183. DOES FRUCTOSE HELP TO RECOVER BETTER FOR THE NEXT RIDE? - BY JON ECHEPARE

Recovery between training sessions is one of the most important nutritional challenges in endurance sports. When recovery time is limited, carbohydrate intake becomes particularly important, as prolonged exercise can substantially deplete glycogen stores.

This scenario is common in professional cycling, such as during Grand Tours, but it can also occur during training and even among amateur cyclists. For example, amateur cyclists might spend the working week fitting in shorter training sessions and then use the weekend to accumulate most of their training volume. Saturday could involve a 4–5-hour ride with some climbs and Zone 3 intervals, followed by another 3–4-hour ride on Sunday. In this situation, carbohydrate stores may still be partially depleted when starting the Sunday ride.

Traditionally, most attention has been placed on muscle glycogen. However, skeletal muscle is not the only place where we store carbohydrates. The liver also stores glycogen and plays an important role in maintaining blood glucose availability during prolonged exercise. This is important because muscle glycogen is essentially trapped within the muscle: it can be used by the muscle itself but cannot be released as glucose into the bloodstream to help maintain blood glucose levels.

This distinction becomes particularly interesting when we consider the type of carbohydrates consumed after training. Glucose is an excellent substrate for restoring muscle glycogen, whereas fructose is preferentially metabolised by the liver.

Previous studies had already shown that combining fructose with glucose-based carbohydrates can accelerate liver glycogen restoration while producing similar rates of muscle glycogen resynthesis compared with glucose alone (1,2)

From a physiological perspective, this sounds useful.

But does adding fructose to glucose-based carbohydrates during the post-exercise recovery period actually improve not only glycogen restoration, but also performance in the next exercise session?

A study published by Ed Maunder and Colleagues (University of Birmingham, UK) on Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise in 2018 tried to answer this question (3).