Arc of Attrition 50

James ‘Ricky’ Hatton is one of the key members of our Athlete Support team, and heads up the PF&H video callers group. He took on the Arc50, and despite having fairly little time for preparation, successfully crossed the finish line just under his target time of 10 hours. While Ricky would have ideally consumed more carb, in line with the latest scientific recommendations, to provide his body with more available energy, he has struggled to hit the higher numbers that we see elite athletes that we work with consume, and so was fairly happy with ~61g of carb per hour. Having spoken to the Sports Science team after the race, it was decided that next time he takes on an event of this duration, James should aim to train his gut ahead of the race, as well as introduce some real food early on and save his appetite for sports nutrition products for the key late hours. This said, improvements to his hydration, including making sure he didn’t run out of fluid at vital points, likely would have helped with his fuel absorption too.

James is a seasoned ultra-runner, and knows from his time training and racing that he has a fairly moderate sweat rate, to accompany his average sweat sodium concentration. In the expected cool conditions of the Winter Arc50, he was confident that ~500ml of fluid per hour would replace a good enough proportion of his sweat losses to prevent the negative performance effects associated with dehydration. Running out of fluid for an extended period in the warmer than expected conditions during the day meant he became very thirsty ahead of an aid station and it appeared that he never got back on top of his fluid losses. With some brutal terrain to conquer in the last 4 miles, Ricky crossed the finish line feeling light headed, and needed two cartons of chocolate milk, two cups of tea and a can of cola before he felt well enough to stand and make his way out of the medical area. It’s safe to say based on this that he had accumulated a significant level of dehydration across the 10 hours which may have impacted his performance. He certainly could have done with additional fluid intake during the race to better match what his body was losing.

James doesn’t drink coffee in his day to day life, but is known at PF&H for his affection for caffeinated energy drinks. This was no different during this race where he drank a litre (32oz) of energy drink, which he’d emptied into his bottles the day before to make flat, and an additional PF 30 Caffeine Gel, provided him with enough to just exceed the recommended dosage and likely reap all of the available ergogenic benefits.