The Oner - 84 Miles

Approaching this race with an Achilles injury and suboptimal training volume in his legs, Andy planned to only run 20 or 30 miles of the course before calling it a day. In the heat of the moment, he felt better than expected and decided to battle through to the finish line. However, because he didn’t expect to be out on the course for the full duration, he didn’t pre-mix his PF 90 Gels in his Soft Flask like he usually would. Instead, Andy decoupled his fuel from his hydration and mixed up the format of his fuel intake between sports nutrition, including the PF 30 Gel, PF 30 Caffeine Gel, and more real foods like chocolate and nut bars to help satiate him through the latter stages of the race. Due to his injury, Andy was taking anti-inflammatory tablets to which he attributes his urgent need to go to the toilet during the last 30 miles of coast path. Without this, he believes that he would’ve gone much quicker and been able to rate his GI comfort higher than the four out of ten he ended up giving it on the day.

Andy relied on PH 1500 (Tablets) throughout the race for his hydration, drinking ~8L (256oz) total across the 16 hour race. He was confident in increasing his fluid intake around half way when he saw the colour of his urine become slightly darker. While the relative sodium concentration of Andy’s intake was slightly higher than his sweat sodium concentration, he tends to favour the taste of higher concentration electrolyte drinks, and they help him avoid muscular cramping. At one point during the race, Andy started to feel some twinges of cramp coming on and decided to consume four Electrolyte Capsules to keep them at bay. This strategy worked well for him, as he never felt the twinges again.

Caffeine is an important tool for ultra-distance competitors, especially when the events mean they’re running through the night. Andy made sure he was getting a consistent stream of performance benefits from caffeine by spreading his intake out through the event, consuming both caffeine tablets and PF 30 Caffeine Gels. This put him over the general performance recommendation of 3-6mg per kilogram of bodyweight. However, given the duration of the race and caffeine’s half life of 4-5 hours, exceeding the recommendations is expected, especially considering that Andy tolerates it well and did not report any negative side effects.