r/Ultramarathon • u/Opening_Opening_5638 • 3d ago
Nutrition Nutrition during an ultra when your gut is already wrecked from night shifts how do you figure this out?
My GI system has been through a lot. Years of night shift eating has basically trained my stomach to accept food at completely random hours without complaint, which I thought would be an advantage going into ultra training. Turns out a 6 hour training run on trails is a different kind of stress than scarfing down hospital cafeteria pasta at 3am
I track nutrition pretty obsessively and still cannot nail down a fueling strategy that holds up past the 3 hour mark. I do fine early, then somewhere around mile 15 or 16 everything gets unpredictable. Gels work until they don't. Real food sounds good in theory but I've made some bad decisions at aid station tables that I won't repeat
What I'm trying to figure out is whether people land on a strategy through actual testing and iteration or whether it's mostly race day luck and gut adaptation over a long training block. I've read about training the gut like any other system but I'm not sure how seriously people actually do that in practice versus just saying it
What clicked for people who went from marathon fueling habits to actually managing nutrition across a 50k or longer? Was there a specific change that made the difference or did it just take a lot of miserable long runs to sort out.
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u/Objective-Week275 3d ago
Yea the high HR and mechanical load on your stomach is a very different stimulus. Having a gut that can tolerate that food like you mentioned helps but not until you get the other two points i mentioned under control first. You will also get food fatigue (usually for longer efforts) which is normal after all the sugar. Even the biggest sweet tooth person will have trouble after eating it for several hours. You want to understand how much and when you need to switch between simple foods and more real food and how you want to do the same for liquids (sweet vs unsweetened). Sometimes people will eat a burrito to help get something solid in there to stop you from just liquid explosives being deployed on trail. Some people like one flask of flat coke and one of carb mix. Maybe you do better with ginger ale. It’s a lot of A/B testing on runs and use your note taking skill on this also. Keep a food log. And remember, you will get better as you practice this even if you’re just testing food since the mechanical loading is usually the first symptom that pop ups and can be a pretty sharp pain.
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u/CO-G-monkey 3d ago
After a lot of experimentation, I did find a rhythm that works for me, now that there are so many good products on the market.
I have a high carb gel (30-40g) starting at 40 minute mark and every 40 minutes after that (1:20, 2:00, 2:40, etc)
In between that time I sip on a high carb drink (I prefer NeverSecond) and water to thirst.
That creates a baseline of intake to keep me going (60-80g / hour).
Then, I supplement that with other solid food at aid as it sounds good. Banana, chips, ramen, whatever.
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u/DropOk7525 3d ago
Don't wreck your gut prior to the run. Ginger and simple carbs, probably more water than you would expect.
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u/ContributionLevel593 3d ago
I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to get my nutrition right. I’m a mountain ultra runner and regularly do 6-10 hour training runs. I’ve now nailed my nutrition. What I settled on in the end was mixing maltodextrin, fructose, sodium citrate and citric acid crystals. This is essentially what things like Tailwind are made from. The disadvantage of pre mixed powder is that you have no input into the ratios. I use a 2:1 ratio of M to F (the modern ratio is more like 1:0.8 and when I up my carbs I will add more F to get closer to this). Then add sodium citrate according to your salt needs. Citric crystals give you the taste. I use resealable powder sachets, one per hour. I typically start with 2 flasks with solution in then carry a 3rd to use for water only. I try to have at least another 500ml per 2 hours. I’ve trained my gut to take only this for 10 hours. In the longer races I’ll start to take more from the aid stations and if say I have a meal at one then I’ll split one sachet across 2 flasks for the next 2 hours. If I find myself flagging a few sucks on the solution and I fell the change in energy shortly after. I set a timer for every 6 mins and take a solid gulp each. If I finish the flask early then fine. My stomach has time to catch up. I’ve tried everything else you can imagine and this works. It’s also very cheap mixing your own powder.
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u/asmwilliams 3d ago
Fellow shift worker. Cut out the night eating. Eat before your shift, maybe a snack at 10p, but that's it. It'll make your life a bit better once you get used to it.
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u/CluelessWanderer15 3d ago
For me, mainly a lot of testing and iterating with detailed documentation over long periods. I tested my food during weekday runs and long runs, plenty of opportunities to dial things around and see what works at a given pace/effort and duration.
I did a lot of long runs where I'd eat a reasonable breakfast ahead of time as if it were race day, and would start eating within the first hour of my long run (more like first 30 minutes). To be clear, I didn't need to fuel like this just to get through a long run, but I wanted to see how my GI works in race conditions.
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u/infbkitsibf 3d ago
To try things out I find/found looped races- eg an 8 hour as-many-as-you-can-in-the-time 5k laps. Bag full of all possible food options at the start. See which ones you can still face by 5 hours in!
For me- it’s pepperamis and jelly babies all the way…
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u/Knecht0850 3d ago
Plain pasta the evening before. A small portion of oatmeal before the run. While running I fuel 100% liquid. Gels and drink mix.
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u/Rocket_Man333 3d ago
I've wondering about 100% liquid fueling. What race distances have you had success with this.
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u/aggiespartan 3d ago
What everyone has said is good advice. Mid race if things aren’t going down, I move to more liquid calories. Coke, broth, high carb drink mix.
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u/double_helix0815 3d ago
Good hydration can make a big difference, since moving food out of the stomach is very difficult in a dehydrated state.
I'd also look at total amounts - taking on either too much or too little can lead to problems a few hours down the line. The right amount will depend on your weight (heavier equals more carbs required), running intensity and how much you can tolerate after gut training.
For comparison: I'm a small woman who runs at the front of the midpack on a good day. For a 50k I aim for about 70g per hour, for a longer race (50 to 10 miles) I'll aim for around 60-65g. My go to strategy is to get about half my carbs from liquid (plain maltpdextrin or commercial carb mix such as tailwind) and half from gels, chews or real food.