Nutrition Mistakes to Avoid with Coaches Stephanie Howe and Adam St. Pierre⎮KoopCast Episode 12

trail runners here we go we're about to get going with another edition of the KoopCast one of the things that i really enjoy about our ultra running team here at train right.com is that we all come together every single week as a group of professional endurance coaches and we sit in our continuing ed sessions and we make each other better and those continuing education sessions run anywhere from just looking over athlete programming and athlete schedules to incredibly intricate topics dealing with biomechanics and physiology or maybe the latest and greatest recovery aid that seems to be out on the market and one of the things that always comes out from those sessions are all the things that we have screwed up or we've seen other people screw up and it and inevitably it ends up being a really fun conversation and so to riff off of that a little bit i invited stephanie howe who you guys might remember from the very first edition of the KoopCast with david clark i invited stephanie howe and adam st pierre who was also on the KoopCast again i can't remember what episode it is off the top of my head but we were talking about what to do if you didn't get into western states i brought those two coaches on the KoopCast for this edition to talk about the nutrition mistakes that we make or we see other people make and not just the normal

ones like forgetting your water bottle and an aid stations but the really dramatic ones that at times can be kind of you know kind of kind of embarrassing the conversation was fun it was enlightening we really had a good time with it and what i hope you guys get from this is that you don't make the same mistakes that we have either made or we have seen other people make it's fun conversation you guys let's get into it without any further ado stephanie howe and adam st pierre here we go it's the KoopCast one of the big reasons that i appreciate both of you as coaching professionals is you have a depth of experience you haven't just gotten into it in the last couple of years some dumb things and because of that experience you've done some dumb things i mean adam how long have you been coaching for i've been coaching for 13 years 13 years and steph how long have you been a coach and or a nutrition professional for uh seven years seven okay and i have almost 20 years of coaching coaching so we got 40 between us 40 that's that's how old i am actually i'm 41 this year uh but anyway with with inherently with all of that experience you get to a point where you've kind of like been there done that seen that yeah and along with that we see a lot of dumb stuff and so i thought it would be a pretty fun game to play to bring up some of the dumbest things that we've heard or seen

or done ourselves in the nutrition space why they're dumb and what would be what would be a more reasonable solution now that you have all of these years of wisdom behind you i just thought of some more dumb things that i've done i'm sure i so i asked you guys this i asked you guys this question yesterday and i'm sure you were able to come up with one or two or three but inevitably i think after this conversation we're all going to have 30 or 40 yeah we can have we can have an addendum we could go we could we could go on for days so that that's the format we're going to go over the dumb thing why it's dumb and then what would have been a better solution now that we have this 2020 hindsight that we could look at that situation on cool yeah adam you good i'm great okay you guys want to paper rock scissors for who goes first wait i thought i because i'm a three oh okay i think i get trumped i think i get trumped okay let's not let's not say that word i know okay so steph you could go first what's your what's your what's the dumbest thing that you've seen heard or done from a nutrition perspective why is it dumb and what could the person or you have done better to make it not so dumb well i have quite a few dumb things that i've done personally and seen people do um one of the most common things is diet coke diet coke in an ultra yep i get that a lot from people um when i'm reviewing their nutrition plan

and uh it just makes me throw my hands up so you actually see this from somebody's like race day nutrition plan yep see i i have an addiction to diet coke outside of training but if you have the option to have real coke and and real sugar why would you ever go with the diet coke that's well exactly the point is i mean when you're when you're taking something in to have energy and diet coke is giving you that sweet flavor but no energy but what i want to know is is obviously like you're so you receive this this template this plan from an athlete this is what i'm going to do during a race when you then talk to them about the plan that they've constructed that you're going to like tweak and modify what's the rationale for them wanting to use diet coke during a race for hydration they like the flavor and the bubbles and the caffeine the bubbles you know potentially um but i just it literally i have to talk them through why that's a bad idea um i mean tricking your body basically into getting sugar but then there's no sugar in there there's no energy it to me it just seems why would you ever do that well yeah and my concern would be does the artificial sweetener you know does that have any effect on on like insulin or um glucagon or any of the other hormones that

are actually moderating your blood sugar well exactly and i don't think that's something that's ever really been looked at because again going back to the the issue why would you ever take in um a beverage that has fake sugar in it okay so steph why specifically is this dumb i mean it kind of i don't know we look at it and it's kind of a no-deat thing but you have the experience of you you're like taking you're like taking the athletes through this journey of their race day nutrition plan what do you say to them is why what do you say to them in terms of why is this a terrible idea well first thing i say is like you know the whole reason you're taking in like food and fluids is to get energy and then the second reason is because after a while in an ultra you are your your palate is getting fatigued from all the sugar so if you're just taking in something that's sweet but you're not getting any energy from it that's like a double negative right because not only are you just increasing the your maybe um distaste if you will for sweet foods but you're not benefiting from it and then also i think carbonation can be tough when you're racing and i mean you know taking in flat coke is better usually um but that's just one other reason why i wouldn't recommend anything carbonated um so it has

all of the negatives and none of the positives exactly that fits the definition of dumb wait should i drink la croix during runs i wouldn't recommend that but it's so good so here here's the conversation it's kind of up topic uh i had the other day over over dinner is there mexican diet coke because you know there's mexican coke with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup and it comes in a glass bottle like is there mexican diet coke if so what's the difference diet coke yeah i don't know that's a great question i know i've been to mexico a lot it's called coca-cola light coca-cola light yeah so there is they use i'm pretty sure they use aspartame it's got the same it's got the same label like the same even the same color you know diet coke's got that silver color to it so can i drink that in an ultra i would say go for the real thing go for the full sugar mexican cola okay steph so we've decided that diet coke's pretty dumb i think we can all agree with that it's dumb because it gets it's all the negatives and none of the positives what's a better solution plain old coke i think any type of soda you know if you're if you're looking for that caffeine um boost if you're looking for something sweet just just drink soda because that's going to help you have you guys seen a lot of the actual research that they've done with coke specifically as an ergogenic aid like using the actual product coke as opposed to any of the other nutrition products

brand marketing as yeah as opposed to pepsi as stuff says have you guys seen that before i have not oh really i'm like i'm kind of surprised that neither of you have run in that research so so the typical the typical run of show is they use it in like a sprint situation so it's 90 minutes or two hours at 65 of vo2 max or something like that and then there's some series of high intensity sprints at the end to kind of mimic uh the the the situation be like a cycling race or something like that and they would put coke up against diet coke i think was actually one of the placebo one of the placebos right one of the controls because they wanted to control for the flavor water some sort of electrolyte beverage and coke always wins and it's not a trivial amount what if they put it up against like mr pibbs or uh or like costco brand coke i don't know kirkland cola wait wait how about coke versus mexican there we go that would be interesting to see i bet red bull has some of those studies like coke versus red bull oh they might what if you mix the two i don't know but if you did coke versus red bull you could probably control for the calories and then it's just all the other stuff in there all like caffeine and taurine and stuff like that that's in there that you that that would be the the really scary stuff yeah exactly do you know in the ski world a common feed is coke and coffee mixed together cold so good it's like thick tar i think i just threw up in my mouth that's pretty gross

you skiers okay steph anything else to say about coke and diet coke just don't do it go for the real thing just don't i was i was kind of expecting you to come up with like a more well that's the most common that the most common yeah it's not the most like mind-blowing like what are you thinking but it's more like this just comes up more often and i just scratched my head like where did who gave you that advice why did you think that was a good idea so so steph started start us off on a nice like family friendly one i'm going to share share a personal experience that's a slightly more graphic um so the uh the listeners with with weak stomachs may want to turn away um but i ran my first 100 miler western states in 2011 um and and my master's thesis is actually on hydration and thirst in in different environments um so i was big into into into sodium supplementation and um i decided it would be a good idea to take a very high electrolyte drink and add electrolytes to it um so i was consuming about 2500 milligrams of sodium per hour um and if anyone remembers the the 2011 western states it was a fairly mild year um you know it might have broken 90 in the canyons it was it was a good year it was a snow year um but i took my sodium nonetheless and uh i started having some some lower gi distress um at about mile 10 um and i proceeded to visit visit the woods about about every hour for the duration of the race

but wait a minute so you're taking 2500 milligrams of sodium per hour from the get-go from the get-go um and what like what forms were you getting it i had uh that year there was no crew access until uh until forest hill so i was running with a hundred liter bladder uh filled with efs grape um that was my flavor of choice and then i was adding a liquid sodium supplement to that oh my god um where did you do your master's thesis i'm not gonna i'm not gonna disclose that i don't want to discredit any institutions the university of new hampshire and in an effort of full disclosure as well you were not a cts coach at that time no i was neither a cts coach nor a cts needless to say i was coaching elsewhere but uh i won't talk about that i might have not hired you like like after that experience just recently i'm like wait a minute i don't know if you know kind of quite what you're doing here well i think i mean if you look at the the research that was really just starting to change in the late late you know 2000 2000 aughts i guess pre-2010 is that what it's called uh 2007 sure 2010 sure um you know it was still very much in the like replace all the sodium you're losing and and almost a more is better on a sodium replacement front um you know every every race aid station was providing sodium supplements and it was it was sort of thought to be this necessary essential

component so um i'm kind of an extreme personality and if some is good more is often better um which which i now know um and i don't tend to coach that way but as an athlete i'm sort of uh more is more is often better um but anyway that year i weighed in uh 13 pounds heavy at uh forest hill that was one of the last years where they weighed athletes um but if you remember they weighed athletes to make sure that you weren't dehydrated so they were almost encouraging you know people to to over drink and and to to maintain uh maintain body weight by drinking a ton um so i weighed in super heavy they told me to stop drinking i stopped drinking and then i bonked horrifically and at that time they just had i think you you've mentioned this a little bit but i just want to be clear they still weighed people and it was is that forest hill yeah okay so they weighed people and they were making sure the only thing they were making sure of is that you weren't eight over eight percent underweight was eight or seven one of the other somewhere around yeah but they didn't care they didn't care they looked at you and you were 13 pounds overweight and they're like man you're good to go well no so they asked are you peeing and i said yes a lot and they said are you you know are you with it um and like clearly i was i was pretty with it i wasn't super out of it because at that percent i was like clinically i was hypo in a treatment at that point and um you can get it into some dangerous stuff where you're you know just in a mental fog and doing things that aren't

safe but um they allowed me to continue with the advice to stop drinking for a period of time and so that's a huge mistake you now realize huge mistake i now realize that what so specifically you mentioned some of the reasons why it's a huge mistake one of them is being you probably clinically hyponatremic at that point where some why why are some of the other reasons that this over sodium supplementation becomes so problematic well i mean think about your your poor intestines um and they're trying to absorb nutrients and you're just burying them in sodium um so it's it's bound to lead to some some stomach upset some gi distress and that was uh that was a big part of my race that year um my race was was marred by frequent frequent stops in the bushes i'm actually kind of surprised at the end did you was that one of the years where they looked at hyponatremia i think it may have been one of the first years they started looking at hyponatremia um because i did yeah we did blood tests uh blood draws at the end um and i was fine at the end oh it would have been interesting if there was a mid-race blood draw um to compare to interesting so i was in one of those hyponatremia studies as well and at the end of western states i was clinically hyponatremic and it was the year where they were trying to develop a new protocol to treat hyponatremia so previous to this there were two there are two kind of solutions to treat hyponatremia one of them was just to orally consume sodium some broth basically

and the second one is a standard sailing bag and what marty hoffman was trying to develop that this year that i just happened to be a part of was this i can't remember if it was a hundred or 150 meter milliliter bolus of three percent of a three percent sodium solution so super salty injection of super salty you know super salty bolus of fluid that they would that they would inject and that was the intervention that they thought would solve hyponatremia faster because that's the issue that they wanted in the clinical population in the clinical population and i got so i come across the western states finish line they take a quick blood draw i'm clinically hyponatremic i'd i'd agreed to be a part of the study and i got randomized into the super salty uh a group very fortunately and so they injected me with this 100 150 milliliter bolus and i felt better within six or seven minutes like i went from stumbling over my speech even more so than i normally do to completely coherent i was talking to my wife i was having a great time they still held held me in the tent and it turns out that that is consistent across everybody that they would use that treatment for where it doesn't take a whole it doesn't take a long period of time to actually correct the clinical hyponatremia well it's

interesting that they would even get approval to do that uh type of an intervention because you know there's evidence that a you know a regular saline bag in a hyponatremic person can actually be right like pretty bad uh detrimental yeah yep yep yeah i don't i don't know i mean obviously they were under like consistent monitoring and maybe there was a level to which they wouldn't put the sailing bag on those people i don't know yeah if you're at like 120 or something just knowing their research they have a really good irb they have to go through so yeah you know it's just like let's see what happens to these runners but that's actually a problem at races where the medical staff is not up to date on the current research and i had an athlete that had this happen in 2019 where he crossed the finish line was hyponatremic they gave him a standard sailing bag and i'm not going to go into the details of this but he had just a ton of very serious medical complications ensue because of that type of because of that type of intervention so it's i mean i i think that like your case adam the like the trickle down effect from what we can learn from that can go all the way to saving people's lives potentially wow i didn't know i was that you screwed you screwed up that importantly so so so you're actually okay at the finish line yeah well so yeah i uh amazing i didn't

drink for about 20 miles which was inconvenient because my only calorie source had been my my drink mix so you had two errors yeah oh yeah um so i actually have no recollection of uh of about miles miles and pretty much from from green gate to uh to highway 94 i have no recollection um except for eating pancakes at how corners um aid station at auburn lakes trails that's hilarious yeah they were really good okay so skunk there was a skunk so what so what is what would be the correct solution to that so if i were to to go back um so i've actually i've kind of swung the other way on the pendulum with electrolyte supplementation to the point where i i do like i don't i don't do any um above and beyond what's in you know my sports nutrition products and you know the the handfuls of potato chips um but i also know now that i have a fairly low sweat rate so i have some confounding variables that have made me able to get by without really thinking about my sodium supplementation um but in hindsight if i were to go back and and do some things differently um i probably would not have taken in 2500 milligrams of sodium so don't take that much in don't take that much in and and use the sodium or the sodium that's in the sports nutrition products that you are taking in are pretty much enough for you and you know that because of a test that you did and you wrote an article on the train right blog about this why don't you yeah take us through what that test looks like so i was at the uh

the endurance coaching summit the training peaks puts on here in boulder um and they had a a group from precision hydration here presenting um and i i went to that presentation sort of hoping to uh to be a bit of an argumentative jerk in the crowd um but they were actually it was a really good balance presentation uh to their credit but the test they did one of those you know they they use in a kind of electrophoresis to get your your forearm sweating and then they measure the actual sodium content in the sweat um from your forearm um so i uh being a bit of a self-experimenter uh i had them measure my my sweat sodium concentration i then proceeded to down 5000 milligrams of sodium uh over the course of two hours so you really didn't learn from your western stakes you know because you're just like chugging a bunch of sodium right after this well i figured i wasn't in 100 miler so it wouldn't hurt me but but really my contention was that your sweat sodium rate changes instantaneously in relation to what you're consuming um and and you know i hadn't seen evidence for or against that i had never seen it really tested or uh published published in in published literature so i did a little self-test um and my sweat rate was was within margin of error uh my sweat sodium concentration was the same pre and post so steph are you aware of any of the literature on that um yes and i think i i mean it it's tricky because everyone is so different and it's you know it's trainable you're you can

um you know adapt to become a more dilute sweater um and you know it does depend on what you're taking in so if i'm taking in a bunch of sodium my sweat concentration is going to be more salty yeah but that's kind of the opposite of what adam found like he took in this big huge amount of sodium and it didn't really change granted it was resting conditions that that's that's a big difference yeah and only two hours yeah i think the biggest take home in application is that it's really individual like you can't just say you need x amount of sodium an hour and i do think you can get it through the the sports products you're consuming um and i think the the alternative like the the potential um danger for taking in too much sodium is outweighs the you know the the issues of not getting enough yeah it's interesting because a lot of the performance experts i'm we're up here in boulder at adam's house recording this and there's a lot of performance experts just within 10 miles of us not even air quotes yeah like legit like legit like legit experts and one of the thing one of the one of the constant themes that they will always say when they do this uh sweat sodium testing is the better athletes are always more dilute for whatever for whatever reason maybe it's a genetic reason maybe it's a combination of genetics and diet but the best athletes just don't have as much sodium in their

sweat and then the the practical consequence of that is they're at less risk for hyponatremia because they're not losing as much sodium through through their sweat and they don't have to supplement with as much in kind of the heat of battle no pun intended that's a fitness adaptation um you do like as you become more fit become more dilute in your sweat so yeah that's exactly what i was going to say like i remember back to you know grad school you know exercise physiology you know 201 or whatever the grad school level class is like it's one of the first things you learn is is some of the adaptations to exercise training um are like more dilute sweat and um it's similar to your your heat acclimation adaptations as well so adam when when you work with athletes on their nutrition plan like having this experience right what's a nutrition plan yeah exactly when you work with your athletes going through their their race day nutrition plan having this experience that you just had and literally being on both sides of the fence from a practical perspective like walk us through like how you view sodium supplementations as it relates to the athletes that you're working with so for the most part i i'm i'm sort of laissez-faire on that part uh on the sodium aspect i really focus on on calories and and getting sufficient fluids um you know having having an idea of sweat rate and making sure you're getting enough uh to prevent severe dehydration while not drinking so much that you uh get hyponatremic and then you know if we're having issues then then we dive a little deeper into it

do you have any of your or do you have any of your athletes do the sweat test um i have not recommended a sweat sodium concentration test no no no not not that not that test though just the how much are you sweating oh like like the the naked weighing yeah exactly yeah yeah um i'll do that with with most athletes a couple times throughout the year you want to just you want to just describe that for everybody so we're all on the same page yeah it's a really simple test you weigh yourself in very little clothing uh or no clothing you go out for a run go run for an hour without drinking anything or peeing um and then weigh yourself after um and very simply the amount of weight you lose is is largely correlated to the amount of uh fluids lost to sweat i think an important um addendum to that is that's in those environmental conditions right yeah so it's it's important when you're calculating out numbers in nutrition to keep in keep the context um in mind because you know that could be your sweat rate at 60 degrees and 80 humidity but what happens when you go you know to 105 degrees and it's a 100 humidity yeah um that's going to change your rates yeah totally i've got a an athlete from florida who came up for our memorial day camp um and it was you know usually when you come to high altitude it's such a dry environment that you end up losing a lot of sweat but compared to florida um he felt like he was a camel you know this is a guy he'll lose uh he would lose like eight pounds in a one hour run at you know 95 degrees 100 humidity in florida

steph have you ever heard of a sweat rate that high no yeah i haven't either insane i haven't either i mean you this is your master's thesis yes well no i mean this was just uh anecdotally working with this one particular athlete um but have you heard or have you ever encountered an athlete either that you work with or that you've heard about or that you've actually seen an outlier in the research that's that high because you've told me this story before my my my first thought is is that can't be right i mean in in my master's thesis we didn't directly record sweat rate um but we did have people were 10 percent dehydrated by by body mass loss um but that occurred over the course of you know 90 minutes of exercise followed by an overnight uh non-rehydration period did you have a lower limit for your irb for how much you could dehydrate them just say yeah uh we we were i think our range was eight to 12 percent that's kind of shocking because 12 you can actually yeah it's brutal it's it's a brutal it's brutal but you can have some complications no our irb thought it was cool oh my gosh i i'd be remiss to mention that uh one of my favorite sports has a marquee event going on this weekend and that's ufc 246 conor mcgregor is coming back into the octagon and that that does not it doesn't have anything to do with ultra running except for the fact that those athletes are they're like the pioneers of how much body water you can lose

and still function because a lot of times when those athletes they go in and you know they're walking around just to give everybody context who doesn't have a combat sport type of background you'll have athletes that walk around at like 210 210 or 220 pounds that'll make the 185 pound limit for their particular sport that's a that's a huge difference and not not all of that is water loss but a lot of it is actual water loss and during the weigh-ins people will pass out they will get to the venue where they're going to do the weigh-in it's usually some hotel conference room or something like that and they've dehydrated themselves so much so quickly that they'll enter the you know they'll enter the room and they're waiting for their time to kind of get up on the scale and they'll just pass out right there i don't know if we should use them as our role models absolutely not but it's funny but for various reasons they've actually gotten a better handle on that a lot of people including myself as a fan i'm just a fan of the sport have been like really critical of that sport and not being able to curtail all those because it ruins the cards i mean you think about i i've actually been to a couple of fights now like actually attended in person where i expected this person to fight and the day before the fight they have to withdraw because they couldn't make way or they had some sort of medical complication during the during the weigh-in process they knock themselves out yeah exactly yeah so so i'm going to bring us off of combat sports and back to to mistakes making and ultra running um and not to monopolize stuff because i'm sure you have some other good mistakes

but one mistake um that i made in that same scenario was relying too much on uh calories in liquid form um so that's a good one so that my my hydration and thirst were necessarily tied to my caloric intake um and sometimes that works out great and sometimes it works out less great uh but i generally try to counsel athletes not uh to rely solely on liquid calories you know what's really interesting about that is that this one of the one of the primary products right now that's used to deliver all of your calories in a liquid form it's not it's by not by no means the first one but it's one of the more prevalent one ones right now goo roctane it's the high calorie drink that came out right around the same time that this completely opposing strategy in the sports nutrition world came out which is to keep your calories in your pocket in your hydration in your bottle and our i remembered like getting some of the first bat goo was our nutrition partner for cts for a few years and i remember getting some of their first like trial batches of roctane in and at the exact same time dr stacy sims who was a she was a big advocate for this uh at the time pushing this keep your calories in your pocket and your hydration in your bottle and functionally what that meant was a lower calorie sports drink and so you had you had quite literally at the exact same time these two very different caloric strategies

contained within a drink and i just i just found that fascinating yeah i um i definitely give that advice to athletes i'm working with um to use your your to get your calories mostly from fuel sources like gels blocks bars etc and if you are going to take a sports drink for the electrolytes or just additional calories to keep it very low in in terms of calorie concentration because you can get into big trouble with that um because if it's colder temperatures you you know you're going to be mismatching the calories versus hydration um and the opposite is true with warm temperatures you have to drink so much liquid to hydrate yourself and you're going to be overwhelming your gut with calories and i have a couple um mistakes i've made that i want to share and that was one of them actually um i i i wanted to start western states i believe it was 2017 or 20 2017 um with just uh calories liquid calories and i just like totally bombed my nutrition which is kind of embarrassing to admit as someone who does nutrition um and ended up having to spend an hour and a half at devil's thumb just laying there um trying to bring myself back to life and it was because i had made my drink mix too concentrated so i was getting way too many calories and was dehydrated at the same time well how concentrated was it

well i was making it to strength i was making it as they recommended but it was and actually this this wasn't 2017 this was 2015 it was a pretty warm year um and i was just drinking more i was getting probably 400 calories an hour to stay on top of my hydration it ended poorly so you probably you you probably had like a 250 calorie 16 ounce bottle of which you were taking like one and a half of those an hour exactly and i i had a pack on actually so it was a full bladder full full of calories and i didn't have the problem was you know now a lot of times you have two bottles so you could do one water one sports drink all i had was sports drink yeah same as my western states um so similar but but different um i don't know if you guys have have done this personally as an athlete but i will often rely on the the aid station provided sports drink whether it's goo rock tan or tailwind and i'll have athletes we try to you know i try to have it as a supplement but race directors out there please mix your sports drinks to strength um i had a you know an athlete at bandera this weekend not to call out bandera but pretty much every race i've ever done wasatch um like the drink is mixed so weekly that it's it's neither a source of calories nor a source of uh of electrolytes and if an athlete is counting on that

uh as part of their nutrition strategy it can be dangerous i i can one up that story so in 2010 when i did uh when i did western states i was going to use goo products um throughout the entirety of the race and goo was a sponsor of western states and so i wanted to kind of match it up i went out to the memorial day training camp like a lot of athletes uh uh do and that's a fantastic training camp they set up all the aid stations just pretty similar to how they would be during uh during the race and you can really get a feel for what the like what the whole thing is like so it's a it's a perfect setup so i went there very specifically with the intention of i'm going to do this course recon and i'm going to practice my nutrition exactly how i'm going to do it during the race of which i was doing the exact same nutrition program in training so it's taking all of the same products i thought it was the most brilliant setup and so the first day it was a high snow year so we ran from rob from robinson flat to forest hill or just before robinson flat to to forest hill and i started noticing along the way that uh it was called goo brew at the time was their drink and since then they've changed the the name and the formulation slightly but the goo brew that they had at each one of the aid stations just tasted light just like your experience adam so i went through the whole camp and i'm like what is like what is the matter with this and so i reached out to the race director and i said hey why why did

the goo brew taste so light and they reached out to the volunteer coordinator and said oh well we mix we mix this at half strength at all of the aid stations and i asked them why like why why do you actually do that and they said well it's in our manual so in the volunteer manual at that time there was some piece of instruction to mix whatever electrolyte beverage that they were using and in this case it was goo brew to half strength and so i called i called brian vaughn the ceo of goo because he's one of our partners at the time i called him up and said hey you guys are the nutrition sponsor of this race you have to know that this is happening and he was mortified he wasn't so much mad because he could understand how you know he didn't give them those instructions and you know they were just giving them the product and things like that but he was more mortified that the product that they had spent so much time developing had been adulterated in this fashion yeah it's crazy sounds like a breakdown in communication yeah yeah so anyway okay so i got one i get to chime in here too by the way is it about pizza no i could come up with one about pizza but no so this is one it's kind of like stephanie's where it's just one that i've seen a lot it's not one that i have in fact i was thinking about i was thinking about this yesterday i i have never used this nutrition strategy save for one time in my whole coaching career which is which is a lot of

athletes and that is the concept of having a race weight and we hear this all the time from both athletes and coaches you need to get down to your race weight and the reason i think it's such a big error is because everybody is guessing they really don't know what their ideal race weight is and the concept of having an ideal race weight is reserved for the very tip of the spear of athletes the very very very very very very best the people who make the olympic finals and even then there are a lot of caveats that you have to have in employing a strategy of having a specific race weight and so when i have athletes ask about this and they ask about it they ask about it a lot because it is so it is such a common concept all i tell them is like listen eat healthy foods and let the work take care of the rest that's going to get you as good as you're going to get if we need to focus on reducing your body weight at some point in time we'll talk about it but just do the work and eat healthy and let it kind of take care of itself yeah that's uh great advice and i get this question a lot too and i think you know if you're if you're looking at like an elite athlete running a track race potentially you know that's

going to make that's going to be a factor but in an ultra weight within like plus or minus i don't know 10 it's really not going to make or break your race it drives me crazy when people want to focus on a number because that's such a an arbitrary marker for success and performance and if you're going to work on body composition i i like to tell i use the word body composition rather than weight with athletes that's something you want to do ahead of your your race season and then you know coop as you said you focus on fueling right training right and it usually does take care of itself by race day well and a lot of athletes have this concept in their head and i actually think a lot of coaches have this concept in their head as well not us but a lot of other coaches have this concept in their head as well that somehow that like a three percent uh reduction in body weight is going to lead to a three percent improvement in performance or a five percent uh reduction in body weight is going to lead to a five percent improvement in performance because that that makes sense right you're fighting less you you know, you're fighting gravity less with that body weight and blah, blah, blah. But what people don't realize and what a lot of coaches don't realize is that there's always a cost to inducing that negative energy balance. And that cost primarily comes through in the quality of the workout suffering and the risk for injury increasing.

Yeah. I think, I mean, uh, along those points, you know, I think Steph nailed it in an ultra year, um, in an ultra, your body weight fluctuates, you know, anywhere from three to 13 pounds, right? Or 18 pounds. Well, I started the race at like one 60. Um, so yeah, I must've been up above one 70. Um, but yeah, like if you're so focused in training on losing that last two pounds and then you, you know, either over hydrate or under hydrate and, and, you know, fluctuate five pounds over the course of the race, it kind of negates all that stress and, uh, potential negative energy balance and some of the workout quality issues that, that Coop mentioned. Um, but when it comes to, to actual body weights and race weights and body composition, you know, that's an area of myself as a coach, like I know enough to know that I don't know enough. Um, and that's where it's important to reach out to an expert and someone who, uh, who has, you know, the, the very specialized knowledge in that area. So like when I'm working with an athlete, you know, if it's someone, you know, we just want to lose a couple of pounds over the course of our, our base building phase, I think I can assist with that. My general philosophy being similar to Coop's, you know, do the work and, you know, try to avoid those, you know, that second donut every morning and the, the bowl of ice cream at night. Um, but you know, anything beyond that sort of out of the scope of my, my expertise.

Yeah. I definitely take a low hanging fruit, pardon the pun, a low hanging fruit type of approach with that, where it's like, you just look at the athlete and it's really not a weight reduction thing. Really. All you're trying to do is improve the quality of the diet first and foremost. And then that in turn might have a side effect for actually losing weight. So you're talking about, okay, let's go from, this would be my scenario. You go from four scoops of ice cream to two scoops of ice cream, because I don't have the self-discipline to go down to zero scoops of ice cream, or you just take out beer or alcohol a few days a week or a couple of days a week. I mean, it's those, I think those types of things for most people end up being effective nutrition strategies first, because they're replacing those calories, those low, those, those low quality calories with higher quality calories. And as a complete, almost unintended by-product of that and doing the work, some of the body weight comes off. Yeah. I like, I like that exact, uh, sentiment where weight loss is a, a by-product or a side effect of, uh, improving your diet, you know, cutting out some, some vices perhaps, and, and above all else doing the work.

And I actually like reducing the vices because putting my nutrition hat on here, I think, you know, food, I've talked about this before, food should be enjoyable and it should be something that you feel like is stressful and really strict. So yeah, just reducing your amount of dessert every night or, you know, not having alcohol a couple of nights a week, that's going to make a difference in one body composition, but then two, how you feel just in general. Yeah. And taking it, go ahead. I don't know. Well, what I was going to say is, is one of the kind of, kind of one of the contentions that I have with a lot of the diets that are out there that either restrict or focus on one particular aspect of their diet too much, like a macronutrient composition is kind of the, the, the, the key violator of this right now is that just to your point, Steph, it's too much of a focus on one thing that probably doesn't matter that much at the expense of all the stress that it creates focusing on that one thing and the complication that surrounds it of getting that one thing exactly right, which probably doesn't matter. Yeah. I, I think, um, the counsel I would give to coaches who are working with athletes when this question comes up is to just kind of deflect the question, um, and say, you know, one thing that will actually make a bigger difference is focusing on your sleep. You know, like if we're talking about performance improvements, um, that

can make such a bigger difference in the whole scheme of, of training, adaptation, performance, than trying to like look at the little things in your nutrition. Yeah. So sleep more and buy all these recovery contraptions and the puffy pants and the protein patterns and things like that, like sleep more first. And then all of these other interventions can, they can play a part if you're getting the right amount and the right quality of sleep. First and foremost, I think that's really sage advice. Nailed it. Nailed it. Yeah. Um, Stephanie, you have another one. You have another one. I can tell you're like, you're like just about to jump over, over the screen right now. I know. Well, I have, I have several written down here, but I have one that I think pertains to, to many runners as well. So I'm going to, um, go back to Western States as well. It just seems this is one that brings out the best in all of us for some reason. Um, 2014 Western States, my first hundred miler. How'd you do in that race? It went all right. It ended up well. Um, So humble. It was my, my best, my best, uh, finish there. Um, it's funny not to, not to derail your train of thought, but Western States was my first hundred. I made tons of mistakes and it's still my fastest one by far. That's hilarious. It's my PR and I don't know if I'll ever break it.

Well, it's because you want to do like hard rock and all this other mountain stuff. I like dumb mountain stuff. Okay. Sorry, Steph. No, it's good. Um, so very, you know, new to the a hundred mile distance. Didn't really know much about it besides, you know, the experiences that I had seen with pacing and crewing people. So I did what many runners do, which is also not a great idea is crowdsource. Like, Hey, what should I be doing for my nutrition? And, um, I made two big mistakes here. So that was one of them just asking everyone. And the problem is, you know, if I would have asked two people, great, but I had so much information. I had like all of these things like do this and do this and they contradicted each other. And it just made this complicated, like mind storm. So I had that going on. And then I also race week was still crowdsourcing and, uh, decided that I was going to make this, um, concoction of nutrition that, um, I had not tried before ever in a race scenario. So this is, I just want to paint this picture of what this looked like. Um, I was mixing these little bottles pre-race, I think the day before and Brian Powell actually saw me and he's like, Stephanie, what are you doing? I was like, I'm making my nutrition. Um, what I had was CarboPro powder in maybe these like little eight to 10 ounce bottles. And then on top of that, I mean,

I put water in there on top of that, I would put like two to three gels, um, of different flavors to like mix it up. It gets better. I'm picturing like tiwi, strawberry and cola gels together. Yeah. Yeah. Little bit of coconut water because people had said that's great. And then this is the icing on the cake. I opened up S caps and dumped them in there. Oh, that sounds so gross. Um, well, it was, and I think I'm going to give myself some kudos for this because I started the race, whatever, like just worked my way in. I took a little bit of that and I was like, this is disgusting. Like I cannot get this down. So I just, I just ditched it. I made a, um, like moment of swap in my nutrition and just use what they had at the aid stations. And turns out I, I finished the race pretty well, but, um, had I just continued to take this disgusting concoction of like salty coconut watery, I don't even know what it was. It was sludge mix. Um, I probably wouldn't have made it too far.

So go ahead, Adam. So, so here's an interesting, just thought just from kind of your experience and my experience, do people still make their own gels? Like people, people used to, you know, just buy maltodextrin and make their own gels. Um, and in my experience, anytime I've tried to take a commercially available product and modify it, it has not gone well. Um, it's a bad idea. And if you look at, you know, goo being a great example, they put a lot of research and a lot of thought into their formulations, into what goes into their products. So if you're just kind of modifying it on your own, unless you are a super duper nutrition expert, uh, above and beyond what's, uh, what's employed by goo, um, you, you may be doing a disservice to yourself. I agree. Um, I think there is, there are companies, I know at least one company that does, um, like you can order your own, basically make your own concoctions. And when I have athletes that do this, I try to steer them away because I do know personally that cliff bar goo and scratch does great research that goes into their products. And like, you know, when, when you have all the science and it's like creating this product, that's made for what you're doing. It's like, why would you try to make your own concoction? Yeah. I, I have athletes ask me the same thing. And they, the company that they want to use is a company called infinite who I have some, I have some experience with, yeah, really big in the triathlon world. And I, they actually have a pretty slick way to do it where you can, if you know the amount, if, if you have a little bit of education and you want to put

a certain amount of calories, sodium, and even the flavoring there, they've got this little slider system where you can just kind of adjust the amounts of each. And then it shows you what you're going to kind of, what you're going to get in a bottle. But I agree with Stephanie's take on this is that the professionals are always going to do it better than the consumer. Like you might think you know more than the experts, but you, but, but, but you really don't. But in some ways, and I'll give my little anecdote to this. I remember getting some of the very first batches of what at the time was called secret drink mix from Stacy and Alan, when they were just making it, you know, in the, in one of the garages here around marked foil packets and unmarked foil packages with the red X on it and things like that. But those are two highly qualified, highly educated people that specialize in that area that were, that were trying to concoct a, a solution that was very specific to an, like they had the education to actually, to actually be able to do it. So I would trust them and be like, okay, yeah, I can use this. I actually use that at a bad water when you're in bad water.

Yeah. I mean, I think a company like infinite, um, I don't see a problem with that because you're still, you know, you're looking for a certain number of calories, certain, uh, amount of sodium or whatever. My, my issue is more with, you're taking a product that is already supposedly optimized and then you're just modifying it, your kitchen table. Um, so infinite's fine. The crowdsourcing comes in. Don't listen to the other people. Well, but in a lot of ways, a lot of ways, like the history of ultra running and how we disseminated information is rooted in that crowdsourcing and that endless game of telephone that would happen from athlete to athlete to athlete, all the way down the different iterations of the race. And that's why we ended up using insure for so long, for so long, which is so gross and a horrible product to use in a sports nutrition perspective.

Well, now that's actually what I was just going to bring up and to get like, put that in context. I had two separate nutrition consults this week where insure came up. People are still using that because 20 years ago, you know, that's what Tim Tweedmere used or, you know, it just is like been the game of telephone. Like, yeah, that's what you take at the top of devil's thumb. When, when Dean, when Dean ran across the country, I was with him during that project. He would, he would make this, he would request this concoction of insure. Actually, it wasn't insure. It was muscle, muscle milk, which is basically the same thing. Muscle milk, monster energy drink and emergency. Oh, did he mix those together?

And we would all mix, we'd mix it all together in a bottle and give it to him and he just plug away at it. But this is how gross it was. It was totally disgusting. He could only like keep it on him for maybe like 20 or 30 minutes because it would curdle. It would actually curdle and have these like little white beads floating around in the mixture. And when we, when we dump it out or every once in a while, we'd be brave enough to like take the unused portion and like put it in a cup that we had in the car or whatever and sip on it. There were actual like physical little, you know, beads, almost like a chia seed or whatever that, that like collagulated with whatever alchemy happens when you, when you mix those three things, it was, it was totally, totally disgusting. You could just add some CBD oil in there and it'd be, don't get me started on that.

Then it would be the millennial drink. Oh, it's this. So 2019 in Western States, after we finished recording this podcast, I'm actually going to go record with, uh, uh, uh, John, uh, Zeigler, who is a cannabis and a CBD expert right down the way. And one of the stories I'm going to bring up, uh, with her to start to kind of paint the picture of how CBD is kind of like completely infiltrated. The ultramarathon world was going back to Western States again. Why does this always happen in Western States? And are people going to think that we only talk about Western States? I don't know. It's really weird. This is coming up in this, but anyway, later. Okay. So at Western States this year, I'm sitting out at Robinson flat and everybody has a CD CBD product. They're rubbing it on their knees and their calves and their feet.

I saw somebody took a bomb out and start spreading it on their feet. Like it was going to like reduce the friction or reduce blisters in between their toes or something like that. They're taking the tinctures and the gel capsules and the spread. I saw every single type of delivery mechanism that I knew about. And then even some that I had no idea even existed across all of these different products, both commercially available products and things that they would like mix up in the vat in their kitchen or something like that. All at Robinson flat within a two or three hour time window. It was, it was incredible. It's a new thing. Okay. Steph, you get the last one here. Well, So this is again, another personal story. Um, and, and it kind of goes against my advice of don't do anything new race day. This actually is, is a story that ends well, but, um, UTMB, obviously a race in Europe has very different food options at the aid stations. And, um, so, I mean, I, I've started this race three times, um, and it's gone not particularly great for me, but, um, one thing that I remember from my first run of UTMB was that there was bolognese sauce at, um, one of the, the aid stations, I think Champagne Locke. And at that point, um, I was having some stomach issues, you know, just like a long day. And I came

in and for some reason, the bolognese sauce just sounded appealing. And I ate that. And it was like the best decision I'd ever made. So like bolognese with, with ground meats and sausage and they were serving it over pasta, but I just didn't want the pasta. So I said, hold, hold the noodles. Did you eat that with a spoon or just like drink it out of the cup? I ate it with a spoon, but the story gets better because I had remembered that and how it like brought me back to life that year. And so the following year I'm running and the same thing happens. I just come into this, this aid station and I kind of feel a little crummy, go for the bolognese sauce and it perks me up again. And I know that it's not available at the next couple aid stations. So I tell my crew at that time, Hey, can you take some extra to like feed me later on?

And just so happens that my crew, um, is Claire Gallagher, who this girl, I just got to give a little like shout out to her. Claire wins CCC that year, like doesn't celebrate her race, gets in a car, comes and cruise my ass. Who's like dragging myself around the mountain, um, misses her award ceremony. And not only that, but she's like, you know, sleep deprived and I'm having her carry this bowl of bolognese sauce from isn't, isn't Claire a vegetarian too? Well, she, she is. Yeah, she is. I don't know. That was like probably the least of her complaints. There's like a picture of her sitting in the back of a car, holding this bowl with two hands, falling asleep. Um, but, uh, I, I ended up finishing and whatever. Thanks. Thanks to her.

But that's a good example of like something so outside of anything you would ever expect to fuel with, but it actually turned out okay. I thought you were going to say that you filled your bottles with bolognese. You know, if I would have thought of it at the time, I probably would have. That sounds like a terrible idea. What I want to know is, is like, we're supposed to be better than that. Like Adam, you're highly educated. You had a master's degree at the time. Steph, you're highly educated, PhD in nutrition, PhD in exercise science. And you, and you practice nutrition. Why are we not better than that? It's hard to give yourself advice. I think more than that, it's hard to take your own advice. I think, I think that there's something to that because let's change the scenario a little bit.

And I'm going to put my coach mentor hat on for this last little part. If you were to, if you were were ever to have given that advice to one of your athletes, try the bolognese sauce, try the bolognese sauce. And I would, and I would hear about it. I might fire you. Like, I might just say you're done. Like you were not qualified to be a coach, right? We're ending this right here, right now. I'm running TDS and I'm just going to eat the bolognese sauce. Yeah. I'll tell you where the stupid stash is. Oh my God. That's so terrible. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the things I've done, I would never recommend to an athlete. And I mean, in some ways it's, you know, I've tried so many things and had things go wrong that it's, it's just good to know. Like I can give that not advice, but just anecdotal, like, okay, so I've done that.

Yeah. I think that's crucial as a coach to have that experience to say like, yeah, you know, I've tried that. I had a runner who would only feel with beef jerky and almonds, like during, during ultras and like, well, like that doesn't have any carbohydrate. It has, doesn't have any point, but I had, I tried it just to see. You know, it's important that we try things and make mistakes, even if they're somewhat counterintuitive or counter to, to common, common knowledge. But you're not getting off that easy. You're not trying to make that mistake at Western States and Stephanie, you're not trying to make that, that mistake at CCC. No, no, but we're looking for the, the, the, the edge. That's a weird way to find an edge. All right. We're, we're going to wrap it up here, but suffice to say, don't do any of that stuff that are, there are better solutions out there.

We've made those mistakes, but there's one more we got to talk about. What's the one more beer? Okay. Beer during a race. This is your story. Well, a guy, I don't have any personal experience with it, but I know there are some runners out there, um, who claim that, you know, beer in the late stages of a race is a, uh, a stomach settling fuel source. Stephanie, what do you have to say about that? I've never tried it. Um, to me, the thought of that is awful. Um, I wanted to try it at Wasatch. It sounded like a good idea until I got to mile 80 and it came down to like, my stomach was okay. So I didn't want to mess with it. Um, I was taking it more as like, well, if my stomach's crap, I might as well have a beer and enjoy the last 20 miles. I would be afraid that like, I just get drunk. Like I'm kind of a lightweight and I don't drink a lot. I'd be afraid that like, if I took it, like even as something as silly as like a 12 ounces of Coors Light or something like that. Like I, you drink good beer.

Yeah. But see that, that would have a higher alcohol content. So even with like propagate this, this problem, and you don't want to have that on trail. I'll just say anecdotally, like I, I agree. I don't think it's going to be beneficial. And the only experience I have with this is like, I live in cold climates. And so sometimes after going out, um, on a Friday night, I'll run home, um, to beat the cold. And when you're running after having a beer or two, you sometimes can feel great. Like, Oh my gosh, I'm running so fast. But honestly, like you're, I, I have found like, it's just false. Um, I guess encouragement. Like I think after drinking a beer, it's like, you feel great and you're running. And then it's like, Oh, I was actually running like 10 minute pace.

Adam, when you did hard rock, did you take any of the tequila at Virginia's pass? I, I, I wet my lips with just a, cause rock rock Horton, who's the aid station captain there. He has this like little thimble basically, which can't, it can't be more than one and a half milliliters. Yeah. No, I I'm not, I'm not a tequila guy, uh, to begin with, but I had to, because it's, it's tradition. I had, well, I had both of the times that I finished hard rock. I had every intention of doing that. And I, this was in the counterclockwise direction. So Virginia's is earlier. So I'm like, okay, if I'm ever going to do this, I'm going to do it here. Cause on the other direction, it's actually, I mean, it's like for me would be midnight or one or two in the morning or something like that. And I had every intention of just partaking in the tradition. And, you know, I grew up in Texas and I drank a lot of tequila growing up in Texas as a knucklehead, 20 year old. And when I got there, the smell of it was just, even, even it was just the tiniest whiff at, you know, 13,000, whatever feet was just so incredibly foul that I lost all gumption that I, that I had to take, to take this little small, you know, one ounce of 90, what can't even be an ounce. It's like a lick of tequila.

I just had no desire to do any of it when I got there and I completely wussed out two times in a row. When I think it comes back to what is that going to do besides just the fact that you have the bragging rights of I took tequila. Killian did it and he won and he won. Set a course record. It must be causal. This is a good rap. Like that must be the reason you won. Okay. So now the new thing we're moving on from CBD, everyone's going to be taking tequila shots or CBD laced tequila. That's gotta be a thing. And if it's not, it will be now. All right. We're going to end it there before it evolves into more nonsense and people actually start taking us seriously. Seriously. If you're listening out there, none of these are, none of these are meant to be taken as actual advice that you should take. You should learn from our mistakes, right? Adam.

That's a big part of coaching, right? Steph. All right. Thanks for listening. You guys learn from our mistakes. Peace. That should be our new CTS coaching slogan. Learn from our mistakes. All right. Trail runners. What'd you think? That was really fun. I always have a fun time talking to those two. We have a good time. Sometimes it's too silly. That wasn't too silly though. Hopefully you guys, you guys heard a lot of things that we think that you should avoid in the nutrition space. I know everybody is starting to ramp their training up. Maybe some early season races out on the calendar. Black Canyon's coming around the corner. I'm doing Zane Gray. I got to get my act together for that. But these are honest, quite honestly, we've seen these time. We've seen these same mistakes time and time and time again. You don't need to make them learn from our mistakes, learn from the mistakes that we see out in the field. You will be a whole lot better off and really reduce the learning curve that you have in this silly sport. If you just listen to the pros and what they've done right and what they've done wrong and what we've seen gone wrong. So I hope you guys take all that to heart. It was a super fun podcast to record. Expect more of these kind of coming down the line. If you have a suggestion for any of these, you can hit me up on social media. Twitter is at Jason Koop. Same thing on Instagram. Or if you happen to have my email, go send me an email. But who does that anymore? I always take suggestions from the social media crowd,

from the audience and insert them into episodes of this podcast, kind of where they see fit. A lot of the content that you guys have seen already come out is really direct from you, the listeners. Thanks to Stephanie. Thanks to Adam for being honest with the mistakes they've made or that they've seen. It's not always easy to do that. I've heard Adam tell that Western State story a lot at our camps, and we make fun of them every single time. And hey, if a coach like Adam or a coach like Stephanie is the right one for you, you want to kick your training up a notch. You want to see if you can realize your goals this ultra running season, maybe just a little bit clearer. Or you just want some accountability. Somebody to kick you in the butt when you're slacking off or somebody that you have to, you know, kind of report into every day. We have a coach for you. Our staff is, they're just absolutely floored. I talk about this a lot. Every single day when we get together as a group, I just, I'm just kind of beside myself. And I'm really, I think it's really, really fortunate that we were able to bring on somebody as high quality as Stephanie just recently. I just got done training and her and another one of our new coaches, Sarah Socorros, who will be on a future edition of the KoopCast. And every time I go, go through a training process with any of our new coaches, they just get better and better and better and better. And Sarah and Steph were just the absolute epitome of that. So if you think coaching is in your future, you can sign up right now at

trainright.com and use the promo code KoopCast. That's in all caps. And we will wave. That's what I meant to say. We will waive your registration fee. That's my gift to you for listening to the entirety of this outro. I really do hope you take advantage of it. I love seeing athletes at races. I'm going to be out at Black Canyon pretty soon supporting athletes at a, at that race. And if you're a CTS athlete, I'd love to meet you. The van will be in service. Yeah, that's right. The new KoopCast mobile will be in service at that race. So come say hi. But like I said, if coaches is in your future, check out our website trainright.com or just hit me up on social media. I'll be glad to answer any questions that you have. Thank you guys for listening. Once again, appreciate the heck out of everybody.

And we will see you guys out on the trails.