Nutrition strategy study

[frontier_joe]

Hi
Last summer i successfully completed the Bob Graham round with the help of amazing friends and family in support. I suffered with nausea a lot sooner than i thought i would but thankfully i managed to keep moving and stay positive. I had done a lot of reading and experimenting with different foods and snack etc to try get my stomach used to taking on food for such a long time. I got some great advice from the forum and tips to help me round…Pringles! such a good shout! Anyway getting to the reason for the post, I am a mature student studying sports science and i am approaching my final year project. Since my primary interest is in mountain running and especially ultra distance i have been reading all the research i can find on the topic and i found something interesting. There has never been a controlled study looking into a nutritional strategy for ultra endurance running. The bulk of the research exists for triathlon (iron man) or takes a case study approach to following runners in ultra distance races and recording what they ate etc. So with that in mind i am planning on attempting such a study and wanted to find out how many people would be interested in getting involved? I need subjects the more the merrier! It is still in the early development stages but the basic plan is as follows;
The study will most likely take place in the Lakes on a set loop course with a central hub at the start/end of the loop. Rather than being a set distance the study will be a set time e.g. 16hours (could change depending on interest) and participant will complete as many laps as they can in that time. Total distance along with lap times/pace will be monitored. Should make for a great atmosphere with everyone finishing at roughly the same time.
There will be 3 groups (potentially more) with 3 separate nutritional strategies A,B and C. Group A will run as normal and manage all their own nutrition. Groups B and C will have a nutritional strategy to follow e.g. type of food, timing of nutrition etc. (will be developed along side willing participants). Once completed the data can be analysed to see what relationships exist between the strategies and performance, nausea, mental state etc. Will eating more frequently maintain a higher pace for longer or will eating less frequently reduce nausea, could changing strategies partway through the race benefit performance. The more participants the more reliable any findings will be. If you're interested or know someone who might be interested in participating please get in touch. Nothing is set in stone at the moment and a lot of the structure and depth of the study will depend on how many people are interested. Ideally participants would have ran at least 1 ultra distance event before.
Thanks for sticking with the post i know its long, any questions just give me a shout I'm happy to answer any questions.
Cheers

[andy k]

Joe,
per my other post on ultra eating I think that effort level is a key factor in the success or failure of any given nutritional regime and therefore something that you would need to try and control for.
So for example: two winter RR attempts
in 2012 - fit well and strong - able to keep / run ahead of schedule - able to eat well to the point of hoovering stuff down.
in 2013 - recovering from a long spell of cold / lung infection - not fit. Able to maintain schedule but eating anything much was a challenge and simply not able to fuel enough to keep going. I could go at the required pace and even though I wasn't having to "try hard" I was just the wrong side of the effort line to be able to eat well, due to not being fit enough.

don't know how you control for this, but something that needs to be taken into account - Heart rate limits maybe ?

[andy k]

Joe,
per my other post on ultra eating I think that effort level is a key factor in the success or failure of any given nutritional regime and therefore something that you would need to try and control for.
So for example: two winter RR attempts
in 2012 - fit well and strong - able to keep / run ahead of schedule - able to eat well to the point of hoovering stuff down.
in 2013 - recovering from a long spell of cold / lung infection - not fit. Able to maintain schedule but eating anything much was a challenge and simply not able to fuel enough to keep going. I could go at the required pace and even though I wasn't having to "try hard" I was just the wrong side of the effort line to be able to eat well, due to not being fit enough.

don't know how you control for this, but something that needs to be taken into account - Heart rate limits maybe ?

[socks]

I'd be interested (if you don't mind an old lady who doesn't run very fast but can keep going for a fair while). As long as I can get cups of tea at very regular intervals, I don't mind what food I get.

[JanSoLo]

Hmmm. Would be interested. Obviously depends on dates etc. I'm paleo but use lactose free dairy too. I'm not necessarily low carb either. I eat accordingly to intensity

[#1Spookster]

Joe,
Do you have a date in mind?
Spookster

[frontier_joe]

All are welcome to come and participate, preferably people with ultra running experience but the more the merrier! Age doesn't matter either and I'm sure we can arrange some tea!
Andy you are bang on to say intensity makes a huge difference to nutrition strategies, as it effects which fuel source the body uses and how much blood is diverted from the stomach for exercise etc. The trap we could easily fall into is trying to find out everything about ultra running strategies from a single study and unfortunately its just not possible, the study has to be designed to answer a specific question, for example "is meal timing related to performance and nausea?" to answer this you need to try make everything identical and only vary meal timing between groups that way you can confidently say the differences between performances was down to the different meal timings etc. In the real world however we can't make everything identical but we can try get as close as we can, and by increasing the number of participants it gives us a better probability that any results aren't simply by chance. Like i said in the original post the study design is still in development and i don't want to get over ambitious on the amount of data we can collect. That being said if everyone has their own heart rate monitors that they wear during the event i definitely wouldn't turn away the data. Thanks again for all the interest keep speeding the word!

[frontier_joe]

Joe,
Do you have a date in mind?
Spookster

Mid October is on the cards at the moment. Im trying to get a fixed date to work from as soon as possible so we can start recruiting participants. Still work to do yet on venues etc.

[frontier_joe]

Hi guys tine to start organising dates for those of you that were interested in taking part. Ive created a Facebook group to make communications a bit easier:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/238890782980030/

Provisional dates for the study are 11th,18th or 25 of october, the date that most people are available for wins as the more participants the better. Ill be recruiting people over the next few months and filling people in on the study details and what you'll be doing etc. Spread the word! Thanks again

[frontier_joe]

Ive added a post in the general forum with new details for the study

http://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/showt...utrition-Study