This is Part 2 of our Nutrition (Top 10) Tips - Please do share your thoughts and advice below
6. Where's my Salt gone? You'll find an army of runners who will look into your sunken eyes and scream "Have you taken your S-Caps" - what the heck. Well these are basically salt tablets. Common wisdom will have you consume some regular intake of these to balance your electrolyte needs. The chaps at TrailandUltrarunning nail this perfectly in their 5 top mistakes blog post
7. Dealing (with) Hot Hot Hot - When it gets hot the brain (gut as well as the one up top) just doesn't say EAT. When you often try and override the brain and your force something down you end up by being sick or you want to be sick or you are just overcome by Nausea. It will happen (it's one of the most common things that you read about is post race blogs for sure). It's worth taking advice from the kings of heat at Badwater . In their University section they advise "Liquid meals are best in extreme conditions, because they are digested quickly and the blood used in the process is able to return to the extremities to help cool the body surface." If you have a great crew then you may want them to be constantly supplying "ice version". So frozen gels and frozen tailwind ice-pops!!!!
8. Remember what happens in the "Drop Bags vs Aid-Stations" Game - In many pro-race times of reflection I often think about all those 'unclaimed' items from the drop bags. Those items that you so lovingly sourced and paid for and that you never get to see or enjoy. Why? Well you typically put stuff in them that when you arrive at the check-point you find that a) you don't want them at that time b) you don't feel like carrying too much and so you just take essentials c) you still have stuff from the last drop bag and the aid-station table has more of those things anyway. I cannot pretend to have a solution here. But just to say maybe its worth putting a few curveballs in your drop bag. Something you just wont find on an aid-station and that only you love - a gherkin - a rice ball/sushi - kiwi fruit/dried mango
9. Don't Fear the Poo - the advice so far has been about food and nutrition and in some way "feel good". What to stick in your mouth that will hopefully keep you on the tracks, reboot you or just plonk some energy in that tank. At the other is your bum. Many runners have experienced the need to "drop" when the furthest from any official toilet. Consequently some runners may be put off from eating too much because they want to avoid this. DaznBone most definitely encourage you to EAT and drink and fuel and PRACTICE having a forest poo. The great piece of news is that doing a "freestyle" poo is actually how your body is designed to do it - using a toilet is another reason why we have gut/bowel issues. So eat - be energised and smile a 'healthy all knowing' smile when you are doing the ultra-poo
10. Jamie Holmes effect - don't try this at "holmes" kids"!!! Jamie is one of our oldest and dearest friends. He is also a fantastic runner. One important thing to know is that you shouldn't take any run advice from him. Why? Well (leaving the pre-race beer drinking and map-reading failures aside) he loves to break the no.1 rule and our final Top Tip - which is to NEVER try something new in a race. If you are going to use some food/energy drink/gels etc then try and practice with them in similar conditions. When you see all this new food (especially the sugar laden junk) on the aid-stations remember that if you haven't trained with something similar then your are playing ultra-food roulette!