Peter Frick-Wright (host): This is the Outside Podcast.
Peter: One of the first events at this year’s summer olympics is race walking. On August 1st, the fastest walkers in the world will toe the line to see who can move the quickest while keeping one foot in contact with the ground at all times and straightening their leading leg as the foot makes contact with the ground and keeping it straight until the leg passes under the body.
And I know you’ve heard the jokes and seen the parodies, but… race walking is hard core. Elites walk a 6 and a half or 7-minute mile for 20 km. It’s a sport whose athletes live at the limits of endurance and pain tolerance.
So, with the summer olympics in Paris coming up, we thought we’d replay this episode from 2019 about an Olympic race walker who signed up to participate in a nutrition study that changed his life.
It’s the first of three episodes we’re doing looking at interesting aspects of this year’s Olympics. It was originally produced as part of our Sweat Science series.
Peter: In the beginning, there were carbs, and they were good.
Alex Hutchinson: It’s just inextricably connected that if you want to enhance your endurance performance, you have to carbo load.
Frick-Wright: Runners run on carbohydrates. For the…
