Heavy Eyelids and Heavier Feet
Are you lost without that morning cup of coffee before starting your first set
of runs? Apparently athletes are
too. The use of caffeine in
day-of-the-race energy supplements is common and widely accepted as helpful for
athletes during endurance competitions like marathons and triathlons, but how
much is too much?
“Caffeine
has been well known to be a beneficial drug to use during sport. It’s been
studied for many years over a variety of different types of sports; it will
improve your performance,” says Matthew Ganio, director of the University of
Arkansas human performance laboratory, in an NPR story
chronicling the benefits and downsides of utilizing caffeine during intense
races like the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii: a grueling event that
boasts a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and ends with a full marathon
(26.2 miles).
According to
the article, athletes like Sarah Piampiano, a professional tri-athlete,
maintain an almost constant caloric intake with a hearty serving of caffeine to
continually revitalize themselves both physically and mentally during the
day-long competition. If you've seen an endurance sport in action at some point
-- be it in the Olympics or just in the crowd at a local marathon -- you might recall
seeing racers downing little packets of energy gels like GU (“Goo”) with water.
Piampiano takes an energy gel before the race begins, one every hour on the
bike and, by the time she’s running the last half of the marathon, has
increased her intake to two packets every 20 minutes.
“The top
athletes, the pros, want to be able to meter out caffeine during the course of
an endurance event. It’s always nice to
have that second wind, late in the race, where you can energize the mind,
stimulate the mind, with the central nervous system response of caffeine,” says
Brian Vaughan, CEO of GU Energy Labs, a company that manufactures training gels
that combine “carbohydrates, amino acids, electrolytes and caffeine.”
While other
athletes “avoid caffeine because it makes them jittery,” “bothers their
stomachs” or simply choose to self-medicate -- ingesting the compact energy
packets as needed rather than on a methodical schedule -- some researchers also err
on the side of caution. University of Connecticut doctoral candidate, Evan
Johnson, argues a “vicious cycle of supplementation,” in which athletes who
continually use caffeine to stay alert during competition have trouble sleeping
when it comes time to rest. Such was the case with the English soccer team, who
“took caffeine pills to amp up” for a World Cup match and “needed sleeping
pills to wind down.”
As with all things, moderation is key. A study
of male non-athletes in Australia demonstrated “more vigorous” work outs with
the use of caffeine, while the NPR article went on to note that the FDA
recently announced an agency investigation of “several deaths that could be
linked to energy drinks.” The remaining side effects of such a consistent and
heavy use in endurance athletes have not yet come to light, but the energy
supplements and gels derived from caffeine have already made their mark as a
race day necessity.