Michael: The Merits of Junk

Blossoms like gold flames
Sporadically decorate
The green leaved branches.

Friday, September 8, 2017

There seems to be a growing consensus that runners should clean up their act and use electrolyte mixes and foods that are made from simple wholesome ingredients. Sounds good. Yet I’d throw a caveat into the mix and still advocate for swallowing a decent dose of semi-unknown crud during every long outing.

Why?

I’ll use my plan for my upcoming 50k to explain. It’s going to take me around 6 hours. I suppose I could carry all my hydration and nutritional needs with me, but what’s the fun of that? That’s reserved for either a long hike or a fastpack trip. This is a race and the point of that is to finish as quickly as I can. That means taking advantage of drop bag points and aid stations.

This race has two drop bag points over the course of a 50k; one at the 12 mile mark and another at the 20 mile point. There are also aid stations at the 16, 26, and 29 mile points.

So it should be easy to throw in my preferred hydration mix and food into drop bags and always be able to consume what I’d like and have trained with. Yes, problem solved; case closed.

In fact I am partially going to mix the two approaches; I’m going to carry a few hydration single mixes and chews at the start and run through the first drop station and have a bag with a few more mixes and bars at the second drop point.

But what if my bag doesn’t make it? Or I take longer than planned? Or my stomach has decided that today, of all days, it’s sick of those formally always delicious Picky bars and it’s daring me to take another bite and see what happens?

That’s why before every run that’s going to last more than a couple of hours I feel it’s somewhat wise to walk into the nearest store and pick out something that looks familiar to any child; a pack of Oreos or Chips Ahoy or whatever the local knock offs are.

Use those bio-hazard products during the last hour or two of your long training runs and you’ll discover that you can get by or maybe even enjoy the variety from your usual scientifically precision formulated super fuels. If so, you can be confident in one of the crises above, that you’ll be alright scooping something similar off an aid station table.

And, as a bonus, you may discover that you don’t have to rely on the expensive concoctions at all out there and can skip using a drop bag or carrying any excess hydration or food.

However, you may also painfully discover, as I have, that this strategy can sometimes not turn out so well. And by that I mean getting punched in the gut by something that seemed edible at the time but quickly turned into an alien wanting out of your stomach in some hideous purge through any or all available orifices. That happened to me when I tried to run on these locally hand made sugar corn cookies. With only a few miles to go during an otherwise enjoyable long run, I gave them a shot and within minutes I came to a crawl with a wrenching fist of gut pain.

Live and learn. I can manage on chocolate chip like cookies, but I’ll avoid yellow cellophane products like the plague.

It’s all a part of experimenting while enjoying life on the run. It’s fun and what makes getting outside a wonder and a treat (usually) in more ways than one.