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HOW ONE OF OUR ATHLETES FUELLED AN 8-HOUR TRAIL RACE 🏔️
8 hours on the trails.
8 hours of climbing, descending, running, walking, concentrating, making decisions and asking your body to keep producing energy.
And when you're racing for that long, your fuelling strategy needs to work for more than just the first hour.
You need to think about what you can eat, how often you can eat it, what you can tolerate and, perhaps most importantly, what you'll still want to eat several hours later.
So rather than relying on one type of sports fuel for the entire race, one of our athletes mixed it up throughout the day.
Here's exactly what that looked like. 👇
⏱️ TO START — GEL + CHEWS
They started with a gel and chews, getting carbohydrate in early rather than waiting until they felt like they needed it.
That's an important part of long-duration fuelling.
When you're several hours into a race, trying to make up for a lack of fuelling earlier can be much harder than starting consistently.
So rather than waiting for hunger or fatigue to appear, the strategy was to start fuelling from the beginning.
⏱️ AROUND 3 HOURS — TIME FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT
After around three hours, RED-Scue was introduced alongside more familiar foods.
The combination included:
🍫 RED-Scue
🥪 Sandwiches, alternating between cheese, Vegemite and peanut butter
🥔 Hula Hoops
And this is where things got interesting.
The aim wasn't to find one "perfect" food and eat that for the next five hours.
Instead, the athlete mixed different foods and textures throughout the race.
WHY VARIETY CAN MATTER OVER 8 HOURS
Think about how different you feel at hour 1 compared with hour 6.
Your appetite can change.
Your taste preferences can change.
Your tolerance can change.
Something that tastes amazing early in a race might become completely unappealing several hours later.
And that's why having different carbohydrate sources, textures and flavours can make a practical difference.
It gives you options.
Instead of thinking:
"I have to eat another gel."
You might have:
"I'll have some sandwich."
Then later:
"I'll have some RED-Scue."
Then:
"I'll have a few Hula Hoops."
You're still thinking about fuelling, but you're giving yourself some variety within the overall strategy.
⏱️ THE NEXT 5 HOURS
For the majority of the remaining race, they continued with this combination.
RED-Scue.
Sandwiches.
Hula Hoops.
Alongside their other race fuelling.
And that's something we really like about this case study.
RED-Scue wasn't being presented as a replacement for everything else.
It was one part of a wider fuelling strategy.
Because real endurance fuelling doesn't have to fit neatly into one category.
You can combine sports products with familiar foods.
You can use different textures.
You can switch flavours.
You can adapt as the race progresses.
🍫 WHY RED-SCUE?
This is one of the reasons we created RED-Scue as a food-first sports fuel.
When you're racing for 8 hours, you may not want every carbohydrate source to look or taste the same.
You might want something more substantial than a gel.
Something smooth and food-like.
Something you can take in smaller portions.
Something you actually enjoy eating.
And that's where RED-Scue can sit within a longer endurance strategy.
Not instead of gels.
Not instead of drinks.
Not instead of everyday food.
Alongside them.
🥪 SPORTS FUEL + REAL FOOD
There's sometimes a false choice in endurance nutrition.
As though you have to choose between:
"sports nutrition"
or
"real food."
But you don't.
For a long event, there can be a place for both.
Gels can provide a convenient source of carbohydrate.
Chews can be easy to portion.
Sports drinks can provide carbohydrate and fluid.
Sandwiches can provide familiar food and variety.
And a food-based bar can give you another option when you want something different.
The strategy becomes less about finding one magic food and more about building a combination you can actually maintain.
⏱️ AROUND 8 HOURS — THE FINAL PUSH
Towards the end of the race, they used a caffeine gel to help see them home.
Again, it was another example of using different tools at different points in the event.
The athlete didn't rely on caffeine from the beginning.
It was introduced towards the end as part of their individual strategy.
Caffeine can affect people differently, so this is something to practise in training rather than suddenly introducing on race day.
🏁 8 HOURS. LOTS OF DIFFERENT FOODS. ONE OVERALL STRATEGY.
There isn't one magic food that gets you through an ultra.
And there doesn't need to be.
The overall goal is to develop a fuelling strategy that provides enough carbohydrate and fluid for the demands of your event, while taking into account:
⏱️ Duration
🏃 Intensity
🍽️ What you can tolerate
🥤 What you're drinking
🧠 What you actually want to eat
🏋️ What you've practised in training
For this athlete, that meant combining:
Gels + chews + RED-Scue + sandwiches + Hula Hoops + fluids + a caffeine gel towards the end.
Not because that is the way to fuel an 8-hour race.
But because it was the strategy they had developed for themselves.
AND THAT'S THE BIGGER LESSON
Your race fuelling doesn't have to look like someone else's.
You don't have to eat the same thing for eight hours.
You don't have to force yourself through a fuel you hate because someone told you it's "the best."
And you don't have to choose between sports nutrition and food.
You can build a strategy around both.
The important part is that you practise it.
Try different foods during long training sessions.
Work out what your gut tolerates.
Find textures you actually enjoy.
Practise your carbohydrate timing.
Test caffeine before race day if you're going to use it.
And work out what you want available when you're six hours into an event and your preferences have changed.
Because fuelling for an ultra isn't just about the first hour.
It's about still being able to fuel at hour 4, hour 6 and hour 8.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO SUFFER THROUGH YOUR FUEL TO PERFORM. ❤️
That is one of the ideas behind RED-Scue.
Food-first fuel.
Fuel that can sit alongside the other things you already use.
Because endurance nutrition doesn't have to be:
gel → gel → gel → gel → gel
It can be:
carbohydrate + fluids + variety + sports fuel + familiar foods + food you actually want to eat.
And sometimes, having another option in your pocket is exactly what makes it easier to keep fuelling.
🌱⚡️
#REDScue #FuelWithoutFear #TrailRunning #UltraRunning #EnduranceRunning #SportsNutrition #RaceFuelling #CarbsFirst #FoodFirstFuel #UltraNutrition
