There is no denying that the title of “Southern Stormer” has a ring to it that sets these athletes apart from most other sport.

Having said that, succeeding in an ultra event is not as easy as just putting on your training gear and pitching up – special preparation is needed – physical, mental and emotional training is required to bring home the hardware.  An area of particular interest is nutrition.

Energy Systems:

To better understand the nutrition required for an ultra event you need to understand where the body gets its energy from.

To start, remember that energy expenditure must equal energy intake to achieve energy balance.  This means you need to eat the right kind of food and enough of it, to provide the right kind of energy for your sport.  This is where Future Life comes in – but let’s looks at the energy systems first.

We use different energy supply systems when we exercise and the system used depends on what we are doing.  The energy systems include the phosphagen and glycolytic (anaerobic) and the oxidative (aerobic) pathways.  Ultra athletes use primarily the oxidative (aerobic) energy delivery system in their exercise.

As oxygen becomes more available to the working muscle, the body uses more of the aerobic (oxidative) pathways and less of the anaerobic pathways.  Major sources of energy for the oxidative pathway include muscle and liver glycogen, intramuscular, blood, and adipose tissue triglycerides.  The oxidative pathway fuels events like a half-marathon, marathon and endurance cycling or 1500-m swimming.

Did you know?

Approximately 50%–60% of energy during 1–4 hours of continuous exercise at 70% of maximal oxygen capacity is from carbohydrates and the rest from free fatty acids.

Training does not change the total amount of energy used but rather the proportion of energy derived from carbohydrates and fat.  Interestingly enough, a trained individual uses a greater percentage of fat than an untrained person – at the same workload.

Fatty acids from blood and muscle triglycerides are an important fuel for aerobic exercise of moderate intensity.  Short chain fatty acids are converted to long chain fatty acids when available to the body in sufficient concentration.

The Bottom Line – Future Life of Ultra Events:

An ultra athlete needs to consume slow release (low GI) carbohydrates to feed the aerobic energy pathway.  The athlete also needs to have a steady supply of fatty acids that will be used as time goes on.

Future Life is a great source of carbohydrate AND an excellent source of resistant starches.  Resistant starches are not digested immediately but are broken down later on in the digestive process and converted to short chain fatty acids which in turn can be stored as long chain fatty acids.

These two sources of energy are what are needed for training and performance.  Future Life is a PERFECT source of energy for an ultra athlete.