• Ry had a fantastic run at the Lakes in a Day event, taking the win and finishing comfortably 35 minutes ahead of second place. Despite this brilliant performance, it wasn’t without some issues
• Ry felt his stomach begin to become unsettled from ~6 hours 30 mins, and around mile 41 (~7 hours 15 mins) he experienced some sickness, estimating throwing up ~1L/35oz of fluid in total. Whilst this is unfortunate, it did help to settle Ry’s stomach and he was able to continue. He slowly reintroduced foods and fluids which saw him through the remainder of the 9-hour race

Hydration

• On the surface Ry did an OK job at meeting his fluid needs across this race, consuming an average of ~471ml (16oz) fluid per hour. But, a few things Ry reported suggest he was under doing his fluid and becoming relatively dehydrated
• For the first hour and 45 minutes, he consumed ~750ml/25oz of fluid, refilled at a checkpoint, and then proceeded to make 1L/35oz last until ~5 and a half hours into the race which is a lot of running with not much fluid. This time frame coincides with when Ry peed, around 4 hours 20 mins which he reported as being very dark in colour and ‘not a healthy wee’. This is a pretty clear indication that Ry was dehydrated at this point
• At the checkpoint following this Ry filled another two 500ml/16oz bottles with more energy drink mix which took him up to the 7 and a half hour mark where he collected a relatively small volume of plain water (following his sickness) and coke to carry him to the finish line. A couple of times Ry reported reaching the checkpoints feeling thirsty
• On top of not enough total fluid, the majority of this fluid was an energy drink mix (3.5L/118oz out of a total of 4.3L/145oz consumed) versus a relatively small amount of plain water (just ~550ml/19oz). In future races we would encourage Ry to even out this ratio of energy drink mix to water
• The stomach can have too much of one thing and may reject it after enough time (which is what we suspect happened here and may have caused the vomiting) and two, carb-rich energy drinks may be suboptimal at quenching a person’s thirst over such long duration events (sometimes the body just craves plain water)
• Increasing the amount of plain water versus energy drink can act to dilute the concentration of the mix in the stomach and may help stave off GI issues. It’s important when dialling down the amount of energy drink consumed that these carbs are still consumed via other methods (in gels, chews, real foods etc.), which is something we discussed with Ry
• Lastly, Ry reported only a single twinge of cramp in his adductor at ~4 hours after a steep climb but said ‘nothing came of it’ and it’s most likely that this was a result of high loading of the muscle rather than a fluid/electrolyte imbalance specifically

Fueling

Conclusions

• To summarise, Ry had a brilliant race at the 80km Lakes in a Day event, taking the win and running a fantastic time, a whole 35 minutes ahead of 2nd place. Though he felt good for the majority of the race, as a result of the sickness he experienced, Ry rated his GI comfort a 7 out of 10 but 10 for race satisfaction given that he took the win and by such a decent margin (well done Ry!)
• We will continue to work with Ry to understand why this sickness might have occurred but our key takeaways from this race and things which Ry should experiment with going forward is:
1. Dialling back his hourly carb intake a small degree (~10-15g/h less) to an hourly consumption of ~60g/h to avoid overloading the GI system
2. Dialling up his plain water intake and reducing the total volume of energy drink mix he’s taking in
3. Taking a few less electrolyte capsules to bring the relative sodium concentration of his consumption down