Centurion Winter Downs 200

Sam used a wide variety of ‘real foods’ and sports products to achieve a carb intake within 10% of our recommendations, essentially nailing his fueling. He prepared plenty of energy rich options which could be requested based on what he craved at the time by phoning ahead to his crew at the next checkpoint. As the race wore on, Sam’s wife, Amanda, also took the executive decision to change the flavour profile of his favoured PF Carb Only Drink Mix on a couple of occasions by changing it to a different energy drink mix to help prevent flavour fatigue. Sam’s crew also used lessons learnt at the Arc of Attrition at the start of 2023, to offer Sam’s personal favourite, rice pudding, to provide a warm yet almost flavourless fuel source when he thought he didn’t want to eat anything at all.

Sam’s ability to maintain a regular fluid intake was the one thing that never wavered according to his crew. In the cold and wet conditions, an average of ~340ml per hour likely replaced a good enough proportion of his sweat losses to avoid dehydration. Sam peed relatively frequently though, which is often thought of as a sign of being well hydrated. Sam was consuming drinks with a little over half his sweat sodium concentration on average, and combined with the diuretic effects of a large caffeine intake it’s likely this led to him peeing more frequently than would be considered ‘normal’. That said, he was erring on the side of caution this race, as he ‘oversalted’ at the Arc and finished ~3kg heavier than he started, having experienced a lot of swelling. His strategy this time appeared to do the trick, as he happily didn’t experience any cramping or other side effects.

Sam had thirteen coffees during the race (mainly during the nighttime hours), some caffeine chews and ~1.2L of cola, which resulted in over 1800mg of caffeine being consumed in total. The scientific literature around optimal usage of caffeine during exercise is based on far shorter events than this one, and our observations and practical experience suggest that Sam’s intake was appropriate here. He successfully fought against two full sleep cycles, with just one 30 minute nap across nearly 54 hours, though he was quite delirious as a result of his sleep deprivation towards the end of the race. He even reportedly asked a tree for directions and hallucinated that hooded figures were following him (thankfully, they weren’t!). For future multi-day events with minimal rest, Sam is going to trial ‘micro-napping’, and abstaining from caffeine on race morning until he needs it most and will get the biggest ‘stimulus’ sensation, rather than drip feeding throughout.