The Mud Run Blueprint for Fitness
by Roger Smith, PhD
Run 3 miles, 4 miles, 5miles, 8 miles, or 12 miles.
Climb walls, ropes, and trees. Crawl through foul
black mud, creeks, and shock wires. That can burn
a lot of fuel. How do you pre-fuel before an event?
How do you re-fuel during and after an event?
The traditional methods are (1) spaghetti dinner
the night before, and (2) sports drink during. But
these are like your dad’s old tennis shoes. They don’t
really work that well, but they were all he had 20+
years ago. Athletes and scientists have learned a lot
since then, one key thing being that spaghetti and
salty punch are not very good performance fuels.
Eating spaghetti the night before a race gives you
some available energy from the carbs. But it mostly
gives you a stomach full of pasta that you have to
carry with you through the race. And anything that
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