re at the end of a marathon, your body’s transitioning from glycogen as your glycogen stores are wearing down or depleted, your body’s switching from making the same amount of energy using two calories, and now it has to go to eight calories to make the exact same amount of energy.

That’s where the bonking comes in and where the wall comes in, and that all comes together late in the marathon.

This is why we practice the glycogen depleting; it teaches your body to become more efficient at burning fuel from fat.

One study shows that levels of the enzymes associated with fat metabolism significantly increase.

Your fat metabolism improves at all paces as well, so you’re better able to use glycogen more efficiently, as well as fat more efficiently, at different paces; at 5K paces and at tempo paces.

It doesn’t have to be the long run.

A couple of things to keep in mind from the study is that the benefits of doing glycogen completed long runs is it doesn’t actually make you more fit.

Doing long runs on glycogen depleted if you’re training for a 5K or a 10K or really anything under an hour and a half or two hours, isn’t going to make you any quicker, so it’s not going to give you any kind of advantage since you’ll be burning pretty much 100% glycogen in all those races.

Another thing to keep in mind is the faster you run the more glycogen… A greater percentage of your energy comes from glycogen, so this is why we always preach to not go out so quick in a marathon.

You’re just burning up those glycogen stores a little bit quicker if you’re going out above your head, or you’re not going out as conservative as most marathon plans prepare you to go out as.

It’s just as a waiting game and trying to delay the depletion of glycogen as long as you can. Hopefully on a great day it’s 26.2 miles.

I know the point is you don’t want to do these every weekend, and typically you want to always make sure your depleted long runs are just long, easy long runs.

You don’t want to do any kind of fast finish or surge, or any kind of long run with a lot of pace variations in it.

You just want to go out depleted, hit the long run in and call it a day.

The most that I would recommend during a training cycle would be two or three. You go very deep into the well, leaving the house without glycogen for several number of hours, and then you put in a long run on top of that.

When you come home, you’re very depleted. Almost some of the same things that would happen during the actual race, so that, like I’ve said earlier, good carbo-loaded meal after the run is ideal.

A lot of protein, a lot of rest, a lot of hydration, is needed as so you’re trying to get yourself right back out of that well, and recover as quickly as possible.

I hope that answered your question.

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