Lakeland 100

Robyn tested out the PF 300 Flow Gel for the first time by having two Flow Flasks, one for the first half of the race and one over the second half. She mixed in gels, chews and a few ‘real food’ sources after halfway to keep her energy intake topped up. Robyn mentioned that just after the 100km mark she ‘lost her rhythm’ of fueling and the ‘wheels started to fall off’ possibly as a result of flavour fatigue. Robyn hit her usual ~60g/h, but may wish to proactively include more real food, bars and chews earlier on in the race to avoid her intake being impacted by such prolonged use of gels. It would be helpful to practise this in training to continue to build her gut tolerance to these quantities and types of carbohydrates and ideally improve the consistency of her carb intake across such long race durations.

With a later start time of 6pm, temperatures were cool for the majority of the Lakeland 100 and therefore Robyn’s sweat rate would’ve been on the lower end of her personal range. Despite this, over such long durations, it’s common for fluid and sodium losses to accumulate and reach a threshold of race-impacting dehydration. To avoid this, Robyn did well to consistently hydrate with two soft flasks, one containing PH 1000 and the other plain water, which allowed her to listen to the dictates of thirst whilst nailing her sodium intake, consuming a concentration matching her lower-than-average sweat sodium losses. She topped up one of her flasks at each aid station to make sure she never ran out of fluid and drank a similar volume to her last race in cool conditions. She peed a few times throughout, indicating she drank enough fluid to avoid excessive dehydration whilst avoiding the extra weight associated with carrying additional fluid.

Robyn took a higher total dose of caffeine over the first half of the race (~4.5mg/kg), which covered the overnight hours, in an attempt to fight her circadian rhythm which she followed up by drip feeding caffeine until the end of the race (~2.7mg/kg) to slightly exceed the scientific recommendations in total. Considering the race was ~23 hours and the half life of caffeine is ~4-5 hours, the doses she consumed will have been sufficient to top up her body’s level of the stimulant and maximise the ergogenic effects.