Awesome tips, Simon . Thank you

Actually, the hardest part of running for more than 10 hours is figuring out when to eat solid food, when to consume sugar, when to take electrolytes, etc. It’s all about finding a balance that doesn’t upset your stomach! Thanks for the tips and sharing your experiences.

Very satisfying. The salty piece hit the spot too for me!

Thanks! Glad it's helful!

Yes, it's so interesting to hear these things. My uncle who was really big into cycling was telling me about fueling strategy from back in the days. Makes you wonder what it'll be like in 20 years, and if I'll look back at what I did and scratch my head

Let's go! Good luck! Self supported?

Self supported? I think yes. The way I am running my birthday party, I am inviting people to come and run the route with me at any point during the run (a closed circuit) or just hangout at a central location to cheer me on. I will have friends and family present, but no one in attendance will have ever run an ultra or supported anyone running an ultra. I have done a few triathlon sprints and am training for an Olympic triathlon a month prior to the ultra run, but have never done anything like an ultra before. Your videos are providing me with tons of great information!@@runningwithsimon

@@thomasostroski7113Cool! Very original!

I'm the same way.

Same but max 30km once a week. Feel like i need to implement calories for longer than that.

@@RealBullbear perhaps so...also sufficient rest ,recovery and nutrition is critical ..100 % rest and recovery is so important...

You could try incorporating 1 or two bananas and see if you can run like normal. I like having a very light breakfast and evening snack. Huge lunch and dinner.

Me too but for less than 3 hours of running

Good luck :)

Good luck manuel! Let me know how it goes!

I often have that same grumble towards the end. Usually I try to eat. Sure, it's too late to benefit from that for the run itself, and it's probably helpful to recovery. But sometimes despite being hungry, with grumble and all, I know my stomach won't tolerate much. Sometimes just sipping some water is enough to fool it for a little while. I've tried to force eating, and have regretted ...

I usually have a piece of fruit or Gatorade if I’m hungry mid training. I usually do 3h/day of martial arts so I burn a lot of calories. I love my bananas

31k tire pull??? That's insane congrats

Haha, thanks. Considering a marathon maybe next year or year after for my 60th, lol.

@runningwithsimon - worked on my electrolytes intake and finally nailed it. Did a 42K solo run on Sunday at 34° and survived without any issues at all. Sure it was a slow-pace run, with a run/walk strategy (my first at that distance: 15 min slow run 7:45/km, 5 min fast walk) and was back doing a 17K today (56 hrs later) with no issues. Thanks for the pointers.

I like that! I think the main reason I use calories is because the math is simple enough for me to do on the fly.

Salut Simon, I also use the carbs per hour approach suggested by Jason Koop: 60-80g per hour for runs longer than 90min. Simple starting point to experiment from.

My professional martial arts coach, his student just won European champion in mma. - He says he eats around 60-90g carbs before and after training. We don’t go on long runs often but interval training is a lot of fun. - We generally aim for a speed where we can hold a conversation and not pant at all times.

I know it's silly and is not directly related to this video, but when I get carried away with the excitement of a race and pace too fast, I like asking myself "why am I in such a rush to be in pain?"

You're welcome 😊

Glad it's helpful :)

That's awesome man! Keep it up!

Ca fait plaisir!

You bet

Thanks !!! :)

You're welcomed!

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks ! This one is a tough one - simple instructions, but oh so hard to apply!

It’s tricky for sure. If gel make you sick, then don’t. It’s about finding the right food. As I sometimes say, if you could eat it and not be sick, that was a good choice. If you ate it and got sick…that was a bad choice….

Glad it's helpful - cheers! Got to admit I miss my poles friends from when I lived in Europe. They sure knew how to have fun!

Ça fait plaisir!

It was Nora's idea! I'll try to make more visuals in the future - it's very helpful!

Great to hear! The hardest remains to apply it but I hope it's a good place to start experimenting and finding what works best for you.

You're welcome! I bet you have a lot of knowedge now, which is half the battle! Applying it is tricky however - most time for me it works well, but some times my stomach just doens't want to collaborate

Let's hope that helps him! Thanks for sharing!

Great! That was probably the biggest thing my wife did to finally be able to race 100k - fuel more often in training run, so that on race day, it went smoothly(ish)

Thanks - I hope it's helpful! And you can of course 'fine tune' these numbers with practice but I think it's a good starting point

Thanks!

Good luck!

*Studied - I've had my PhD for about 8 years. But I'd never have the patience to be a teacher lol!

Totally true. And it’s not exact anyway but helps see if you are waaaaay underfueling. And at the end of the day, if you eat it and puke it - bad choice. I think pros actually go with blood test during race to adjust. But for us mere mortals, it’s a rough guess at best!

It's good that your practicing this for sure. Sounds a bit on the low end in terms of calories but you should be able to improve by then. Good luck, let me know how it goes!

Have a good race!

Haha thanks! That’s my way of having fun putting those movies together

Thanks for sharing. And glad you found your solution!

Good luck! Elevation gain is tough, but if you take your time, it's very manageable. For me it's a lot about 'resetting my expectations' and realizing that my overall pace will be much slower and include a bunch of walking, but everyone is in the same boat!

Peeing, unless you are in town or say at a campground, is totally fine. Pooping, depends a bit but is more of a “try not to”. Like it’s semi-frown upon but also…shit happens. Always try as much as possible to hold it. But look, if you suddenly have diarrhea and you are literally going to shit yourself…well… there’s that. At the very least try to practice basic sanitation and leave no trace principles such as the “where” is not close to water source, you go further away from the trail, you dig a hole, fill it back, bring back TP etc. But that’s very much a last resort and should be absolutely exceptional… too much of that and that race could literally cease to exist because they won’t be able to renew their permit (because they left the trail in bad condition). Example Badwater is in a national park, and all crew cars have to carry 10 portable toilet just in case you can’t wait until public restrooms. Typically you won’t have that option … so you have to try and hold it. But I wouldn’t “ban” someone who had “an accident“ if they took the precaution above.

haha oops! Hope you solved it...

@@runningwithsimon every race is a challenge with my pace,my nutrition and my stomach

...and losing!

Haha Thanks! ... I guess? :P I love Jeff's stuff - so clean and well edited! Nice story telling too!

That's true!

I’d suggest you use a (free) online tool for those estimate - they let you use metrics or imperials. The big factor is your weight. Some tools will also ask things like elevation gain which if it’s for a hilly run I think is an important consideration. Ultimately it’s just an estimate because it can’t actually measure your form or anything. For example it’s intuitively obvious that you’d burn more calories running the same distance on soft sand or snow then on paved.

Yup I also mostly save protein for later.

That's the right mindset for sure. You can have a look at this one on how many mileage at peak based on race distance: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/a9hpY5mZm93Pp40.htmlsi=AeJ-lfCfObw3JpqU And this one about how to make a training plan. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mbSqdcuLuLXJZ2w.htmlsi=FtzkxLRbnuc1JOg0

@@runningwithsimon thankyou bro :)

Yes, that's right! I use those packs and they are 200 Cal. I try to do 2x bottle per pack. It's harder in race to know what you're having precisely because it depends on how they dilute it (and sometimes you can taste it - it's EXTREMLY concentrated, and sometimes diluted).

Sure, on empty stomach you'll start absorbing monosaccharide such as glucose almost instantly - that's really the basis of a 75g glucose tolerance test (and the reduced ability in pre-diabetes to then distribute in relevant tissue). But it takes longer to 1) fully absorb all you ingested 2) even longer if you have anything in your stomach. In a 'normal' profile for gtt, you can see level raising in 15min, but they stay high and peak at like 1hr, so you're still absorbing to that point

Makes sense, thanks

M-kay! Can someone get me paper towels?!

Yes but no clue when. It's harder than it sounds to provide specific guidance there because the core concept are similar. I know what works relatively well for me - but explaining it might not be super helpful. Because it's the application of it that is difficult, and it's more about trial and error first, and eventually problem solving on race day. BUT I have been collecting a ton of quality data on this - tracking exactly what I'm having food/drink/salt in my last 5-6 x 100 milers.

Sorry for the multi-post answer. Just to add - I guess the only big difference is that for longer distance at some point, you can't have what would be your 'ideal' fuel, so you need to pick what works. And the last thing is that longer distance implies slower pace - aka lower intensity. Which implies a higher reliance on fat metabolism as % of energy source. So the math isn't nearly as simple because some of the base assumption just don't work, and one would probably need to measure Fatmax or something. Which well, I've never done, and most of us don't have access to.

@@runningwithsimon Okay no worries, we all have to make our own journeys. Think it's time to experiment more with solid foods and get a better feeling as to what works/doesn't.

Agreed. We always use a mix of metabolic pathways. It’s of course a simplification I make when saying we burn glycogen vs fat. Depending on intensity, it’s going to be different % but always a mix of both pathways. Technically one could do a fatmax lab test - but other than pros, who can do that? Pros are also doing lactate monitoring during race nowadays to adjust fueling, but similarly, who has the resources to do that if you run for fun? But even pros still rely heavily on carbs for nutrition, so I don’t think there’s any major paradigm shifts. It’s more that they can fine-tune fueling based on actual lab vs. rule of thumb.

I am fat adapted and for 3 hours at 6 mph I do not need food. I am slow, not racing, just regular exercize for me at 70+. I was born in France, and there is no way I will consume "gels". I never eat processed junk. Did you ever try to just select more high quality nutrition over the 2 days before a race? If so what did you pick? 😊

If you eat it and it sits well with your stomach, then that’s a great choice. It’s so personal that in the end, if it works, and is a good source of energy, it’s perfect! I think myself fat Greek yogurt wouldn’t sit well with my stomach but that’s just me

Thanks for the reply. I will keep using it then 👌

Thanks! That guy is one of the absolute greatest!

Yeah you're spot on - those numbers are personnel and need to be adapted to you. I'm always amazed by how little my wife as to eat! I have seen tools online to estimate burn rate too which is probably a good starting point but eventually you tweak it to you. It's hard to estimate because weight is obviously important, but it also depends on your running form and other factors

@@runningwithsimon Yes i have found calorie calculators online that have given me good info on body type and weight. Im more muscle dense also so needed to add more real food to suit me needs.

Sleeping - unless it's 36h+ race, you can often just push through. Stopping isn't great - your legs will tighten up. Hot meals - you should take them later in the race. Especially if it's cold, it will feel very good. I would myself not have hot meal, unless I start feeling that 'not hot' food is getting harder to eat. Banana or coke - you'll have to find out for yourself. For me, banana would mostly work for the first 20-30 miles, but later would feel 'gross'. Coke is good any time for me, so I prefer to wait until it's necessary (e.g., I can't have banana or gels) Supplements - if you mean salt pills, that's mostly if it's very hot / you sweat a lot. I don't really have a rule as to 'when they are needed', but if they are, I take 2 at the time every 60-90 min.

If you run those distance, I think it’s safe to assume your body will metabolize fat at its fastest possible rate. But that’s limited. It’s hard to know what’s your fat metabolism rate is if you don’t actually do lab work. I estimate 100-150Cal/hr for myself. And a 22ft 100 miler would require about 12k Cal for me - so let’s say 4500 fat, 2000 glycogen, meaning 5500 from food. Doesn’t mean I have to eat it flat - I can easily sustain 300Cal for 10ish hours (=3000), but eventually becomes harder and harder. But as long as I consumer 2500 over those other 20hr, I’ll feel fine. And based on my notes, for me it works. That said, this is all over engineered and also going backward. I eat what I can tolerate. 100 cal per hour at first should be easy as long as you don’t forget to. Later however, it’s hard. And you’ll just feel sluggish and low on energy if you fall behind

Thank you so much!!! @@runningwithsimon

What do you mean by fast metabolism? That you burn more calories at rest? If so, I’d just look at how much energy you expect to expand during your run and eat accordingly

You're right - and good points. It's more complicated than that for sure, and we're ignoring some factors due to the intrinsic since approximate nature of the whole calculation here (a bit like you'd round up pi to 3.14 so there's no point pretending you can be accurate to the 0.00001). So it's more a matter of how accurate can you be, and how accurate do you need to be. Because unless you are a pro athlete, we don't have access to lab work that would need to be more accurate. Just the estimate of how many calories you burn running is already super approximate - it's easily going to be 20% off, which makes any down stream calculation extremely approximate at best (but good enough to give guidance). It'd be super helpful to be able to do some Fatmax lab work which would help understand what % comes from fat metabolism vs. carbohydrate and what's your peak fat metabolism rate. My understanding is that this relates more to lactate threshold than heart rate or even VO2 max, but both of these are related to lactate threshold and therefore often used as another simplification to estimate effort level and where you stand on your metabolic curve. Anyhow it's not so much that it's a % fat vs carbs, but rather that you have a max rate for fat metabolism, and the balance will come from carbohydrate which is not rate limiting at the intensity we are talking about. Without doing a fatmax test, who knows what's your rate. I read from individual to individual pretty big gap, but oxidizing fat could give you upwards of 200 potentially (but that varies greatly). So really what happens here is that if you go very slow (say like hiking 2-3 mph) and say you need 200-300 cal/hrs, a VERY large chunk of that will come from fat. But if you go fast and need 700-800 per hour, you have a large deficit to compensate first from stored glycogen, and eventually from ingested carbs. And I absolutely see the difference, if I start struggling with food intake, I can keep going at a slow pace, and presumably, most of my calories are from fat oxidation. Now would it be worth factoring this in calculation? Well, if it was practical, sure! And that's certainly a thing at pro level, check out The Norwegian Method in triathlon. I'm absolutely no expert on it and haven't read much, but my very neophyte understanding is that they use frequent blood lactate monitoring during race to adjust effort level (pace) and nutrition. I heard kilian refer about that too when talking about evolution of the sport and UTMB. So yeah, it's possible, and can give you an edge. But that also shows that to have this level of precision, you can't just make the math before end (despite them having great access to lab work, VO2 max measurement, lactrate threshold, fatmax, etc...which we don't have). They still need to monitor during the race and adjust. So unless you can do that, it's just not practical. So the reason to not factor it is simplicity and false precision. AND if anything, ignoring the contribution of fat to your available energy pool goes in the right/safe direction of the imprecision. Hard to explain in words what I mean here, but say if you know you can jump 1.5m +/- 0.1 m, and there is a gap ahead of you of 1.5m, even if the wind blowing my back will help a little, I'd rather ignore it when making my decision. Similarly for fueling strategy, if you consume 100 cal too much, that's probably better than underestimating your need. But sure, as you correctly point out, you can't eat past like 60-90g of sugar so you have to watch out for that. And for your calculation ahead - apologies if I may be misunderstanding it. But what you need to do is to start eating from time 0, despite still having glycogen. You should really aim to NOT deplete it because that's where your body will feel empty. So again apologies if i mess up the number in your example, but so you are saying 50km in 5 hours. Am I understanding that you estimate needing 3000-3500Kcal total? If you eat 3 gels per hours the whole way, you have ~1500 KCal from that, than 2000 KCal from glycogen = 3500Kcal. And you're right, you may be burning 500-1000Kcal from fat over those 5 hours, so we're maybe talking more like 4000Kcal, which places you comfortably above the line. Even better if you have some 500Kcal breakfast before the race. Being 'above the line' ensures you are still energetic, and gives you more wiggle room to increase pace. Again, sorry if I'm messing the number up, just trying to explain how I would look at the math. And sorry for the long post, struggling to keep it short, but great point. Love talking about that, and I would LOVE to do those test for myself someday. But in the meantime, it's duct tape solution and rules of thumbs which are accurate enough to bring me across the line!

@@runningwithsimon Thank you very much Simon for taking your time and explaining the big picture. Now I understand the game better.

Yes the faster you run and/or being in zone 3,4 the more you’ll need. I think you could try to calculate your exact needs online based on your body weight, distance, time, etc. It’s always approximate but will be more accurate. Because the 3 main factors for how much energy you need in total distance, your weight and elevation. Then the speed (or time you take) says how quickly you need to intake that.

There are really calculators for this 😱@@runningwithsimon 😂. The result however is quite surprising. I'm more on the range of 100kcal/km. Considering a maximum intake of 300kcal/h while running and a base availability of 2000kcal. With this I'm done with my energy after 3 1/3h even with prefect nutrition. Surprisingly the kcal rate matches my feeling when running today.

@@mariusm2402 That's a very eloquent way to say you started feeling like shit around 3 1/3h :P ... Nice run, good job!

Haha your inner raccoon! I should do my The Coon costume again this year :) I guess my spirit animal is our golden retriever we had as a kid. She could eat A LOT and anything really. … but also, she’s had a few episodes of just stealing something on the table and eat so much she’d get epically sick! I bet she felt it was both the best and worst day of her life!

You're totally right, we're definitely metabolizing fat during those run, and it's fair to assume at the pace we go, we burn it at max rate. But that's the thing - it's limited there. I've never done fatmax labwork, but based on a fair amount of empirical data (e.g., tracking my intake accurately in multiple 100 milers), I burn about 100-150Cal per hour during a 30hrs ish race. So it's definitely not negligible at those pace. At faster pace like 7-9 mph, that's less of a factor - and that's more typically my pace in training. So at least for me, it's more of a factor for a longer race. But I omit this in the calculation for practical reasons and to avoid falling into false precision. We're really trying here to find the most practical way to estimate caloric needs that will provide results that are "good enough", and not the most accurate. Something that is workable on the fly, and that anyone can do without labwork. Because anyway, most numbers used are gross estimates that are likely not accurate to +/- 20%. 2k cal of glycogen? Calorie burned per miles - this one would be affected by things like terrain (pretty obvious when comparing send vs. pavement), weigth of gear (who factors this really?), wind (same...how do you measure), elevation (sometimes we do, but often we ignore), etc. But despite all of this, we're still landing ballpark accurate that is sufficient in guiding what to take. But don't get me wrong - as a PhD and data nerds, I'd love to be involved in a data driven study. I know the norwegian in triathlon were using a lot lactate and glucose measurement to fine tune training intensity and fueling. They say it's the future of the sport including in ultrarunning. For pro - yeah I guess so? But for the average runner? Nah - not any time soon. It's not accessible, it's too complicated, etc. But would be cool to try, so if you know anyone....

@@runningwithsimon Thanks for replying. I've been going down the rabbit hole of metabolic flexibility (Tim Noakes, Dan Plews etc). These guys are seeing 1.8g/min fat oxidisation at 80% of VO2 max. Dan is coaching top ranked guys doing ironman with no carbs. Crazy. I'm working on being a predominently fat burner (less GI upset, less inflamation, less cortisol, less diabetes) for my ultra swims and see good results so far. I've started running also, hence viewing your most excellent channel. Cheers

@@bswims I guess you saw these below? 1.8g min-1 seems exceptionally high, and hitting fatmax at 80% VO2max also sounds quite drastic - but I suppose elites are within 99th percentile (and huh arguably,... not sure how doping would affect that, but I'd think minimally epo would increase VO2max and increase oxidative metabolism rate). But even at the more average rate they describe at 0.5-0.6, I guess you're right that I might be underestimating (are you doing x60 -> hours, then x9Cal per g? - not sure if that's the proper conversion but seems logical). If so, my prior estimate landed at 0.3 g / min. But I guess the big conclusion from those paper is also that you have a huge range, and that without actually measuring, it's a bit of a guess work www.researchgate.net/publication/307549210_Maximal_Fat_Oxidation_Rates_in_an_Athletic_Population www.veohtu.com/fatoxidationrates.html#:~:text=They%20found%20that%2C%20on%20average,56%25%20of%20VO2max.

During a run? Honestly not the greatest system. For races, I simply record myself on my GoPro (e.g., "I'm at mile 5, I've had 2 gels and ~1 bottle of tailwind") and compile it afterwards. For training runs, I don't record it - but I think a training log/journal could be helpful especially if you are still experimenting. You can track how you've felt after run or in general AND you can track how you are doing with a specific fueling strategy. That'll help see what works and what doesn't. As for daily food, I used to use My Fitness app to track calories but I think the app is not as good anymore and isn't totally free. Also I think it's important to not become obsessed about calories intake in training otherwise one might underfuel - it's important to know approximately, but obsession isn't healthy. So I did it for a little while just to balance things out but now I go 'by feel'.

TY! This is very helpful, definitely will start logging without the intention of becoming obsessed. I am very new and appreciate all the feedback. Thank you for all your videos, funny and informative!

I think that's a very good question. I don't know that there is any hard science data here, so this is more my 2 cents which is backed by nothing at all. And no I don't think it's needed- but the main reason is that anyway we tend to underfuel chronically on long training run. I think practicing to fuel during these long run will serve you better so that you can fuel properly on race day. But again, no science behind me saying all that - it's just my impression

Great insight. I do always tend to underfuel not on purpose just due to whatever reason. I’m going to just focus on eating and staying fueled.

My understanding is that you're intuition is actually spot on, but the explanation is less straightforward. It's unintuitive, but studies show that we *burn* approximately as much for the same distance regardless of pace (only nuance is if your form is very different, that might impact - so walking ain't the same as running). So say for me, 500 Cal for 5 miles if I run it in 40 min or 70 min. BUT when we run slower, heart rate is lower, which means proportionally more of that energy will come from stored fat oxidation (vs. glycogen or nutrition). So practically that means exactly what you said - if I run slower, I don't need to eat as much because I burn it from my fat a

I personally would not use any. You can of course do it, and you'll have time to absorb a significant amount of it. But it's unlikely to be needed because you'd have enough glycogen stored to finish without

lol even faster than me!!!

Have you ever run an ultra marathon?

Glad it's helpful!