Somebody explain this to me

[DontBurnMyFlag]

Well in my little mind, this just does not add up.

Yesterday I did nothing that even remotely counts as exercise. I met a girl in the city, we went out ot dinner and ate incredibly greasy food. Before that I just bummed around the house either on the computer of in front of the TV. It was a lazy day. Later that night I found some leftover pizza and went to town. This is not like me at all. It was just a boring saturday and having worked out hard all week, I felt I deserved a break.

So today I wake up and decide to go for a run probably 3 hours after I woke up. I go out and I do 4.5 miles like it was nothing! My heart rate didnt peak 160bpm. I had no stiches, no shortness of breath no nothing. And this was at the same pace I usually run. I expected to die because of all the garbage I ate the day before.

Usually when I go for a run, its about 9pm and Ive eaten healthy all day, or healthier than usual. I do my 3 miles around my neighborhood, get my heartrate up to about 180 and Im done. Some nights are worse than others, Ill drop my time by a few minutes or just generally feel like not running. And thats after a day of healthy-ness and whatnot.

Am I not running fast enough? Did my body use the fat from yesterdays meals as fuel? Did I secretly gain superpowers overnight?

As far as Im concerned all 3 play into my current situation.

So, to make my incredibly long post complete; someone please explain this to me.

[fatboyjim154]

I always have a "good eat" the day before I go out on my MTB or riding it to work. Don't ask me, but I get the same results?

[Mike1986]

More than likely it is because of the time you ran, pretty soon after you woke up and the pace. Your body used the excess carbohydrates during the night to expend energy in order to have the brain send signals to breathe and do other maintenance functions since you are unconscious. Some of the carbohydrates were left over, but most of the fats were stored since it is more calorie dense yielding 9 calories per gram instead of 4 with protein or carbs. When you woke up you had a shortage of carbohydrates which couldn't be turned into glycogen which couldn't be turned into ATP to fuel short, intense bursts of muscle contraction (i.e- sprinting). So since you had little to no carbs, your body turned to its secondary energy source- fat; which is much more dense than carbohydrate so it of course lasts longer. This happens, but it is better to have enough carbohydrate and fat so the body can burn them 50/50.

Also, you were probably running at a constant pace so your body didn't need to use more calories than it would if you were doing interval training with sprinting and jogging in a circuit fashion. 1 glycogen structure will produce 36 ATP when you exercise aerobically and put a very heavy strain on your body (Simply, when you exercise and you have to stop because you are totally out of breath.) When you exercise anaerobically, that 1 glycogen structure will produce only 2 ATP since there is less demand on the body to get oxygen into the bloodstream to flush out lactic acid so that it could preserve whatever muscle glycogen it may have left in case a more stressful demand is put on it (Running fast instead of jogging lightly). Your body is always trying to acclimate to workloads you put on it and energy is it's no.1 concern above all and it truly is amazing how our bodies both use and conserve energy.

Simply put- Both luck and something that shows you have excellent aerobic and anaerobic conditioning.

[DontBurnMyFlag]

damn...

Nicely put. Thanks for that info.

[Darin]

IN other words....it was a good day. :D

[Hekim]

I found after eating pizza the night before, I'm an animal in the gym the morning after. I guess it's the complex carbs. I don't do that often since there's so much fat, but it's sure good when I do (I live by Chicago ;) ). :D