AP'ers might want to read and discuss this article in today's New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/health/nutrition...
In my experience, anything on nutrition and exercise physiology that begins with "Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky..." is worth a read.
Great article; thanks for posting.
For those that want more information on nutrition and the elite athlete the articles written by Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky (and his McMaster colleagues) on the web link below are also a good read.
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/ghocanadagho/gcgtips.htm
Thanks for the great NYT article!
As i read it, for us "normal" runners, who don't train twice a day, it is not necessary to use special nutrition products. Nevertheless, post-training nutrition IS important, especially you should pay attention to consume proteins in the time of some hours after the race, BUT you can do this with normal food, for example meat or eggs. It is no big deal to consume the proteins you need, but nevertheless you should do it. So it is not done with just drinking some fruit juice ;-) but add some meat or eggs (or soy or legumes if you are vegetarian) and it is ok. I think this is the right way to think about it, don't just buy the illusions the industry builds up to sell you their (mostly very expensive) products.
I like chocolate milk afterwards, but only after a glass of water for re-hydration. It's cheap, and has fat, protein, and sugar.
Plus the soy version is pretty good if you don't like it squirted out of a cow.