Marathon Hot Take: Gels are incredibly overrated

As a marathoner in the past, while not a good one, I always had an issue with the gel being handed out at mile 17. 5 or so...just before the proverbial wall. By the time I am struggling at this point, the gel is essentially a placebo.

I wonder if it would be better if the gel was handed out at mile 14 as a refresher, rather than closer to the struggle point for many recreational marathoners.

Plus, it doesn't seem to be a wrong position especially since Dean Karnazes has been known to eat a pizza during an ultra. That's good empirical evidence.

Don't believe the lies of big gel!

They want you to get one of those belts and stash a dozen gels. 💰💰💰

GoSomewhereElse wrote:

Stoppit Smith wrote:

As a marathoner in the past, while not a good one, I always had an issue with the gel being handed out at mile 17. 5 or so...just before the proverbial wall. By the time I am struggling at this point, the gel is essentially a placebo.

I wonder if it would be better if the gel was handed out at mile 14 as a refresher, rather than closer to the struggle point for many recreational marathoners.

The retard strikes again

I am plenty entitled to give my runner's perspective about a running issue in a running thread on a running website.

Thanks though.

Not for real runners. You must hang out with hobby joggers

My approach is to never take gels in training, only in the marathon race - at water stations only, and only gels with caffeine.

As Stoppit notes, late in the marathon, these have no real benefit, unless you're walking, I suppose.

I would take my last gel around 21 miles.

Idiot newb don't even know what he saying

Pls forgive op as he is too dumb

Times are irrelevant. I threw out some solid exercise physiology and you responded with "you must be a hobby jogger". It doesn't matter how fast I've run, what matters is the validity of my idea.

However, cause this is LRC, I gotta do this: I've run 2:24 and 2:27, which puts me squarely in the 99.9th percentile of all runners, or probably like the 99.99th percentile of hobbyjoggers. What have you run?

should be studying 102 wrote:

Times are irrelevant. I threw out some solid exercise physiology and you responded with "you must be a hobby jogger". It doesn't matter how fast I've run, what matters is the validity of my idea.

However, cause this is LRC, I gotta do this: I've run 2:24 and 2:27, which puts me squarely in the 99.9th percentile of all runners, or probably like the 99.99th percentile of hobbyjoggers. What have you run?

Don't sweat the haters.

Dean has already proven your perspective correct.

see i actually see this the opposite way, I think you should START taking sugar at mile 21.

If you have hypoglycemia, the brain interprets that as a good reason to panic, regardless of your actual fatigue. This alone is a great reason to put sugar in the tank past 21.

My logic with mile 21 is that for me, it takes less than 30min to run the last 5.2 miles. That is about how long it takes for your blood sugar to spike and begin to come back down, you won't get a "crash" in 30 minutes. There will be plenty of substrate for glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation. If you take your gel 60 minutes before you finish, you get 30 minutes of glucose followed by like 2 hours of elevated insulin and downregulated fatty acid metabolism

dude dean Karnazes is not an authoritative voice in marathon running haha.

However, for ultras, heck yes, run slow and pound that fat. I feel like the worst thing you could do in an ultra is take gu after gu after gu.

are you saying that I dont know what I am saying??

In a marathon, the principal concern is extending point of glycogen depletion beyond the time required to complete the event.

This involves "topping up" throughout the race.

Conventional practice is to add 60-90 g (1 or 2 gels) of glucose/fructose per hour, usually in a 2:1 ratio.

As about 20 minutes is required for uptake, at 6 minute miles, anything taken after 22 miles or so wouldn't be useful.

As to caffeine, that's been shown to improve fatty acid mobilization/use - more energy contribution from fats additionally extends potentially-problematic glycogen stores.

should be studying 102 wrote:

see i actually see this the opposite way, I think you should START taking sugar at mile 21.

If you have hypoglycemia, the brain interprets that as a good reason to panic, regardless of your actual fatigue. This alone is a great reason to put sugar in the tank past 21.

My logic with mile 21 is that for me, it takes less than 30min to run the last 5.2 miles. That is about how long it takes for your blood sugar to spike and begin to come back down, you won't get a "crash" in 30 minutes. There will be plenty of substrate for glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation. If you take your gel 60 minutes before you finish, you get 30 minutes of glucose followed by like 2 hours of elevated insulin and downregulated fatty acid metabolism

Glycolysis or Glycogenolysis? Do you know the difference?

should be studying 102 wrote:

see i actually see this the opposite way, I think you should START taking sugar at mile 21.

If you have hypoglycemia, the brain interprets that as a good reason to panic, regardless of your actual fatigue. This alone is a great reason to put sugar in the tank past 21.

My logic with mile 21 is that for me, it takes less than 30min to run the last 5.2 miles. That is about how long it takes for your blood sugar to spike and begin to come back down, you won't get a "crash" in 30 minutes. There will be plenty of substrate for glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation. If you take your gel 60 minutes before you finish, you get 30 minutes of glucose followed by like 2 hours of elevated insulin and downregulated fatty acid metabolism

Regarding insulin reactions and fatty acid metabolism, there is a lot written on this.

The first place I recall seeing this topic covered is "Better Training for Distance Runners" (Coe/Martin) which discusses the role of carbohydrate intake and norepinephrine response.

Ernest wrote:

In a marathon, the principal concern is extending point of glycogen depletion beyond the time required to complete the event.

This involves "topping up" throughout the race.

Conventional practice is to add 60-90 g (1 or 2 gels) of glucose/fructose per hour, usually in a 2:1 ratio.

As about 20 minutes is required for uptake, at 6 minute miles, anything taken after 22 miles or so wouldn't be useful.

As to caffeine, that's been shown to improve fatty acid mobilization/use - more energy contribution from fats additionally extends potentially-problematic glycogen stores.

Agree with the first part. Disagree with the caffeine idea which is based on a very old flawed study. Costill 1970. Re-read it and see if you can spot the obvious flaw?

Yes i know the difference between glycolysis and glycogenolysis.

Running at marathon pace for an extended time triggers exhaustion of intracellular glycogen stores (stored as granules in skeletal muscle). The mechanism of this is GLYCOGENOLYSIS, or cleavage of glycogen into glucose monomers. These 6 carbon glucose monomers are then metabolized via glycolysis to produce 2x 3 carbon pyruvate which can enter the Krebs cycle/citric acid cycle, generating the highly reduced intermediates which power chemiosmosis via the electron transport chain.

Glycogenolysis also occurs in the liver where glycogen is cleaved and the resulting glucose monomers are transported out of the cell into the interstitial space and eventually the bloodstream. This is triggered by hypoglycemia.

Why the hell would ingesting a Gel give you substrate for glycogenolysis? Im not sure if I understand your criticisim

I will have to check it out, thanks for the recommendation!