Figures
Endurance runners must race long distances without 'hitting the wall,' exhausting the carbohydrate reservoirs that fuel their working muscles.
Small carbohydrate reserves can catastrophically limit human performance in endurance running: Runners risk "hitting the wall" if they exhaust their leg muscle glycogen before finishing a race. Using a mathematical model of carbohydrate metabolism during endurance running, Benjamin Rapoport (10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000960) demonstrates a method of computing personalized estimates of distances at which runners exhaust their carbohydrate stores while racing at various intensities, providing a quantitative basis for safe pacing strategies, optimal midrace fueling plans, and estimations of performance limits in human endurance running. This artistic rendering shows a runner at different distances and stages of glycogen depletion, superimposed on a glycogen molecule.
Image Credit: Benjamin I. Rapoport; segment of glycogen molecule from image by Mikael Häggström via Wikimedia Commons, brick wall courtesy of Charles S. Bond.
Citation: (2010) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 6(10) October 2010. PLoS Comput Biol 6(10): ev06.i10. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v06.i10
Published: October 28, 2010
Copyright: © 2010 Benjamin I. Rapoport. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Small carbohydrate reserves can catastrophically limit human performance in endurance running: Runners risk "hitting the wall" if they exhaust their leg muscle glycogen before finishing a race. Using a mathematical model of carbohydrate metabolism during endurance running, Benjamin Rapoport (10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000960) demonstrates a method of computing personalized estimates of distances at which runners exhaust their carbohydrate stores while racing at various intensities, providing a quantitative basis for safe pacing strategies, optimal midrace fueling plans, and estimations of performance limits in human endurance running. This artistic rendering shows a runner at different distances and stages of glycogen depletion, superimposed on a glycogen molecule.
Image Credit: Benjamin I. Rapoport; segment of glycogen molecule from image by Mikael Häggström via Wikimedia Commons, brick wall courtesy of Charles S. Bond.