last minute changes

Earlier this week I learnt that my nutrition plan had a hitch.  As well as the usual sports drink I planned to eat a mixture of grapes, Turkish Delight, rice pudding, baby food, sultanas, energy bars, protein bars, apple puree, custard, jaffa cakes and energy gels.

There's quite a wide range of stuff there but I think that problems can easily occur if, for example, I existed on sports drink and energy gels for the entire 24 hours.

Anyway, when I put it all together in a schedule I noticed that the ratio of sodium to potassium was a measly 1.95:1 whereas it should be between 3 and 5:1  The problem seems to be too much potassium rather than not enough sodium which makes it more difficult to correct.

Some of the science behind this can be read here.

Looking into this in more detail I realised that simple things can make a big difference so what I've done is:
- cut down on the number of Carbo Shotz energy gels as they have a high potassium content
- exchanged some of the high potassium sultanas for lower potassium apple puree
- changed my brand of energy bar and protein bars
- added some salt when making the apple puree

The calcium content is still a bit high but I'm willing to leave that be as it's less important than the potassium and sodium content.

Small changes can make a big difference.

Tomorrow will be spent packing and resting before travelling north on Friday and racing on Saturday and Sunday.  The weather here is getting better daily and these two forecasts for Perth indicate good weather for the race.

weather forecast from the BBC
weather forecast from Metcheck

Overall I've been very lucky with weather during my ultra races.  I have heard horrendous tales of 23 hours of rain during a 24 hour race a few years ago.  That must have been so demoralising.  It was the same for all the runners though and I guess in those conditions it comes down to who copes best.

I could do without that though ... running 140+ miles is difficult enough without bad weather.