Weekend Roundup: Stupid Mistakes Triathletes Make… and How to Avoid Them
I don’t want to say that it was a bad weekend, but I made at least two dumb-assed triathlon mistakes and wound up with my first—albeit minor—injury of the season. Argh. As I noted later that afternoon, I got up early for Spin Class on Saturday, but despite having plenty of time, I still managed to walk out of the house without my Gatorade bottle, resulting in a near blood-sugar meltdown in the middle of class. Then when I headed out for a five-mile run yesterday morning, I pulled a muscle in my left calf. Dumb! Let’s take Saturday’s mistake first. It was much less complicated. A human body always burns a mix of blood sugar (glucose) and fat for fuel. This is true for everyone, all the time. Fat is by far the more plentiful fuel supply, even for folks who’re very skinny, and when we’re at rest or working at a relatively low heart rate, fat is what we’re burning most. However, our brains run exclusively on glucose, and more to the point, glucose is the easier, more “high octane