PUBLISHED 03/02/2006
If you're like a lot of runners, your postworkout routine goes something like this: Stretch, drink water, shower, and get on with your day. Food? That can wait until you're hungry, right?
Not if you want to feel your best on your next run. When you run, you burn mostly glycogen, a fuel stored in your muscles. Your mission right after a run, therefore, is to eat, even if you don't feel hungry. And fast. No matter what time of day you run, the enzymes that are responsible for making glycogen are most active immediately postworkout-leaving you a 60-minute window in which those highly stimulated enzymes are at maximum capacity to produce glycogen.
"After exercise, especially following intensive or prolonged bouts, the body is primed to reload muscle glycogen," says Suzanne Girard Eberle, M.S., R.D., author of Endurance Sports Nutrition. Wait more than an hour to refuel, and your body's ability to make glycogen out of what you consume drops by an astounding 66 percent. And the longer you wait, the more likely you are to feel sluggish.
"Everything runners do is about how well we recover," says Lisa Dorfman, M.S., R.D., a sports nutritionist and marathoner. "That's when the gains from training come."
In that crucial first hour, shoot to consume 300 to 400 calories-ideally containing three grams of carbs to every one gram of protein. Your body's already primed to make glycogen out of simple carbs, and a little protein helps repair muscle-tissue microdamage. Of course, what you'll feel like eating (or drinking, or not) after a 7 a.m. run will probably differ from what you'll want after a run in the noon heat or between work and dinner. Here's how to maximize the refueling window, whatever time of day you run.
