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@hippy
After reading this article about a way to increase maximum carbohydrate intake during exercise I'm curious about the effects of taking in no protein during a race as in the case of Ironman competitor Chrissie Wellington.
In the example of Chrissie Wellington, the data he showed was from 2007, at which point she was taking 86g carbs/hr; she’s now apparently taking quite a bit more than that, because she’s managed to train her system to tolerate it. Another change Wellington has made is that she now takes just carbs, no protein. Asker’s opinion is that the early studies that found improved performance from taking something like a 4:1 ratio of carbs to protein during exercise were flawed in several ways. His lab has tried to replicate those results and found no benefit from adding protein — so eliminating the protein might make it easier on the gut.
I've spoken to a few people about it and most seem to think that for long stuff, you need to take on some protein. Certainly for multi-day events it makes sense - I'm not sure about 24hr events though.
An alternative to including protein during races was suggested to me - Glutamine.
It's an amino acid, a protein building block and supposedly less likely to interfere with gut function.
This set of US guidelines suggests there may be benefits to its use but no studies have yet been done to prove it one way or the other.
http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2009/03000/Nutrition_and_Athletic_Performance.27.aspx