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.

Results

Back home and happy ... but aching all over.

Ran 228.011 km (141 miles 1196 yards) in London finishing in third place. Well pleased with that as it is over the 225 km qualifying distance set by England Athletics for the Commonwealth Championships next year.

Full details can be found on the race website.

However ... the one thing that let me down was the too frequent visits to the gents. I feel I lost at least 3k by simply not being on the track. At this early stage I tend to feel this problem was caused by my sodium potassium ratio being wrong. The overall ratio in my food and drink was just under 7:1 but my guess is that it should be higher.

Anybody out there have any thoughts on this matter ?

One thing I was very pleased with is that whilst running the second half of the race (especially in the second half of each hour long segment) I was moving much quicker that the two guys in front of me. I passed them far more often than they passed me. I think they were walking quicker or for less time than me and didn't pee as much.

Two people ended up in hospital - including the winner (Chris Finill) - I hope they're both OK.

Thanks to everyone involved with the race: organisers, helpers, lap counters, runners, crew members, etc. It really was a good one.

Oh yes ... I didn't collapse !!! Kept moving for 10 to 20 minutes after the race then sat on the floor with my feet on a chair for a while. Didn't shower or take off my compression tights either. All this seemed to work brilliantly until I got on the tube at about 2.30pm - keeled over after about 10 minutes. Got a taxi to King's Cross instead.

Mustn't go underground after an ultra race in future :)

Thanks also to my crew, Fay and Keir and also to Julian for keeping the Otley AC website updated with my progress.

I'll update the other pages on this site in the next few days.