Dragon's Back Race

Although we often see athletes taking on a greater amount of ‘real food’ during ultra events, Robyn was working at a relatively high intensity across six days in the Welsh countryside, so chose to primarily use gels as she found them much easier to tolerate. Due to the multi-day format of this race, Robyn was able to refuel between stages with high-carb foods such as pasta and rice. On the days she felt her energy levels were highest, Robyn did well to hit over 60g of carb per hour with no GI issues; taking on ~62g/h, ~60g/h and ~65g/h on days one, two and five respectively. Robyn’s lowest carb intake came on day three where she averaged ~50g/h, by taking on a similar amount of carb to other days but over this longer stage (70km / 43.5 miles) which dropped her hourly average. In future multi-day races, Robyn should plan to adjust her fuel strategy for the longer stages, but overall her intake didn’t dip too drastically and she was able to average ~57g per hour across her six-day moving time.

In her first multi-day ultra race, Robyn preloaded and rehydrated effectively each day using PH 1500 to make sure she caught up on the deficit of a day's sweat losses and started each stage optimally hydrated. Robyn predominantly used three 500ml bottles, two of which always contained a relative sodium concentration of 1,000mg/L, each stage which she consistently refilled at checkpoints. Due to temperature highs of 26ºC / 79ºF, designated timeouts were also implemented at checkpoints. So, Robyn made the most of these periods to cool and take on additional fluids to effectively keep up with her sweat losses throughout. To achieve this successfully, she undertook sweat rate data collection and a Sweat Test in the lead up to the event, this uncovered her sweat losses to be up to 1L per hour at race intensity in warm conditions and a sweat sodium concentration of 573mg/L. Using this data, Robyn planned her intake accordingly to avoid too big a deficit each stage and any performance decline as a result.

Despite Robyn’s total caffeine intake being over the recommended range, she fell short of the caffeine guidelines by solely using small amounts of coke during the first four stages. In comparison, Robyn utilised caffeine effectively on days five and six by taking on a couple of caffeine gels in addition to some coke to hit over 3mg/kg of bodyweight. To maximise the benefits of caffeine across all stages and help to reduce her perceived ratings of exertion, Robyn could look to implement a more consistent caffeine intake.