Eating and Ultra

We’ve all heard it; ultra-running is an eating contest as much as an endurance one. I was recently chatting with some new athletes of mine looking to jump from the 10k distance to a tough, mountainous 50k and were curious about the major differences in preparation.

Without more than a second of thought I told them, “Eating”.

They, maybe jokingly, asked if they could just eat gushers as opposed to spending $$$ on gels. And i responded, “well, technically, yes”. A pack of typical gushers has 90 calories and 20g of carbohydrates. What I suggest for most athletes is ~300 calories and between 70-100g of carbs per hour. In order to meet this quota one would have to consume 4 packages of gushers every hour to stay properly fueled. For a race like this, even the elite field will be on course for 5.5-6 hours. They are likely looking at 9-10 hours depending on conditions. So, these athletes would have to consume 36-40 packages of (realllllly melted) gushers to complete this race. Which, maybe they’d rather do. I looked on Amazon and found a box of 42 packages of gushers for $21…. which is pretty cost effective. There is no doubt that you would ruin that snack for yourself and never want to look at another gusher as long as you run this earth.

This is generally why I recommend gels to my athletes. They are designed to be gentle on your stomach (for the most part) and very predictable in nutrition content (never have to deal with getting a pack with 6 gushers instead of 8-9). We won’t go into the recent Spring Energy/Awesome Sauce debacle, but we also may be provided with the wrong information on a nutrition label (yikes!).

You can, however, make an attempt to fuel your race purely on aid station fare (as long as you know what foods are going to be at every aid station in advance). Follow this link to my friend Alex Borsuk’s article in Trail Runner to get the 411 on how to fuel at aid stations. For example, one handful of potato chips is approximately 130 calories and 15g of carbs. Mind you, aide stations only happen every 3-12 miles (or longer!) so you would need quite a few handfuls of chips to fuel you between them. The risk here is clear; they might not have potato chips or they’re out of gummy bears. This happens frequently with athletes relying on the electrolyte mixes from aid stations; towards the end of the race as supplies are running low, the electroyte mix may be increasingly diluted and you may not be getting the amounts of carbs/calories/electrolytes that you think you are.

The overarching theme here is, you have to eat to run ultras. You have to make a nutrition plan in order to run ultras (and not bonk for 9-hours). You need to train your gut on shorter training runs to tolerate eating and moving (also to find out which fuel works best for your stomach and wallet). You also need to be familiar with your own hunger/underfueling cues so you can read those mid-race at adjust your plan on the fly.

This is hard on your own, which is another reason to hire a coach to help you navigate your nutrition and training ◡̈