Centurion Chiltern Wonderland 2026

PF&H’s Partnerships Manager, Tanya, prepped well with the advice of the Sport Science team. Attempting to carb load the day before her 50 mile ultra, she hit ~6.6g of carb per kg of bodyweight, which is just under our 8-12g/kg recommendations. But, this still will have made a positive difference to her stored muscle glycogen compared to previous races where she has not carb loaded at all - so it’s a skill she can continue to build upon for future races. Sticking to her plan, she had one third of her PF 90 Gel, half a PF 30 Chew and ~500ml of water mixed with 1 scoop of PF Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix each hour to reach ~60g/h of carbs for the first ~8 hours of the race. After this point, her fueling routine began to tail off. In Tanya’s own words, she felt that she was “nearly finished” so decided to just grab some PH 1000 at the final aid station and go, nearly halving her hourly intake to ~32g/h over the last two hours. For her first time following a structured plan, it isn’t surprising to see intake drop, especially considering she experienced some feelings of fullness and flavour fatigue later in the race. This is something she can work on with further gut training including practising both her pre- and intra-race intake.

Tanya’s overall fluid intake fell below the recommendations given her sweat rate and duration on course. Her original plan was to have one scoop of PF Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix in 500ml of water per hour. Whilst this concentration helped her stay on target with her low sweat sodium concentration, she fell short of her fluid target. Having moved to the UK from a much hotter climate, it’s been an adjustment for Tanya to get used to taking on board enough fluid when it feels like she isn’t sweating as much. Her sweat rate will likely not be as high as a race in a hotter, more humid environment, but it will still be significant due to intensity, duration and wind speeds out on course. So, replacing fluid losses proactively is still essential. Around halfway, she noted having a headache which she attributes to dehydration and appropriately increased her fluid intake above 500ml/h, ultimately finishing the race feeling well hydrated. We would recommend going out and measuring her sweat rate during training runs to have a more accurate prediction of what she is losing, and then make sure to keep up with these losses. It’ll be helpful for her to focus on drinking from the start line rather than waiting to feel thirsty, though she did really well to identify and resolve challenges while on-course.