Suppose you are a Marathon Maniac who is planning to run marathons on consecutive weekends, or you have some other reason for wanting to recover as quickly as possible after a race. In that case you will want to skip the pizza and beer and instead practice recovery nutrition by the book. The specific nutrition practices you rely on to bounce back quickly after a race are identical to the ones you should use to promote recovery after workouts throughout the training process, which I alluded to in Chapter 4. These practices may accelerate and heighten the rebound from a race just enough to be worthwhile for high-level runners in certain situations. But when used daily in training the same refueling techniques will make a tremendous difference in the long-term outcomes of the training process for all runners.
What you eat and when you eat after running strongly affect how quickly your body returns to homeostasis, or its normal state of physiological balance. If you consume the right nutrients at the right times the muscle damage you’ve incurred will heal more quickly, your muscle fuel stores will be replenished faster, and your immune system will rebound more rapidly.
The most important nutrients for immediate postexercise recovery are carbohydrate, protein, water, and antioxidants. Carbohydrate is needed to replenish muscle and liver glycogen stores. Protein is needed to repair damaged muscle cells. Both carbohydrate and protein stimulate the release of insulin, a hormone that facilitates muscle refueling and muscle repair. When carbohydrate and protein are consumed together, muscle glycogen replenishment occurs faster than when carbs are consumed alone and muscle repair proceeds faster than when protein is consumed alone. Carbohydrate and glutamine, an amino acid contained in many proteins, also serve as vital fuels for the immune system and thus aid in the restoration of full immune function after strenuous exertion.
Water is needed after exercise for rehydration, obviously, while antioxidants serve to limit postexercise muscle damage caused by the leaking of free radicals from damaged muscle cells and by the body’s own anti-inflammatory response. Sodium and other electrolytes are useful nutrients in a postexercise meal or snack because they are needed to replace the minerals lost through perspiration. They are somewhat less important for immediate postrun recovery than the other nutrients I’ve identified, however.
Timing is critical. The sooner you take in some carbs, protein, water, and antioxidants, the faster the various recovery processes will unfold. The muscles occupy a unique biochemical state during the first hour or so after a workout or race, a state that enables them to exploit a supply of the right nutrients for recovery far more effectively than they can at a later time. Glycogen replenishment, for example, is achieved 50 percent faster when carbohydrate is consumed immediately after exercise than when it is delayed by several hours.
It’s best if the foods you take in immediately after exercise contain little else besides the nutrients that are most helpful to the various recovery processes. Large amounts of fat and fiber, in particular, will retard muscle glycogen replenishment and muscle tissue repair. Liquids are often the best source of immediate postexercise nutrition because the right beverage can provide all of the nutrients needed for recovery in one source and also because it is usually easier to drink than it is to eat in the first hour after strenuous exertion, when appetite tends to be suppressed. Many runners like to drink fruit smoothies with added protein. The dairy industry has lately been pushing low-fat chocolate milk as an excellent recovery beverage, and the research suggests that it is. The milk-enriched tea that Kenyan runners drink so copiously between runs is also a nearly perfect source of nutrition for recovery. A number of companies make bottled drinks and powdered drink mixes that are formulated especially for nutritional recovery. Although more expensive and somewhat less natural than the options I’ve identified, the best products in this category are able to provide the precise types and amounts of nutrients that are most effective for recovery while leaving out everything (except colorings and flavorings, in most cases) that does not contribute to recovery or gets in its way.