Don't Drive the Boat: My Nutrition Strategy for TNF 50 DC

The North Face 50 miler (DC) is rapidly approaching.  I have put in the training, my fitness is quite good.  One area where I am not confident, however, is my nutrition/hydration strategy.  I have run exactly 3 events of marathon distance or longer (one marathon and two 50ks).  Two of these races took place in spring after a solid training cycle done primarily in cooler temperatures.  Both of these spring races were in temperatures not terribly warm, but considerably warmer than the temperatures I trained in.  I bonked very badly in each of these races which led to a death march to the finish.  The last of these death marches took place a little over 3 weeks ago, so I certainly have reason to be concerned.

In the weeks of training since that last death march, I have worked considerably on nutrition and hydration.  I have worn a heat suit on a majority of my runs, layering up in my winter running gear to simulate warmer temps.  In my attempts to solve the nutrition and hydration problem, I can say I have fallen victim to what I like to call the “driving the boat approach”.

When you drive a boat, you turn the wheel a little, and you don’t get the effect you want immediately, so a novice will turn the wheel more.  Soon, you’ll find you’ve turned too much, and so you might overcompensate by turning the wheel too much in the other direction.  Not a very efficient strategy.

In my approach to hydration and nutrition this year, I first took the approach that I would train my body not to need as much hydration and nutrition.  This started with Metabolic Efficiency runs, where I would limit calories before a run, keep the pace quite slow and head out for 90 to 120 minutes of running with no calories and limited water.  I actually got quite good at this in the heart of a New England winter.  I thought this would carry over to longer runs when temperatures got warmer.

I was wrong.  What I hoped was that I could drink less water and eat less calories on a typical run at a regular effort than the same type of run from last year.  Given that my running abilities have increased, I set off in my spring race with high hopes and a single hand-held.  After pushing the pace through 1 loop, not in-taking any calories and having drained 20 oz of water, I was feeling off.  But I thought I could easily remedy that at the aid station.  Two small cups of coke in addition to a freshly filled handheld should do it right?  Whoops, I forgot to eat, just focusing on hydration (though the code did provide some calories).  Thankfully, I had two GUs stashed in my bottle.  But I was already behind and it turned out I was never able to get back to where I needed to be.  Instead, I pushed the pace despite feeling badly, blew my legs up and had little left even after I got on top of my hydration/nutrition needs.

Two weeks later, finally fully recovered, I set out for 25 miles of trails, intending to simulate my upcoming race.  I was rushing out the door and didn’t have time to eat a proper breakfast, nor hydrate before the run, but I thought I’d be ok, given the sheer amount of hydration and calories I was bringing.  It’s true, I had not skimped in any way as I was determined to eat and drink constantly on this run.  Before setting off, I ate a clif bar.  I figured 250 calories is the max your body can process in an hour anyway, so I should be all set until hour 2.  I drank to thirst from my hydration pak and I felt just find for the first hour.  In hour two, I figured I’d take a gel every 30 minutes.  I should have started right on the hour mark, but I did not.  I waited until 1:30, when I started to feel light headed, to take my first gel.  For some reason, despite the lack of energy I felt, I didn’t try to top up on calories or water.  I could have taken 2 GUs for example, and drank heartily from my hydration bladder.  Instead, I just kept telling myself, 1 gel every 30 minutes, drink to thirst.

I was still feeling ok by the time I hit two hours, but I think the damage was done.  I passed through the “aid station” I had set up quickly, grabbing some “real food” calories but choosing not to refill my water knowing I’d be back to the car in 5 miles.  Not refilling proved to be a mistake, because I rationed water over the latter part of those 5 miles (which took longer than I expected) and got behind on hydration (having already started behind, this was not a good situation).  Another mistake I made was to take in solid food calories for longer, sustained energy, without tending to my immediate energy needs.  I should have taken a gel along with my “real food” to keep me running strong. 

After I finished the 5 mile loop and was back at the car, I was determined to do two things:  1. Eat and drink myself back to where I needed to be to finish the run and 2. To slow my pace down so as to not crush my legs in the state I was in; to give my body a chance to recover before picking the pace up again.  #2 was smart.  #1 was a good idea, but here is where I drove the boat in the other direction.  I ate a bunch of real food and a couple gels.  I drank 32 oz of water in one sitting and then however much I could after getting through the food.  Despite moving quite slowly, the impact to my system of taking all those calories and water at once was quite strenuous.  I became very nauseous.  In fact, I even needed to sit down at one point to collect myself.

After a short rest I got back up and started moving slowly down the trail.  As the nausea started to dissipate, I could feel my energy coming around.  I didn’t have any desire to eat for an hour after taking in all those calories and drinking all that water, and I’m glad I didn’t force it.  All in all, the last hour and a half of the run went quite well, especially once I started taking in gels and drinking on a regular schedule.  I switched to every 20 minutes for the second half of the run and that seemed to work out fine.  I finished feeling ok, but had certainly put in some painfully slowly miles correctly my mistakes along the way.  (I ran out of water a couple miles from the finish, which I’m sure I would not have were I to have filled up again the first aid stop and then again at the second aid stop).

I took the lessons learned in these experiences into my last long run before the race this past weekend.  I ate a nice breakfast and drank plenty of water before heading out on my run.  I started my calorie intake 30 minutes into the run and was very regular about it, switching the 20 minute intervals in the second half of the run.  I mixed real food with gels, never taking in more than 400 calories in an hour, and making sure I stayed balanced between the two (weighing more heavily on the immediate energy side of things).  I stuck to non-caffeinated products/food for the first half of the run and then mixed in caffeinated products/foods for the second half.  I drank every time the thought occurred to me.  If I felt light-headed, or my energy fading, I ate a bit more, drank and bit more and pulled the effort back ever so slightly.  It wasn’t the fastest run I’ve ever done, but it was far better than my effort of the previous week on the same trails.

Still, the North Face 50 miler will bring a lot more heat and a lot more miles.  I’m hoping this balanced plan can see me through to the end.  The training is there, so do I know how to properly drive the boat or not?

Barkley Marathons

For something entirely different, check out this New York Times story on the Barkley Marathons, a 100 (or is it 130?) mile footrace through the Appalachians with over 60,000 feet of elevation.  And no aid stations.  While nearly 800 ultrarunners have participated in the race, only 12 have finished within the 60-hour time limit.

But really, is it as tough as the Times makes it out to be?  Matt Mahoney has pictures.  He notes that: 

In 2001, after several failed attempts, Blake Wood, 42, NM, and David Horton, 50, VA, finished together in 58:21, only to be disqualified for inadvertently leaving the course to follow a parallel route for about 200 yards. This route (on the south side of the stream instead of the north side) has slightly better footing and had been the normal route until 2000.   To give you some idea of the difficulty of this course, Blake had won the 2001 Rocky Raccoon 100 in 16:13, and the 1999 Hardrock 100 in 30:11. David Horton won Hardrock in 29:35 in 1993 and in 1991 set a course record for the Appalachian Trail, 2160 miles in 52 days.

And there's more -- much more -- in this old article from the Washington Post, including the story of a Swedish runner, Milan Milanovich who:

took a wrong turn and ran into the fence of the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Suspicious prison guards, alarmed to spot a hiker in such a remote spot, forced Milanovich to the ground at gunpoint.

Now that's an excuse for not finishing!

The Evolution of My Running

It’s been almost a month and a half since the New RiverTrail 50k.  It’s been a month and a half since I have been training for anything, running hard or seriously or even blogging about running.  And yet, I’ve never been more “in love” with running.

The NRT 50k was an evolution of sorts in my still-young running life.  Sure, I started to come apart towards the end, probably didn’t fuel well enough and am still somewhat hobbled by the physical after-effects of training for and racing in that race.  Regardless, it can be counted as no less than the best running experience I have had to date.

Strangely, since running that race, the feeling I crave from running, the feeling I most want to feel when out for a run is the feeling I had at my lowest point in that race (mile 27).  I was down and out, just passing by the mileage marker of my longest ever run, under-fueled, limping and completely isolated (after having spent most of the first 3 hours of the race with some great folks).  I was struggling.

I just kept reminding myself, “I choose to do this, and I do it because I love it; This is what I’m here for, this is what I trained for.”

And the training paid off.  And that’s what makes me want to be back in that place, testing my training, testing my mind, my ability to persevere; testing my love of running.

The year is winding down now and there are no significant goals left to accomplish.  My mileage for the year will be well above the goal I had set at the beginning of the year.  I’ve run all the races I had planned to run.  I had some great experiences and some bad experiences.  Most importantly, learned a heck of a lot about how and why I run and running in general. 

Heading into 2013, I’m already focusing on a 24 week training cycle, starting the very first day of the year (just before that, actually), targeting at getting me ready for the North Face Endurance Challenge50 mile race in Washington, DC.  I’ll be lucky enough to run that race with Joel again, and we’ll go through our (vastly different) training cycles together as well.

Going into 2012, the focus was on running longer.  The hope was that I could run longer and lose only minimal speed.  What I learned, quite unfortunately, is that I lose quite a bit of speed the longer I run, much more than I had hoped.  Training for a 50 mile race is going to have to be about abandoning any idea of speed altogether.

I never fully grasped the idea of “running by feel” before the NRT 50k.  Call it a result of being under or over-trained for races, but the way I felt in races leading up to that one could only be characterized using negative terms.  If I were running by feel, I wouldn’t be running at all, it would seem.  But in stretching my runs out longer than I ever thought possible, I’ve started to realize just how amazing the human body is.  I haven’t quite determined if “running by feel” is fully coupling the body and mind, or fully de-coupling the body and mind.  The reality is that there are most likely times when coupling works best, and other times when de-coupling works best…  and it’s that adaptability that really defines running by feel.

Running by feeling really blows open the doors on my enjoyment of running, however.  Forgetting about the watch, about whether I’m running too fast or too slow for goal pace and focusing about my perceived effort has allowed me to become much more in tune with my body and with my surroundings.  This is especially true on trails, when not being in touch with my body and surroundings will result in a face plant.  Some days, after I get back from the run, upload it and see what transpired, I’m quite amazed at how much faster or slower the run is than what I perceived.  But I think the value of understanding how much effort you are exerting relative to how much energy you have in reserve, how to properly push the pace when you are hurting, and back off it (even when you are not hurting) to ensure you’re going to be able to finish and run the race you want to run is fully supported by training in this manner, and so it will be my motif during this training cycle.

I’m also working on my Metabolic Efficiency.  There was an article in October’s Ultrarunning magazine (one of the best running magazines out there, in my opinion, for runners of any distance) about how to train your body to become more efficient at burning fat as fuel.  This makes perfect sense to me.  If my stomach is off and I can’t take in calories for a period of time, I want to be able to keep pushing on without taking a huge physical or mental toll.  I want my body to operate as efficiently as possible in all conditions, and I realize just feeling comfortable on my training runs isn’t going to get me there.  So, for the past 2 weeks and for the next four, I’ll be eating a (vegetarian, as always) diet high in protein (with a bit more fat than usual) and lower in carbs than I normally eat.  I won’t fuel specifically for any training run, nor will I fuel during any training run.  Too, I’ll be running SLOWLY (so as to keep my heart-rate in the right zone for optimal ME training) and for a duration between 1 hr 30 min and 2 hrs for as many runs as I can.  This should lead right into the beginning the training cycle for the 50 miler, so the timing is perfect.  Generally, I would just build a cardiovascular base before a training cycle anyway, so it’s not terribly different from what I would normally plan, with the exception of the nutritional aspect.

Training for and racing in the 50-miler is going to take up the first half of next year.  I plan to throw in a 50k race in that time (hopefully the TARC Spring Classic) and possibly a fast half marathon with Todd (the Quincy Half again?).  Beyond that, I don’t yet know.  Maybe I’ll try for another marathon at the end of next year, see if I really can run as fast as I want to run for that distance?  We’ll see.  I think a lot depends on how the 50 miler goes... I could end up signing up for a 100 miler, or I could end up hanging up the shoes altogether.

But for now, I’m loving running more than I ever have, and I feel so lucky to have had such a great and relatively injury free year of consistent running (haven’t had a single week without logging at least one run all year).  I’m really looking forward to tackling the 50 mile distance and figuring out where I want to go with my running from there.  Onward!!

Moving Meditation

From a fascinating NYTimes article about the search for Caballo Blanco's body:

Like the Rarámuri, True now ran in sandals, delighting in the simple act of self-propulsion, bounding along the undulating trails like a Neolithic hunter. He called it “moving meditation.” His motto was “run free,” and he did.

Running was essential to the human experience, [Blanco] had decided. Most people undervalued its importance. Running was not merely a sound cardiovascular choice in a fitness craze; it was an ancient art, part of mankind’s genetic imprint. Humans had survived across geological time because they could chase animals until the prey dropped from exhaustion.

Caballo Blanco was one of the most interesting thing about Born to Run, and this article sounds like McDougall may have gotten the inspiration for not only the story but the theory behind running presented in the book from the white horse. RIP.

Only in UltraRunning . . . .

UltraRunning magazine has posted an account of this year's inaugural Ultra Race of Champions 100K. 

"At mile 48.5 [Michael] Wardian, fresh off his second place finish at the World 100K Championships, had a 16-minute lead over Roes and appeared ready to cruise to victory. But he missed a turn at an intersection that one observer described as 'marked, but confusing' and lost about 40 minutes. Despite the wrong turn, Wardian rallied to finish second."

Congratulations to Geoff Roes, Michael Wardian, and all the other runners!

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