Nutrition: before, during (including aid stations), after

Caffeine

Caffeine:

  • Take caffeine ~60 minutes before an event.

  • It’s arguable how much caffeine you need before an event of 0 to 3-4 hours if you’re well rested. The body should be fired up already. However, it can also lead to up to a 3% improvement for some in shorter events.

  • Caffeine does not benefit explosive events (e.g. 100m sprint). Does that mean no gain for bouldering?

  • Taking caffeine on long-duration (4 hours plus) events shows noticeable gains.

  • Pace caffeine intake: it has a 6 hour half-life. I.e. if you take caffeine before a marathon, no need to take more half way through.


Carbs

  • Aim to hit 60grams per hour of carbs. If high intensity, push this higher - over 100gram.



Aid station strategies

Excellent insights into getting nutrition right on ultramarathons.

Start thinking 1/2 a kilometre before the aid station on what you need.

Think when you’re feeling good of what you need to do. (note as example from myself: my stomach went off after 12 hours of the UTMB Nice 2024 event: I troubleshooted a solution to move away from gels however, didn’t troubleshoot that it wouldn’t give me enough carbs leading to a major bonk at the race. Plan!

Neal McQuaid