Fueling up during the Spine Challenger
'Eat some food', it sounds so obvious when you read it back to yourself. Eat some food, keep your energy levels up and stay hydrated. Pretty obvious stuff but so easy to get wrong, forget to do or just not bother with.
“The less fuel you put in the more you will fatigue over time”
I’ve been involved in quite a few 60k plus trail runs over the last couple of years where I’ve experienced debilitating fatigue towards the end of the race. I’m no nutritional scientist or expert in this field but I get that it is based on inputs and outputs. The less fuel you put in the more you will fatigue over time. So much so that at the end of those other races I have felt absolutely shattered, the legs couldn’t have given anymore.
So with that in mind treat the following as my observations and either take it on board or ignore it completely, its entirely up to you.
I broke my Spine Challenger experience up into chunks, Edale to Standedge, Standedge to Hebden Bridge, Hebden Bridge to Ponden, Ponden to East Marton, East Marton to Malham and Malham to Hawes. This allowed me to meet up with a couple of friends who were acting as support and allowed me to refuel and put a fresh base layer on if needed at each stop.
While there were lots of advantages to tackling the Spine Challenger in this way such as the change of clothes, the joy of seeing a friendly face and the physiological benefit of breaking up the challenge into bit sized chunks, the re-fuelling, for me, was by far the most impactful.
So the first stop was Standedge car park. This was about 50ks into the Spine Challenger and by this point I was just starting to feel leg fatigue from that first stretch. I met up with my support and chowed down on boiled rice and chicken, a cup of coffee, can of coke and a few biscuits. I was blown away by the almost immediate impact of having this ‘real’ food. Its almost like my body was doing a little jig, thanking me for re-fuelling in this way with the protein and complex carbs. After a 15min stop I was back out and running. Having never done an event of this distance before I wasn't sure what to expect at this stage in terms of how my body was going to react. What blew me away was how positive this food made my body feel and how, just 30mins earlier, the fatigue I could feel that was starting to set in was now pretty much completely gone.
This pattern of re-fuelling at these regular stops continued throughout the whole race and my body went through the same positive reaction each time. Yes, of course, the further I went on in the event I was definitely getting stiffer and more tired but the fuel I was giving my tired muscles was really doing the trick. I didn’t change anything about this routine throughout. I stuck with the rice, chicken, coffee, coke and biscuits and it worked for me. It would be really interesting to find out from others what their food strategies were and see how those who ate less often fared throughout the event.
Like I said before, I’m no nutritionist but the combination of carbs and protein worked a treat and kept me going throughout. I never touched a gel or a ‘protein bar’ during the race, and as much as I know these forms of nutrition have their place they are just too sweet for me on a long race like this.
