Why moving a little too fast can cost you a lot, especially at altitude

Ever head out trying to follow someone's blistering pace, only to finally slow down and feel depleted? When that happens, you actually can't just slow down a little bit to "make up" for speeding up before. No, basically you've screwed yourself for the rest of the day. Why?

When you hike (or run, bike, etc...), you are using multiple energy pathways. The rate of energy production from each of these pathways is different.

Reference

For the sake of simplicity, we are only going to talk about the two systems that use glycogen (stored sugar). Anaerobic glycolysis can produce ATP (energy) at a faster rate than aerobic glycolysis can. The faster you are moving and harder you are working, the more energy you are going to get anaerobically. Ok sounds great!

But as you would guess, there's a cost to that. The cost is how much glycogen is used.

Energy Systems Part 2 - Aerobic Exercise

We previously went over some basics of anaerobic exercise, now on to the aerobic portion.

3. Glycolysis - Aerobic
The burning of glycogen using oxygen can last much longer than without...but how long? Well, it's going to be directly related to how much glycogen you have stored in your muscles. So when you workout, you need to eat carbohydrates to replenish these storages. If you don't, you will feel fatigued, as your body can't produce energy at the rate you are used to. That's why you'll see people eating all sorts of sugary stuff when doing multi-hour endurance activities. Gatorade came to signficance partly due to showing that by giving carbohydrate calories to people during exercise, the participants could perform the exercise for longer.