Fuelling the Engines
Your body has three main ways of making energy and they are useful for different types of tasks.
The first engine is the ATP-Phospho-creatine (ATP-PCr) driven energy pathway. This is a very powerful energy pathway; quite literally when you think about this, think about short sprints or lifting heavy weights. As you know though, you can’t keep that level of effort up for long and this is because the P-C engine becomes exhausted after about 10-15 seconds. Once the phospho creatine that makes up the fuel is all consumed, the next system has to come into play.
Glycolysis literally means ‘splitting sugar’, and this is what happens in the next energy pathway. When high demand is placed upon the body fast glycolysis occurs without the presence of oxygen; sugar molecules obtained from carbohydrate in the diet are split into two, the energy released is used to power activity and the end product of this is lactic acid. This explains lactic acid build up in the muscles when training at high intensity. This system is strong, but after about 45 seconds the power output begins to decline and more reliance is placed upon the third system.
Lastly, for longer efforts the oxidative system starts to take over as the source of energy production. This system is a collection of four different processes that use oxygen, and this collection of pathways, although very long lasting, does not allow for high intensity effort. Consequently the types of activities it is associated with are the longer, less intense ones like marathon running.
Included in these systems are the:
- Oxidative or slow glycolysis – using carbohydrate as the fuel
- beta oxidation – using fat as the fuel
Whilst fuelling for an event like a training session or a road race may be important, it is equally important to make sure that you have recovered your energy stores after your last training session.
Indeed, many athletes who rely heavily pre-fuelling (fuelling just before training sessions) do so because they aren’t concentrating on putting back the energy consumed in their previous training session.
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