Okay. We are running 90 miles a week. How the hell are we doing this?
Two years ago I did not run. Last year I peaked at 60 miles in a week and thought, whoa, 60 miles. Now I’m running 80 to 90, week over week over week, and I feel great. My hard runs are really, really hard and my easy runs are really, really easy, and my easy-run heart rate has gone from the mid 160s to the low 130s. A lot of that is training. A stupid amount of it is that I finally eat.
The rule
100 grams of carbs an hour on any run longer than an hour. For me that’s anything over about 8 miles, and I very rarely run shorter than 8 miles, so I am almost always carrying gels.
But I don’t need a gel for a 10 mile run
If you’re sitting there thinking, well, I don’t need a gel for a 10 mile run, you are correct. You don’t. You can absolutely run 10 miles on nothing. Your body has the energy in it.
Here’s the thing. If you don’t give it sugar, it gets that energy by breaking down what’s already in you. You can do that. But you will be more fatigued tomorrow, and you will recover slower, and you really do not want to be breaking your body down on an easy day. Easy days are where the recovery happens. Take the gel and your body just runs on the gel, and your muscles keep their glycogen, and you wake up ready to do it again. That is how you stack really, really high mileage. You break yourself down in the hard sessions, on purpose. You do not do it on a Tuesday easy 10 because you forgot to eat.
So I obsessively fuel. Every run over an hour. Even the boring ones.
I learned this the hard way
I was a lightweight rower. Weight class sport. I fractured ribs every single season. I lost my period for 10 years. I know this deal from the inside.
Then I started running and found out it’s so much more dangerous than rowing, because it’s so much more impact. I lasted a couple of months before I got hurt. Then I healed, then I got hurt again, then I healed. Over and over. Such a waste of time.
If you are going to underfuel, honestly, don’t run. Pick biking. You can underfuel biking and it won’t wreck you the same way. Running does not give you time to recover from being broken down all day. So get your ass up and get some gels.
The thing nobody says clearly
You will see people online say “I found out I was underfueling,” and then you’ll see the pushback: I’m not underfueling, I’m not losing weight. And you are correct. You’re not losing weight.
You can still be in a deficit for most of the day, then eat a box of cereal at night and land at baseline. You ate the right number of calories. You ate them at the wrong time. Your body sat broken down and unrecovered around the exact hours it needed the food, and then you fed it too late. You can even be gaining weight and still be in a hole around your workouts. That’s the hole where stress fractures live.
Eat around the running. Before, during, after. The total matters less than when.
What I actually take
Amacx Turbo Gels. 40 grams of carbs each, they have sodium in them, and they’re liquidy enough that I can take one in the middle of a hard track workout and not puke, which is the whole test. The flavor is also great. Lime tastes like Sprite. Cola tastes like Coke. My friends think they taste weird. My friends are wrong.
I take the caffeinated ones first, because I like caffeine, and if a long run needs more than two I switch to the non-caffeinated one for the rest. I cap myself at about 200 milligrams of caffeine during a run, because I already had 200 for breakfast. Racing is different. I’ll do the same fueling strategy, but I’ll caffeine max a race.
When I’m caffeine maxing, meaning a race or the hardest long run of the block, I switch to Maurten. Maurten Gel 160 for the carbs and Maurten Gel 100 Caf 100 for the caffeine. The Caf 100 has the most caffeine per gram of carb I can find: 100 milligrams in a 25 gram gel. So I can get 200 milligrams of caffeine into 50 grams of carbs, instead of 100 milligrams into 40 grams with the Amacx. When the point is the caffeine, that math matters.
Taking a fuckton of gels I don’t think I need is what took me from peaking at 60 miles a week to deloading at 70 in a year. My recovery time is literally cut in half. I recover faster from hard sessions and execute the next one better. The durability is letting me stack miles and intensity I never dreamed of before, and I’m watching my times drop on the track.
Water comes with me in a Feed soft flask, the 250ml one. It lives in the phone pocket with the phone, which sounds like it shouldn’t work and does. That gets its own post, because I googled it so many times before I figured it out.
Where it all goes
I love to carry everything on my back, which is why I’m almost always wearing a Bandit crop. I’ve tried compression shorts with pockets, and every time I’ve found that the uneven weight in the side pockets hurts my hip flexors. Belts are the same problem in a different place.
So it all goes on my back. Bandit’s zip crops have gel pockets in the back that take 5 or 6 gels, a phone pocket that takes the phone and the water pouch, and side pockets for a key card. That’s the whole system. It’s also why I wear crops instead of sports bras, because the crops hold more, and why I like a low rise short, because with a crop there’s already enough fabric happening around my stomach.
The full breakdown of which Bandit crop carries what is its own post, because they are not all the same and the differences matter.
There’s one more thing in the fuel bag for hard days and it’s called Nomio. It works better than bicarb for me and it gets its own post, because it is like fucking magic.
The short version
100 grams an hour on anything over an hour. Even easy. Especially easy. Carry it on your back.
What I wore
| Brand | Piece | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bandit Running | Zip crop | 5 or 6 gels in the back, phone and water pouch in the phone pocket |
All my measurements and every size I wear are on the sizing page.
Questions I get
Do you need a gel for a 10 mile run?
No. You can run 10 miles on nothing. But your body will get that energy by breaking itself down, and you will be more tired tomorrow and recover slower. I take one anyway on anything over an hour.
How many carbs an hour for running?
I do 100 grams an hour on any run over an hour, easy runs included. It's what took me from peaking at 60 miles a week to deloading at 70 in a year.
What gels do you use?
Amacx Turbo Gels most days. Maurten Gel 160 and Gel 100 Caf 100 when I'm caffeine maxing, because the Caf 100 is 100mg of caffeine per 25g of carbs.
Where do you carry gels on a run?
On my back. Bandit's zip crops hold 5 or 6 gels in the back pockets plus a phone. I hate having anything on my hips, so I don't use the shorts pockets or a belt unless I have to.
