500 Cal/hr and the Leadville 100 Record

[XterraRob]

I wonder how delirious you'd be after the Leadville 100 on a diet like that.

[oldschool]

I wonder how delirious you'd be after the Leadville 100 on a diet like that.

If you're referring to me..not delirious at all. I've done many many 100+ mile rides, runs, and 24+ hour events using only liquid calories. If you consume 300 cal/hr in liquid form vs 300 cal/hr in a bulk food form, the energy consumed is the same. I want to consume readily ad easily digested calories. I know lots of guys that would eat way too many cal/hr. This can cause multiple problems with water, sodium chloride issues, and stomach distress.

What was so interesting to me, when I changed my entire food and calorie strategy, was breaking away from the "good ole' tried and true" methods. As Jort said, I went from old school to new school. Sure, some can get away with cookies, gels, chips, and all sorts of calories in all different forms. That didn't work well for me. The "but my stomach is empty" thought, IMO, doesn't take into account the calories I am intaking. Food sitting in my belly is not calories to my muscles. To toss 500 calories into my belly doesn't help. The body can't process and use those consumed 500 cal/hr. It just sits there and has to wait and wait for water to be pulled to help digest. If you eat salty type stuff, the saying the running world was "water follow salt" as the body needs to bring the salinity down, so now water is being extracted from your cells to water down the high salinity in your belly. It was a very interesting path fro me to make the changes from "same ole" same ole' to a whole new way of getting easily digestible calories that can sustain me for a long ass time. It also helps me to maintain a very regular calories schedule and keeps from dips and starts and keeps me at a very steady caloric rate with no glycemic bubbles as GU and gels can give you.

To add, carbs have only 4 cal/gram. Fat has 9 cal/gram. If I maintain certain heart rates my body burns fat and that's a huge bonus. I don't eat fat, I burn the fat I have on my skin and bones. We all have lots and lots of burnable fat in our otherwise well conditioned bodies.

Just my experiences.

Mike

[Sluglas]

Figuring out nutrition has been my Achilles Heel in long events like Ironman, I'd like to try this. Do you have a specific recipe you can share as far as how much maltodextrin and protein powder and what brands/types?

[Jorts]

Figuring out nutrition has been my Achilles Heel in long events like Ironman, I'd like to try this. Do you have a specific recipe you can share as far as how much maltodextrin and protein powder and what brands/types?

For something like ironman, I’d practice with what’s on the course. I feel like it was just Gatorade. The whole time you’re on the bike you should be taking in over 100g of carbs/hr. If you’re not trending toward a glycogen deficit off the bike you can reduce your calorie intake some on the run to reduce GI issues and still not have a major bonk. I qualified for Kona at my first ironman a few years back having hardly any tri experience beforehand. And I’m not some genetically superior athlete or anything.

[XterraRob]

If you're referring to me..not delirious at all. I've done many many 100+ mile rides, runs, and 24+ hour events using only liquid calories. If you consume 300 cal/hr in liquid form vs 300 cal/hr in a bulk food form, the energy consumed is the same. I want to consume readily ad easily digested calories. I know lots of guys that would eat way too many cal/hr. This can cause multiple problems with water, sodium chloride issues, and stomach distress.

What was so interesting to me, when I changed my entire food and calorie strategy, was breaking away from the "good ole' tried and true" methods. As Jort said, I went from old school to new school. Sure, some can get away with cookies, gels, chips, and all sorts of calories in all different forms. That didn't work well for me. The "but my stomach is empty" thought, IMO, doesn't take into account the calories I am intaking. Food sitting in my belly is not calories to my muscles. To toss 500 calories into my belly doesn't help. The body can't process and use those consumed 500 cal/hr. It just sits there and has to wait and wait for water to be pulled to help digest. If you eat salty type stuff, the saying the running world was "water follow salt" as the body needs to bring the salinity down, so now water is being extracted from your cells to water down the high salinity in your belly. It was a very interesting path fro me to make the changes from "same ole" same ole' to a whole new way of getting easily digestible calories that can sustain me for a long ass time. It also helps me to maintain a very regular calories schedule and keeps from dips and starts and keeps me at a very steady caloric rate with no glycemic bubbles as GU and gels can give you.

To add, carbs have only 4 cal/gram. Fat has 9 cal/gram. If I maintain certain heart rates my body burns fat and that's a huge bonus. I don't eat fat, I burn the fat I have on my skin and bones. We all have lots and lots of burnable fat in our otherwise well conditioned bodies.

Just my experiences.

Mike

How long did it take to adjust your body to that diet and were there any pains that came with it along the way? The biggest thing I could see being a problem is dehydration. Reason I ask is I've tried to long stints of hiking before with just caffeine and water, and I was definitely feeling some major adrenal burnout that was making it hard to focus.

[madbuck]

Anyway, I think this result is very interesting. Big races come and go but it is exceptional to see something "different" in the race, let alone a longstanding course record fall.
Up to 300-350 kCal/hr was the conventional wisdom I always heard for digestion/gastric emptying/uptake. Ultra stuff goes through cycles and fads; and, as pointed out, trail running lags bike and long tri events where there is stiffer competition and focus. Plus, the impact and jostling while running is an additional challenge compared to a road bike ride.

About 10-15 years ago, "fat adapted" started becoming really hot and stayed for quite awhile, focusing on pushing the crossover point of primary fuel source to higher efforts. It seemed that sort of a hybrid approach of fat-adapted in training supplemented with glucose in 100M races led to high performances (e.g. Tim Olson, Rob Krar). That made intuitive sense: sort of like live low, train high; or train heavy, race light.

Roche pushed the envelope and in part did so by particularly *training* to eat more calories. Which also makes intuitive sense, to train your digestive system to work efficiently during exercise, and possibly influence the balance of digestive enzymes and perhaps even gut microbiome.
Remains to be seen if others will follow a similar approach. How sustainable is it for multiple 100M races per year? Will it help or hurt with overtraining syndrome (OTS) that seem to have hit several higher-profile ultramarathon athletes in the last few decades? What does this approach look like for female athletes? Does it help or hurt with potential effects of the female athlete triad?
Or is it a one-off fad?
Lots of things to learn here.

[Gulf_Coast_Hiker]

This is from Matt C.'s race report on his Leadville 100 in 2005:

"Fuel
This is the number two question I am getting as it seems the number one Ultra issue for most people is fuel. Note: I call it fuel, not food! True, we are all different but I believe there is a misconception that an Ultra can’t be done on energy gels and sports drinks alone and that we have to eat solid food. However, those gels and drinks are designed for easy and rapid absorption which is just what we need! The key is to practice in training what we will do in the race.

I practiced my fuel regime about five times a week almost year round right down to the number of sips I take per hour. Yes—18 sips an hour is what I need to stay hydrated. More if it is hot, less if it is cool. I get those 18 sips by taking 3 sips every 10 minutes. Further, I dump Carb-BOOM energy gel and Gatorade Endurance Formula right into my bottle or CamelBak so that I get about 50 calories every 10 minutes. My energy levels stay constant and I am never shocking my system like what would happen if I ran an hour or more and tried to take in the same number of calories at one time. As an added bonus, I can minimize the weight I carry based on the time it takes to get from one aid station to the next. Fish Hatchery to May Queen? 24 sips...

To come up with these numbers I had to experiment with what works for me. If I lost weight, I added sips. If I peed too much, less sips. Etc. But the point is I spent a good deal of my training time working on my fuel systems because I think it is the biggest factor between success and failure in an Ultra."

https://www.skyrunner.com/story/2005lt100.htm

[seannunn]

Roche has been a big proponent of "food doping" for awhile now.

I'm not an exercise physiologist or nutritionists and this is paraphrasing my understanding of the idea behind consuming 90+ grams of carbs/hr (i.e. 400+ cal/hr):

In ultras a fit person's HR and perceived effort is around high zone 2 touching into zone 3 (5 zone model). At this level, your energy production comes from a mix of fat and carbs - carbs being the primary limiter there. Even for someone well fat adapted (burning a relatively higher proportion of fat for the same power output), your body's glycogen stores (basically your onboard carb fuel source) will be depleted after 2 to 3 hours when performing at high zone 2. To compensate for that depletion of onboard carbs, you can take in A LOT of carbs while racing, thereby reducing the rate of depletion. This allows you to maintain that high zone 2 power output. The bonk that occurs to a lot of endurance athletes is the depletion of the body's onboard glycogen (can also bonk due to dehydration and/or electrolyte imbalance but that's separate from this discussion), whereby the body has to adapt to burning more fat which cannot produce the same power output as the optimal mix of fat and carbs.

Even crossfit, which encourages a low carb lifestyle for fat burning optimization, has athletes at the crossfit games that rely on a higher carb intake for purposes of performance during competition.

I think you are spot on. Carbs have more oxygens in their molecules to start with than fats do, which means that they required proportionately fewer O2 molecules to be broken down. This is obviously an issue for an elite athlete in the 10K, half-marathon, or marathon. Historically 100 mile races have been run at slow enough paces to allow for the burning of a good mixture of carbs and fats. This may be the start of a new era for ELITE ultradistance runners. Non-elites like me, who (used to) run ultras at paces a lot slower than their marathon pace, would be less affected. Nevertheless it has implications for anyone looking to turn in a better time in a fully supported race, FKT, etc., of several hours duration, assuming they could "stomach" the taste of that many carbs.

[seannunn]

I would also add that somewhere long ago I read that Yiannis Kouros of Greece, who holds all of the ULTRA ultra running records (think 1000K, 1000 miles, etc.) got 97% of his calories from carbs. How on earth he was able to avoid catabolizing muscle tissue in events of several days duration with no appreciable protein consumption is beyond me.

Sean Nunn
Peculiar, MO

[XterraRob]

I would also add that somewhere long ago I read that Yiannis Kouros of Greece, who holds all of the ULTRA ultra running records (think 1000K, 1000 miles, etc.) got 97% of his calories from carbs. How on earth he was able to avoid catabolizing muscle tissue in events of several days duration with no appreciable protein consumption is beyond me.

Sean Nunn
Peculiar, MO

Maybe he was catabolizing muscle tissue.

[seannunn]

I would also add that somewhere long ago I read that Yiannis Kouros of Greece, who holds all of the ULTRA ultra running records (think 1000K, 1000 miles, etc.) got 97% of his calories from carbs. How on earth he was able to avoid catabolizing muscle tissue in events of several days duration with no appreciable protein consumption is beyond me.

Sean Nunn
Peculiar, MO

Maybe he was catabolizing muscle tissue.

He must have been, but how that can be done for multiple days without a significant loss of performance over the course of the event is what I can't understand.

Sean

[XterraRob]

He must have been, but how that can be done for multiple days without a significant loss of performance over the course of the event is what I can't understand.

Sean

How does the Leadville 100 community feel about the use of PEDs?