Relentless Forward Progress_ A Guide to Running Ultramarathons - Bryon Powell [49]
In ultras, eat early and often.
Develop a fueling plan that provides for eating at regular intervals. The timing of those intervals begins when the gun goes off. Do not wait until your stomach is rumbling or you feel yourself bonking. If you wait that long, you can recover, but it will be a long, hard road. Avoid that road. Lean toward eating smaller, more frequent snacks. It’s less of a jolt on the stomach and provides more even energy. For example, if you plan on eating a 200-calorie bar for a given hour, eat half the bar in two sessions 30 minutes apart.
So how much should you eat during an ultra? In general, you should shoot for between 250 and 400 calories an hour. The exact amount will depend on your size, your relative ability to digest foods, your effort, and the temperature, with higher efforts and temperatures reducing your ability to process food. Experiment and find how many calories per hour your body can tolerate while running different paces. I’ve found I can tolerate 150 calories an hour from sports drinks (about one bottle), and 200 calories an hour from energy gels or chews, with 100-calorie portions consumed every half hour. In the last quarter of an ultra, I may increase my gel/chew intake to three 100-calorie servings taken at 20-minute intervals.
Most of your calories come from carbohydrates. Many ultrarunners get these carbohydrates from a combination of carbohydrate-based sports drinks, energy gels, and energy chews, as these calories are easily digested.* This scenario is particularly common at the front of an ultra field. Do not rely entirely on simple carbohydrates. Instead, consume a mix of both simple and complex carbohydrates to provide a blend of quick and more sustained energy.
* Always drink at least half a cup of water (or more if it’s a sugar-based drink) for each energy gel or 100 calories of energy chews you consume. Otherwise, the high sugar concentration will make it difficult for your stomach to absorb the sugars. Prolonged failure to consume adequate fluids with energy gels or chews can leads to nausea and vomiting.
Even elites occasionally mix in some “real food.” What is “real food”?** Anything that’s not primarily a carbohydrate in a liquid or semi-solid state. Ultras are famous for being running buffets with a smorgasbord of real food. At a start, we’re talking fare along the lines of candy, chips, pretzels, fruit, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
** Real food is an established term in the ultra community. The term in no way relates to real food in the sense of a healthy diet or avoiding overly processed foods. Indeed, some prominent runners who strictly adhere to eating real food in the healthy sense during their daily lives consume highly processed, nutritionally deficient products during the course of an ultramarathon.
Aid stations and their volunteers are welcome sights during ultramarathons. (Photo by Stephan/Gripmaster)
A fancy aid station may have homemade soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, pizza, or even a full hot breakfast waiting for you.
The varied food selection at ultra aid stations correctly suggests that consuming protein and fat is not off the table. In fact, a small amount of protein may improve performance in ultras. Protein can be found in sports drinks that are specially formulated for ultradistance endurance events and in many real foods. Limit your protein consumption to no more than 20 percent of your caloric intake on a run. For some, that may be far too much protein. Not to worry; as noted in the preceding paragraph, many ultrarunners consume only carbohydrate-sourced calories during a race. The primary benefit of consuming fat during an ultra is