Life is an ultramarathon

When in Nice for the marathon, I bought a few energy gels to complete my comparison: mX3 extreme, Scientec Nutrition Over Blast and Overstim.s (Energix, Antioxydant, Coup de fouet, Red Tonic).

The main difference as compared to the typical British ones is that they all sell in similar, smaller pouches. Their weights vary between 25 and 27 grams only, when the ubiquitous PowerGel and SiS Go Gel weigh 41 and 67 grams respectively. Not only these gels are lighter than any other I've tested before, but all of them are also much more expensive per calorie. The mX3 Extreme gel sets a new minimum with a ratio of only 37.56 KCal/£, way under the already overpriced SiS Smart Gel at 55 KCal/£. During the long runs when the sweet food becomes unbearable, the Overstim.s Energix range features a savoury peanut flavour, which is a great idea. Unfortunately, the gel texture is so thick that it took me a lot of effort to down it (think about "drinking" peanut butter through a 2mm-large hole). I'm not sure how people do normally deal with that, but I found them absolutely unusable in practice.

Overstim.s also produces the "Red Tonic Sprint Air" gel with mint and eucalyptus. The fresh and intense taste is supposed to boost you when you're out of breath. It's definitely strong, now whether that would actually make any difference...

On the content side, it looks like French runners like funky add-ons. Aside the typical vitamins A, B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, PP and caffeine, some of them include the following ingredients: royal jelly, propolis, chloropyll, gingseng, kola, crataegus, cinchona, meadowsweet, angelica, ginger and fenugreek. Not sure what all of those are good for, but they must justify the price...

Ultra not impressed by French gels

This is that time of the year again, for the 4^th time on this blog!

The year was good academically speaking, with a best paper award and obviously my thesis completed!

However, 2009 hasn't been too great running-wise. I hadn't much time to train properly because of my thesis, and my left Achilles tendon has been achy when cold for most of the year. Then came the aborted Paddy Buckley Round attempt and a DNF on the PTL. Luckily, I managed to pull PB on the Nice-Cannes marathon thanks to a conservative race management, which ended up the year on a positive note.

My four main objectives for the year are then:

• Hardmoors 55 (March) - 55 miles in the North Yorkshire Moors: the first half of the Hardmoors 110. First edition.
• Thames Source Quest (TSQ) (May) - 296km along the Thames from the Thames Barrier to its source. A long-thought personal project.
• Paddy Buckley Round (PBR) (July) - 104km +8,700m on harsh terrain in North Wales.
• Petite Trotte à Léon (PTL) (August) - circa 240km +20,000m around the Mont-Blanc. It will be open to teams of two runners this time.

And obviously I'll enter other shorter events, such as a marathon in April to get under 3h20 . My training plan outline might look like that:

• Nov, Dec: no running (circuit training, swimming, climbing), my Achilles tendon might hopefully recover...
• Jan, Feb, March: progressive hill training for the Hardmoors 55.
• April, May: building up to the distance for the TSQ.
• June, July, August: hardcore mountain training for the PBR and PTL.

I've been briefly tempted by the Runfurther series, a sort of unofficial UK trail championship. The race list includes the Hardmoors 55 and the Lakeland 100. But that involves a lot of travelling unless you live in Yorkshire, in which case you've got half of the races at your doorstep .

Otherwise, I'm still working on a real-time runner tracking software, that I hope to test on the Hardmoors 55. More on that later.

Ultra loaded year.

Trivial subjet today as I'm rather busy at the moment. Analysis of the finishing year and plans for the next one to be posted soon.

As you know, hydration is fundamental during long races. I've had a few problems with that, latest one during the PTL. That's why most marathon runners drink a lot before their race. Because what goes in must go out, you can typically see runners peeing everywhere, for example in the sea and on the palm trees in Nice. This mostly happens before the race and during the first 5km. Most runners I've talked to mentioned they've indeed stopped once.

Things are different for me though, as I took 4 or 5 pit stops during the marathon, despite going twice in the 15 minutes before the race! That's one or two minutes wasted on my PB . I'm not 100% sure why is that, but the answer might come from the sweat. Indeed I've been told several times that I wasn't sweating much as I ran along with friends. My body has probably adapted to waste less water that way during ultramarathons. Could that explain the need to pass more water when I do actually hydrate correctly on shorter races?

What about you, how many pit stops in an average marathon?

Ultra leaks.