Noodles and rice are pretty "spikey", beans are better though.
While not the greatest thing to do (carbo-load), they burn it off so it doesn't matter much.
I'm not sure, but I think that's the point of these high carb meals.
If I'not mistaken, they also eat pasta for breakfast, delaying the use of these reserves.
Pasta are easy to eat in large quantities, and require little energy to digest.
In the absence of carbo-loading there is no lactic acid "wall" and hence no sainted feeling. Perhaps that's why the runners magazines don't talk about it ;-)
What did all those kenyan runners eat for fifteen years before blowing past their fellow marathoners? Did they drink beer and carbo-load on pasta the night before?
In other news, running barefoot is better than trainers, omega-6 fats are more susceptible to free-radical damage than lard, essential fatty acids doesn't mean what you think, nor does "omnivore", margarine and omega-3 butter spreads kill, &c. &c.
Oh, and tinny, tinny, Tinny, TINNY.
http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/ and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-...
(a nice comparison in the second photograph of heelstrike vs. forefoot strike for Jurek vs. Quimare: more info by googling Tarahumara).
Discussion and links (including some to pose running). http://digg.com/other_sports/The_Running_Shoe_Debate_Barefoo...
EFAs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid#Essential_fatty_acid...
Omega-9 is more susceptible to free-radical damage, that's just basic chemistry. Lipid hypothesis is well worth looking up, link from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-9_fatty_acid -- the lipid hypothesis is what most people take to be gospel truth, despite, for example, well known bad-science (throwing out non-conforming data) shenanigans on the part of Keys. (A summary forthcoming in a "popular" movie called fathead).
If you are more interested, Mary Enig is worth looking up, she has an in-depth explanation of competing n-3 and n-6 pathways that is touched upon here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid
Lastly Gary Taubes is a great guide to the debate.
Omnivore is descriptive, not prescriptive.
For the rest, try going to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez and searching for MRFIT, or googling Rotterdam study or the Lyon study. I believe paper summaries are not enough and that one needs to read the study, understand the methodology etc.
e.g. http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/134/11/3100 is a link that turns up. They found countervailing evidence, basically, that fat-intake was inversely associated with CHD (bets are on fat-soluble vitamins like K2 being the agents).
This whole thing is very OT for HN, so I'll stop here, if you don't mind. cheers.