Q&A: Training the gut for a long run can be every bit as important as training your legs
During a run, when oxygen is supplied to skeletal muscles, “the blood that is supposed to be flowing to the intestines is actually going to your muscles,” Sam Wu said, an exercise scientist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
For long, sustained endurance efforts, such as running a marathon, the shunting of blood away from the intestines can damage the thin layer of epithelial cells lining the intestine, which control what enters the bloodstream. During a long run, a sustained lack of blood flow can cause these cells to detach from each other and burst open, spilling their contents into the bloodstream.
As Edwards and her colleagues demonstrated in a separate small study, intestinal damage can be correlated with the intensity of exercise and isn’t specific to running. When compared with runners, cyclists showed similar levels of damage when exercising at similar intensity levels, although they reported fewer overall symptoms of gut discomfort.
Training the gut for a long run can be every bit as important as training your legs. Practice what to eat and drink while training, and remember that a race will be more intense than most training runs. Pay special attention to how you feel during training runs done at race pace, rather than just during long, slow runs.
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