Arc of Attrition 100

Despite Lewis feeling that he might not have been hitting his planned carb intake of ~80 grams of carb per hour, his data showed that he did actually achieve this target. His high carb intake was even more impressive given that he sustained it for over 19 hours! Consuming a range of nutrition products may have helped prevent flavour fatigue from occurring, allowing him to maintain consistent carb consumption. Lewis did exactly that at the Arc of Attrition, using gels, chews, energy bars, drink mixes and some real food too. What’s even better is that he didn’t suffer any GI issues, which is a testament to the gut training that Lewis did in the lead-up to this race.

Since lewis knows that a lack of sodium can contribute to muscle cramps, he increased his intake during the race and benefited from it. However, he mentioned post-race that he didn’t pee for the last 14 hours, suggesting that he may have been dehydrated. To combat this in the future, Lewis should do some sweat rate testing to better fine-tune his fluid losses and book a Sweat Test to further dial in both his fluid and sodium replacement strategies and find out which lever (i.e., fluid and/or sodium) he needs to pull on more.

Lewis proactively avoided caffeine until night time, when fatigue and tiredness due to circadian rhythms can negatively impact performance. In the past, he’s made the mistake of taking too much caffeine, which upset his stomach, so he kept it to one PF 30 Caffeine Gel every two hours. Although his overall caffeine intake was above the recommendations, a higher dose can be useful for ultra events due their extended duration and it evidently worked in this race for Lewis.