D-Queued said:
[...]
So when he says that Nibali is a genetic freak who can selectively switch to fat stores at the end of the Tour on last climb of the day while ripping the legs off of the competition, I figure someone is on something.
Oops. Did I say "on" something and not "onto"?
I am so envious. Wouldn't it be great if one could press that magic fat store button on an HC climb.
Dave.
Though no fan of Michele Ferrari, I think you're doing him a bit of disservice here.
In the linked article MF (apt initials, eh?) refers to the *total* caloric expenditure over the entire stage to make the point that because he burned fat earlier in the stage, he started the last climb with high-levels of CHO, allowing him to do a maximal aerobic effort.
He states that 800g of CHO (approximately 3200 Kcal worth) is in excess of glycogen stores.
The following article puts an order of magnitude on glycogen stores as 500g in muscle and 100g in the liver, so MF's argument seems reasonable to this point:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248697/
This results in the conclusion that he must have burned a significant amount of calories from another source (i.e., fat) in order to meet his caloric balance.
Note that MF leaves out another factor, which is the amount of food that Nibali ingested during the stage. I've seen varying amounts for amount of food consumed/consumable per hour, up to 100g CHO per hour (see, for example:
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/race-fueling-how-many-calories-should-i-eat) - this would more than make up for the deficit, too.
So Vincenzo's total energy expenditures might come from the following:
- metabolized glycogen from stores
- digested carbohydrates from food consumed during stage
- fat burned from fat stores
- protein burned by metabolizing muscle (which will happen especially when CHO stores are low)
MF's point that increasing fat burned during earlier parts of the stage would result in his
saving the CHO for the final stage, where he made the difference over the rivals.
seems valid, though I don't think (given my point on ingested carbohydrates) that there's a particularly strong case that VN's fat metabolism stands out.
Note that this also doesn't in any way address whether his performance on the last climb is reasonable or not. It just would mean that he has sufficient CHO reserves to put out a strong effort on the last climb.
I would think the same would apply to any of the front-runners - i.e., I believe they were all able to put out a maximal effort on the last climb, so I don't think MF in any way explains why VN stands out.
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