Fuel Update - Tailwind with Caffeine!

Well, maybe Im clairvoyant? I mean after all, I have predicted Ill never win a Race class skimo race. Anyway, after my last post I sent the folks at Tailwind a link to it for their "reviews" page. They promptly wrote back to let me know they were releasing a caffeinated product today. How about that!

I also asked them about caffeinated vs. non caffeinated fuel with regards to endurance exercise.  They had this to say:

Research has shown that caffeine does have a positive effect on performance in two ways in terms of endurance sports:

• Glycogen is the principal fuel for muscles and exhaustion occurs when it is depleted. A secondary fuel, which is much more abundant, is fat. As long as there is still glycogen available, working muscles can utilize fat. Caffeine mobilizes fat stores and encourages working muscles to use fat as a fuel. This delays the depletion of muscle glycogen and allows for a prolongation of exercise. The critical time period in glycogen sparing appears to occur during the first 15 minutes of exercise, where caffeine has been shown to decrease glycogen utilization by as much as 50%. Glycogen saved at the beginning is thus available during the later stages of exercise. Although the exact method by which caffeine does this is still unclear, caffeine caused sparing in all of the human studies where muscle glycogen levels were measured. The effect on performance, which was observed in most experimental studies, was that subjects were able to exercise longer until exhaustion occurred.
• Caffeine may alter the perception of how hard you are working. During testing, athletes were asked to judge their effort, which is referred to as the rating of perceived exertion (RPE). Some studies have yielded significantly lower RPE's -- less fatigue -- when the athlete used caffeine. Obviously, the RPE is very subjective, and there are many things that may influence it.

 So, some good food for thought (ha ha).  Hope you find it informative!