Nutrition R&D with Roxanne Vogel from Gu⎮KoopCast Episode 2

what's going on trail runners welcome to another edition of the KoopCast lined up today i was on a recent trip out to the north face endurance challenge series championship out in san francisco and i thought i would take the time to head out to berkeley california to the headquarters of goo energy labs and speak with roxanne vogel who is a nutrition and performance research manager at goo energy labs so she's responsible for basically the pipeline of products from conception to testing to ultimately when they you know end up in your pocket or in your hydration pack and i thought that she could provide a unique perspective on where sports nutrition is going and where it's currently at and illuminate some of the things that you know may have kind of fallen out of favor over the past few years such as sodium supplementation we've seen that go gone from being in vogue where it was on the you know where it was on aid station tables uh ad nauseum to where now it's it's almost kind of demonized and uh it's been interesting to see that uh the progression of that particular aspect and so what i thought i'd do is i sit down and just have a real frank discussion with her about where she sees the space uh what types of products that they might have in the pipeline and also

what she's got going on if you guys don't know roxanne she is a legitimate badass she's done six out of the seven summits and very soon she'll be on her way to the seventh one out in antarctica so we wish her a lot of luck uh for uh in that particular expedition so she definitely puts her actions where her mouth is i mean she literally puts it where where her mouth is meaning she designs a lot of the products that she's going to take on these extremely arduous expedition and there's no better proof in the pudding than that where you can design something and then quite literally put it into practice in some of the most extreme environments on planet earth so i found the conversation fascinating we did take a kind of a look at some of the more controversial aspects of sports nutrition and you guys will have to definitely tune in for that in an effort of full disclosure i have nothing to disclose with goo they don't give me any products they don't sponsor me i don't get a dime from them for doing anything i just really appreciate what they do i really appreciate the science that they put into sports nutrition and i also appreciate the flavoring that they uh that they put into their sports nutrition products i think that of all the companies out there they they get that aspect the best so no sort of financial entanglement from my end like i said i just like what they do and we do talk about some of the products that i that i that i really like and also some of their products that you know i might have some sort of disagreement with so without further ado go ahead tune in

perk your ears up for a conversation with roxanne vogel from goo first off before we get into anything specific tell me about everest yeah so that was a whirlwind uh it was kind of a you know i thought maybe there is a 10 to 30 chance that i would succeed at that and um it was just this crazy idea and i was like well if anyone can do it and has the resources available like we have our chamber here where i could spend a good part of my day in simulated altitude i was like well if anyone can do it it's probably me like i've got these resources here i've got support at goo and um yeah it just ended up working out i think a lot of it was preparation obviously but we also got lucky with the weather and um like the lines to the top which have to be fixed in advance to keep you on the mountain weren't actually put in place until i was following the sherpa who were fixing the lines on the way up so it was like you know if they don't make it and have to turn around then you know you have to turn around yes likelihood of falling off the mountain is greatly increased without being on fixed lines uh but yeah it was uh it was it was wild and uh it was kind of a one of those things where it's like i'll probably have never never have an experience like that ever again but you went during a year where it was really notorious for having a lot of traffic i mean the the images that came out of everest you know this past year when you when you went up were some of the more horrific ones that that

we've seen and you even got lucky within one of the worst years it seems like yeah and i think a large part of that is i went from the north side from tibet um and so i totally didn't have that experience whatsoever in fact my guide lydia brady and i were the only ones climbing the only climbing party that day that we summited on the 22nd of may which is the same day that that picture was taken on the other side we got to the top around noon and everybody had come and gone at that point because we actually summited pretty late in the day and so i never saw a single other climber that day was that kind of surreal to see the pictures after the fact and go holy shit that was going on on the other side of the mountain and you had like no idea yeah i at first i didn't believe i was just like what where did these come from like this is not the same day i summited because i would have seen them but you know then i realized that's great i guess i didn't realize the timing of when you guys got up to the top versus the timing of when that picture when those like now infamous right pictures were taken and so you were totally oblivious about that until when um a few days after uh i had summited and i got back down to where we had wi-fi reception so down in um tibet when i was like getting ready to fly home um you know i was starting to hear kind of news reports about things on the other side because i had friends climbing on the other side as well and you know sadly one of them got sick and had to be evacuated but yeah like i was checking on him and then that's when i heard about the lineup and all those things that were going i was like i can't even can't even believe it

wow so do you want to go back i actually do i do want to climb the other side nice yeah there's something so wait you went up you went up the non-traffic side and after seeing all the traffic and all the stories that came out from it and knowing that the risk is for even for you right because you're you're an experienced mountaineer even for you is going to be greater on the other side just because you're at the whim of all the inexperienced people out there you still want to go back well so here's the thing um i know a group attempted this fall to climb for the first time in about a decade normally it's climbed in may right so it's climbed in the spring um but some people attempted this fall and i think that would be a great time to go because there's nobody out there um conditions this year were just not there for the attempt to be successful for them unfortunately but i think if i wanted to go back and climb on the south i would try to probably go in the fall so wow kudos for you that's really cool that's i mean that's an experience that not a lot of people have right and it takes a lot of it's i'm not i'm preaching the choir here it takes a lot of time and energy and training to get it done right and it's i think it's cool that you recognize the fact that you only had at most a 30 chance of success yeah it's really scary when you think of all the effort and time and energy not only myself but like everybody around me had to kind of put into it and then you're like well this really probably is unlikely to succeed but we'll try what goo products were you using on the mountain so we had um the good fortune of developing some specific products for this but

like based off of our current form factors so i took a version of um roctane gel that was specifically made for this trip a version of a roctane drink mix that was made for the trip um and then i took some everest bars we called them which were just basically like a super calorie dense kind of high fat but it had essential amino acids added into it to protect muscle breakdown but not you know draw on the system for having to break down protein at the same time um so we took some of those everest bars uh those are amazing they were just like this really decadent chocolate macadamia rich and i would eat them while i was moving and just kind of like munch on them throughout the day um so that and then the roctane recovery i actually so roctane protein recovery was being launched when i was out there and i discovered so many ways to enjoy it including in hot water which was just fantastic the uh the vanilla in hot water is just oh so good that's cool yeah are you at liberty to say why it's a version of roctane yeah so i you know through my research and that's kind of what i do here is as part of the research and development uh team i look into whatever's kind of on the horizon as far as sports nutrition supplements and ingredients that could improve performance and specifically i was looking for things that could help with altitude so um you know a couple of ingredients that i found so like ketone salts for instance um they're showing some good research to say that not only are they uh anti-catabolic um but they're also they've got a strong antioxidant

component to them which you're creating a lot of um oxidative stress when you're up there and you know you're not having enough oxygen but your your mitochondria are working overtime so a lot of oxidative stress at altitude so for that reason and then also for cognitive function so ketones can fuel the brain um so for all those reasons i was interested in that specifically and are those products that you think are going to make it to market are they going to like remain in the goo lab for special use cases um you know i would never say never so it's right now there's no plans to commercialize them but it's something that we've tested and you know i did collect data when i was on the mountain um to see like what the effects are so there's definitely it'll be kind of in the vault in case we ever want to do something with it well and that's what happens a lot with sports nutrition right you have a single use case or maybe a small you know handful of use cases and you're developing a product for that small handful of use cases and you see how it works and if it works well then maybe you have something to grasp onto that ultimately becomes a product if it doesn't work well then you just kind of go back to the drawing board i mean that's that's not a uh you know that's not a uncommon story to hear in the sports nutrition world well in a lot of industries it's like you know there's so many ideas and so many prototypes but what like 10 percent of things actually go to launch so yeah i want to talk to you a little bit more about your r&d product your r&d process as a whole and i have the experience of

this from you know way back in the day when you guys were first developing the rock tame drink mix which at the time was unique because it was high calorie it was specifically made for ultra endurance athletes you know like myself so it's kind of like right up you know right up my alley for something to uh to use in in a race and in training situations why don't you just run me through how just how that whole how your how your end of the goo world is set up and how you take a product from idea to getting it out in the field and testing with athletes and then ultimately either shelving it or getting it into like a commercial application application yeah it's um you know it's really fun and it's kind of a long process and most people don't realize that uh you know the whole idea behind a product before it actually comes out might start two or three years in advance of you know it hitting the shelves um so initially what usually happens is there's some sort of impetus like there's some new research article on a particular ingredient or the other impetus can be an athlete need case right so there's a couple of things that we always strive to fulfill in creating a new product it has to be driven by athlete needs it has to be grounded in sound science and so we do the background research i specifically do a lot of reading of scholarly articles and uh reading journals all the time things like that and then the last consideration is it has to be portable because obviously that's what we do we specialize in making products that

people can take with them for you know their athletic needs so those three things are kind of the conditions that we start with um when creating a new product and so whatever that need is or whatever that ingredient is we'll find a way to incorporate it either into an existing form factor like the gel or a drink mix or you know a capsule um and from there we'll do some bench top work which when i say bench top it means we have this little test kitchen in the back of our building where um our flavor scientists our our food scientists essentially can do small batches of test product uh pilot samples and things like that and put it into generic packaging and then we'll test it in-house first to make sure you know it tastes okay enough to give to athletes and then the next round is usually giving it to some of our sponsored athletes and kind of close family circle of athletes that we deal with on a daily basis here and giving it to them to kind of take into the field and test and then provide us feedback so you keep it pretty tight in case you really screw the flavoring up well i mean everything you know when it comes out at first it may not be the best tasting thing but we're like well we're gonna like improve it from here no doubt so but yeah we keep it to a small circle of people we trust and uh we'll send it into the field with them get feedback optimize it some and we'll go through rounds of this right so this is kind of just like an ongoing we'll tweak things um multiple times and then we might do a pilot run

which is like we'll send it for a bigger scale of production so maybe like a thousand units of whatever it is like a thousand gel packets or something and then that will go out to kind of a bigger group um we do have a group uh we're calling the super tasters right now which is kind of our extended network so it's not just our sponsored athletes but it includes like ambassadors we call our salty squad um we'll send new products to them and then get their feedback so an even bigger group so it kind of it's like this if you think of r&d as like the bullseye in the in the um the target you know then we kind of ripple out from there so like next circle out and the next circle before it ever goes to market um so sometimes you know we get feedback and it's like well that's not so great or like it's okay it could use some work um and then you know either we'll refine it to the point where we're ready for production we have enough good feedback we feel really good about the product um and even then there's always points along the way where somebody can say nope we're not going to launch it right so uh it really just kind of depends but either it'll go to production from the the testing after the pilot run or it will get the brakes put on it and maybe held up for later and so for for example with the roctane drink mix and i can remember this because i got some of the first batches of it to to to taste test which were not very good and i think you guys would admit that you improved them a lot yeah what was the time frame for that development process from the initial formulation to testing it to ultimately when it shows up in a running store or bike shop yeah well

with the roctane products in particular they were created for um ultra running specifically which was great and um the naming of it had to do with you know the hard rock 100 endurance race in colorado and so that particular product took a really long time an inordinately long time so longer than most products but i would say for the roctane gel for it to go through that whole testing process and then hit the market was nine years nine years i see i didn't realize that history yeah so it was it was around and people were using it for a long time but it was like athletes kind of related to goo and like a small group and then yeah it just took a long time but people knew it was great the drink mix seemed like it was maybe two or three years yeah that was yeah that was a little bit faster because yeah okay well good job on getting flavoring right because the first one fruit punch wasn't doing it for anybody super bitter but you guys did a good job fleshing it out and that's part of r&d right yeah you learn yeah and you improve for sure so you mentioned something earlier like you follow the um you follow the research trends pretty closely and that's something that i do as well as you're very well aware of nutrition is becoming more and more polarized it seems every few years um from when the research comes out to how it's presented into the public and i wanted to get your perspective on this fine balance that you have to have as a practitioner meaning as a practitioner that's maybe not necessarily doing the research itself but taking the research and applying it to athletes there's this very fine

bout there's this very fine balance between chasing that research down every time something comes out and saying oh this is the you know latest greatest thing that just came out versus letting it simmer and marinate a little bit in the space for a while having other research papers come up and then other ones that are contradictory to you know the first paper that came out i wanted to get your perspective on how you like just what your thoughts are on that when you're thinking about products for goo and also how you think about it as an athlete yeah and it's very timely you know like there are constantly things coming out this new ingredient or that new ingredient or you know method of nutrition periodization or what have you and you know it's always going to be the next like silver bullet right but um as you mentioned like there are going to be more studies and until you can see like a good body of evidence that supports whatever it is that you're considering it's really kind of risky to just go blindly and follow these trends um so you know from my perspective yeah i i watch and see what's what's new and what's next uh but you do want to see not only just like a decent amount of studies but quality studies right so like controlled maybe clinical if you can but like at least placebo controlled uh good sample size like you know quality research and so that's always it's and it's frustrating sometimes when um you know media catches on to a certain headline and they're like oh this

study says this and it's like yeah but that study was in like five people and uh you know they had this condition and it wasn't like athletes and so it's not something that you just apply blindly to an athletic population you know so i want to bring up two that have kind of come up recently that we can bat back and forth and you can pick which one you want to talk about first and maybe we'll take the rest of the time and we'll talk about that and we won't get to the second one but the two the two that are like in vogue right now or at least the most in vogue right now in the endurance space are hydrogels and ketone esters and we're start we we've seen commercial products you know utilize this technology and both of those and i i think you'd probably agree but please tell me if you don't agree i would say that both of those haven't been completely flushed out in the research in terms of their efficacy they're kind of at the very early stages of that and we really don't know what's going to happen two three four five years down the line yet there are companies and products out there that are already starting to be developed and trying to take a first mover position type of approach so let's pick one of those for or if you want to give a general statement on that i mean i've been looking i've been following the science on both of them very closely sure um and i have i've tried both personally um i actually did take ketone esters up everest so i don't know if that tells you anything about how i feel about them but uh yeah so in the research with ketone esters specifically it's so hard to dive through because

there are different forms of ketone esters right so there's ketone mono esters and there's ketone diesters and they actually work slightly differently and have different effects in the body and so you know research gets lumped together as ketone ester and research but it could be a different type and you know that maybe isn't the same thing that you're getting with the ketone mono ester for instance and the use cases are completely different too right so yeah so that science i feel like there's a getting to be it's been you know five or more years now in the making so that research is starting to get flushed out pretty well and it's ongoing and um i feel pretty good about where that research is at so far enough to feel comfortable taking ketone mono esters myself and um for certain use cases recommending them um the hydrogel also been following that very closely um so you know claims that it's tolerated better in the gi system that it empties more smoothly from the stomach so that it doesn't overload the small intestine with the amount of carbohydrates that you can get in there um a couple of research studies recently coming out saying that they tested it versus a normal carbohydrate drink with a similar composition as far as blend of carbohydrate and total carbohydrate amount finding no difference in performance or um you know gi tolerability and things like that so again it's like one study that's come out basically kind of saying well this isn't any better than a standard sports drink but you know they're still testing it so we'll see i'm definitely interested

to see what other research is coming out what's goo's strategy on trying to be on the cutting edge versus letting all of that get flushed out because it is a risk as a nutrition company to develop a product where the efficacy hasn't you know hasn't really been teased out because you end up having your when that's the case you kind of have egg on your face from a reputation perspective right if you come out with something and all of a sudden it turns out that it's you know it doesn't work or in in a worst case scenario it's even dangerous and i can actually remember back to um when this recovery drink in durox was first developed right with a four to one carbohydrate to protein ratio and uh the original research was it was in part done by one of our coaches kathy wadski who was working in john ivy's lab at the university of texas at the time and so they did all this research that said you know if you have a if you have a recovery drink with a very specifically a four to one carbohydrate to protein ratio you're going to be able to resynthesize glycogen faster well it turns out you know after you know years that study was not isocaloric and we know that having a study in a recovery setting you need to have it isocaloric because the total amount of calories will drive that glycogen resynthesis but at the time we were all kind of blinded and i say we like the whole community the research community the nutrition community and the coaching community for whatever reason we couldn't see the the forest for the through the proverbial trees on that and finally when we figured it out we all looked like idiots

and so i always use i use that as like since i was a little since i was kind of close to it i always use that as a just like a case in point of there's this fine line between trying to be on the cutting edge and getting things right and a lot of times it's just guessing like having a bio plausible scenario first and then working a product into that bio plausible scenario and so i'm wondering as a like a nutrition scientist that's responsible for research and development of new products like just strategically or philosophically like how do you balance those two elements of being on the cutting edge versus having solid efficacy behind something before you get a product to market that is a fantastic question and it's really tough right so you you find something that you think is going to work and you want to test it and and get it out there before kind of you know it becomes just mainstream and everybody's doing the same thing but you also have to do your due diligence and make sure not only is it work but it's also safe and you know tolerable and you know the way people use our products is different than the way people use a lot of sports nutrition which is kind of like an acute sense right so our products are being used repeatedly over long durations of time so not only does it have to be safe for like a single administration but it has to be safe for people who are out there for you know 48 hours or more things like that so um yeah i think it's it's really tough and sometimes it is like you you put an ingredient in and it ends up like we ended up taking antioxidants out of our formula

because you know the science kind of changed and we're like no an inflammatory response to exercise is healthy and necessary and so you don't want to blunt that with antioxidant supplementation so in that case you know we learned and and that's what we do and so i think you know there is a risk we are very cautious about you know jumping on any trends too quickly or anything like that but we are obviously interested in if there's something that's going to work and going to improve in performance we want to get it out there and we want to be the ones who you know pave the way i'm so glad you brought that antioxidant piece up because that was something that i wrote down in my notes that i wanted to bring up with you and in more in this general context of you have a product out there and then you figure out that something about it just doesn't work and in this case is the antioxidants how does that conversation go from a research and development standpoint where you where you've made a mistake and that's kind of over i don't know whether that's overstating or not but you've made a mistake within the formulation somehow and you have to backtrack and say okay we're going to tweak this product in this way because something new has been elucidated in the in the research field or in the field or in the field of practice yeah and so a lot of those conversations will come from kind of my role right so if i see something or i'm learning you know there's a new body of evidence that's saying you know something we've been doing may not be the best way of doing it then i will definitely make a recommendation and create kind of a case for why we should change a formula and similar that was

kind of how new rock teen protein recovery was was revamped you know we had a previous iteration it was just a recovery drink mix yeah that was the other one i was going to bring up yeah so it was 10 grams of protein it had like non-fat dry milk in it and things like that which it was fine it worked right it had a three to one ratio um but i felt like we could be doing better and the research was saying you know look at some of these other forms of uh you know like whey protein isolate and not only just isolate but the hydrolyzed version which is even further kind of broken down and pre-digested so for people who don't tolerate dairy well or don't tolerate lactose it's even suitable right it's what they use in baby formulas so it's like this very potent and concentrated uh high quality protein source but it's really easy on the digestive system um and then the other thing was just the total amount of protein right like 10 grams was just kind of not cutting it and um i felt it was time that we needed like at least a 20 gram dose in there based on the latest kind of sports nutrition science standings yeah it's funny because as a coach i've gone through that exact same dialogue in my head when you when like having those products available because my athletes will ask me like hey what should i do for this or what should i do for that and i would look at a product that would have you know antioxidants in it and i go by like i really wish i could recommend this but i know that there's a better one out there that doesn't have these antioxidants same thing with the with the recovery uh drink

mix and lo and behold like two or three months later the formulation changes and i'm like yes they must have heard me talk to my athletes but it's good to know that you're kind of behind the scenes like looking at all that because that thing does i mean it's a it's it's a moving target yeah right as you're very well aware yeah and i you know it's how we get better in in our day-to-day but you got to continually look at ways to improve like you can't just be complacent and think that oh you know we were the innovators here who brought gels to the market um we can just sit back and relax now but things are always changing and yeah so even just looking at different amino acids within the gel that have changed over time um again we're constantly looking at the science and looking for ways to make things better yeah i really appreciate that um i want to pivot a little bit and talk more specifically about practical recommendations for athletes and in in particular in an ultramarathon setting so we we were talking earlier that ultramarathon is like the history of goo right i mean it was started at the hard rock 100 which i think is a really neat history and i also think that from a research and development standpoint it's the best playground because you have athletes challenging themselves at the top of their game they're doing things longer harder you know than they have streams yeah they're they're they are in the very extremes and also as you're very well aware gi distress is the number one issue that ultra ultra runners cite as something that affects their performance in 100 mile race and it it becomes very pertinent for you guys as a nutrition company to

try to try to solve that and so i'm gonna i'm gonna ask a real broad you know just general question so you can bring up whatever kind of bring whatever kind of comes to mind but if you had a new if you had a new athlete to ultra running they come from marathon background come from running background or whatever what are the few key pieces of advice that you would give them so that they would have a solid nutrition program come race day yeah i think uh it's a great question coming into the ultra world from say marathon or something like that you are used to you know having to run for maybe two to four hours and that's kind of so you can afford a little bit more to kind of mess up i would say during an event of that duration whereas you get into these ultra marathons which are four hours six hours or longer right into multi-day but uh if things go wrong you have a lot longer that you have to suffer and it's more likely that you'll end up dropping if you do something kind of critically wrong at the outset so my first strategy is always as you mentioned to take care of the gi distress piece or at least attempt to you know make that a non-issue one of the things i always tell athletes that i'm working with is kind of like sip and nibble if you can so take things in as if like an iv drip feeding you not try to force in a bolus of calories or fluids at any you know like one point just like a big rush of any of those so just be kind of consistent throughout your race and and small amounts over time so your

body is able to kind of assimilate those ingredients um so a chomp versus a whole pack of chomps right right like yeah you just you're gonna have a probably a vest or something to carry things with during an ultra race so like you can afford to just like have things in your pocket and take them out as you need them um and then did i just use the old name for that product yeah the original name was chomps yeah that just tells you i'm stuck in the past sometimes no it's okay but i totally like just went right with it you know what i'm talking about i'm sorry keep going so many people call it chomps um and then the other part is you know you got to be a little strategic about when you're incorporating certain nutrients so say for instance like caffeine or solid foods um you got to be a little bit strategic especially if you have a history of gi issues like if you have any sort of history of gi issues at any distance i would say like your likelihood of having some sort of gi issue during ultra is greatly increased uh so a lot of times you know maybe working on things that might be a little tougher to break down earlier in the race when blood flow is still sort of working in your favor and then later in the race just trying to keep it more simple if you have to like switching to all fluids or if if it's a race that goes overnight and there's like aid stations with soups and broths and things like that switching to something that's just going to be really easy on your gi system um and same with caffeine like you got to be a little strategic about that because sometimes caffeine can even irritate gi system it increases sympathetic drive and that can cause kind of a

violent reaction for some people if they take like a big shot of caffeine at any certain point like late in a race and they're just like immediately not feeling good so violent is a brilliant description for that i've seen that time and time again late in races mile 70 late aid stations yeah violence it seems like a good idea because you're like i need the energy but then as soon as it hits your system it's like nope so nibble nibble sip sip nibble nibble sip sip be strategic with your timing right so think about when you might be better able to digest things so front loading your calories if you can a little bit before you know later in the race you go the more likelihood that you're gonna have some issues maybe not want to eat so much so maybe try to get a little bit more consistent with the sipping and nibbling early on in the race and if you have to taper off later then so be it at least you got a decent amount of calories in up front um yeah and then you know beyond that i think people also because of the nature and the lower intensity of those durations you're able to get away with eating a little bit more adventurously and adventurously i say that i say that with a bit of caution because i think you know instead of just doing pure sports nutrition you can afford to do some like real foods and things like that for most people that's not everyone um but a lot of people can get away with doing more solids and real foods later in ultra races than they can in a higher intensity i say higher intensity but marathon would be considered higher intensity in this case

relatively there's um you know gi distress is like the nemesis of all ultra runners right now and and recently there's been these two somewhat divergent strategies start to emerge in order to combat that one of them is training the gut so you're going to intake more calories at a higher rate than you would during the race and there's an adaptation that takes place while you're doing that just like any other training adaptation right you go harder your body adapts to that particular stress but the point is is you're taking in more calories during training uh than you would during the race and then the other strategy which is it's not on the opposite side of the spectrum but i i i describe them as being divergent because they're definitely trying to accomplish two two different things and they can be contraindicated if you're trying to do both of them at the same time the other one is it is becoming fat adapted so in some form or fashion either restricting your calories waking up fast doing a run not taking in you know as many calories as you normally would during a run somehow trying to manipulate the body's biochemistry through caloric restriction in order to up regulate all of the fat burning processes that go on in the body right and when i look at those and there's a there's a recent paper um by the issn which i'm sure you which i'm sure you read that described both of those and once again when i'm looking at that as a practitioner i'm like well if i have an athlete do both of those they're on opposite sides of the fence

and are the adaptations that you're trying to create somehow not you know not yeah are they are they compatible and so i want to know you like your opinion on that as a professional in the field yeah and um we have a performance lab on site where we can actually do metabolic testing and things like that and that's something that we look at very closely with athletes and determine whether a fat adaptation strategy might be in their interest which could be the case for some of these guys how do you see that guys or gals um so what we do is we look at their caloric burn and not only that but where the calories are coming from so whether it's fat or carbohydrate predominantly at a variety of intensities and then we pick out kind of what their estimated race intensity is going to be and we see where that is as far as carbohydrate versus fat metabolism so let's back it up a little bit you put an athlete on it on a treadmill at a certain intensity yep you're measuring their expired carbon dioxide yep they're wearing the gas the gas mass like darth vader exactly and then from that at that particular intensity you're determining the ratio of carbohydrates versus fat they're burning and then you're determining from that is a sustain is it a sustainable strategy based on the metabolics you're seeing and if it's not we're going to combat that with strategies to burn more fat am i understanding that workflow kind of correctly yeah if if the event that they're training for in particular tends to warrant that right so if it's a really long event and they're going to be working at like maybe 50 to 60 percent of their vo2 max and it makes sense to be a little bit at least fat adapted so that they can

kind of spare glycogen and carbohydrate reserves for later then yeah absolutely we'll look at ways for them to improve their fat burning capacity and their ability to you know burn fat even at a higher intensity than 50 to 60 percent so we move the crossover point essentially to the right and the crossover point being the point at which you're burning half and half fat versus carbs is the point at which beyond that you're burning more carbohydrate than fat so like you know you're tapping into your reserves at that point unless you're supplementing with more carbohydrate but on the other hand you know if the event is going to be high intensity shorter duration you know you're working above you know i'd say 70 percent of your vo2 max most of the time then you're going to want to look at maximizing the whole gut training aspect of it and being able to take in as much energy comfortably without issue as you can you know so it really depends on the athlete and the event and and also some athletes just don't do as well trying to eat constantly and maybe they have a sensitive gi system so for them it might be better to do fat adaptation training it really depends it's a complicated problem to try to solve because i do i do feel that at times those strategies are at odds with each with each other and the other thing that i don't think that we quite have a very good answer to is how transient those adaptations are yeah right like do they come and go very quickly or they stick around for a long period of time like we have a good model for that in like cardiovascular physiology so i apply an impulse to an athlete we're going to have them do a workout the improvement from that workout shows up you know a few dozen

days later and then sticks around for a couple of weeks right we generally know those time frames but with a lot of these nutrition adaptations we i don't maybe maybe you can maybe you can help explain it a little bit better but we don't quite know like how long those actually stick around so if you go through a specific fat adaptation type of strategy i'm going to wake up fasted and go do a run and somehow that's going to upregulate all of my fat burning capabilities does that last for a week a month a year a day yeah your next meal yeah your next meal exactly yeah no you're exactly right like once you start to take in carbohydrate is it then gone which is plausible i mean there's like a metabolic switch essentially um so yeah and it's it's crazy also you know looking at people who are trying to become fat adapted um you know you see criticism on studies that are looking at these three-week protocols and saying well that wasn't enough time i'm sure they are maybe in a state of fat adaptation compared to where they were but is it optimal for performance at that point like they haven't reached the point where that is kind of the the comfortable state for their metabolism to be in but yeah the the point at which it changes and can decay it can happen in as little as a few days just looking at changes in your diet because the cells you know in your gi tract turn over that quickly every two to three days and so you can change the receptors that line your small intestine which is where absorption of nutrients occurs so absolutely it's like it's very flexible and you know you can

put somebody on the metabolic cart which we've done in the morning fasted test them test their metabolism put them in on the cart again in the afternoon and have different results and it also depends we've tested them like taking you know maybe gels and then taking other supplements and just seeing what that does to the acute metabolic response and it could be wildly different so i tend to you can tell me what you think about this and i appreciate like your honest response because i'm not going to claim to know all the answers but when i'm working with athletes i tend to lean on more often than not the training the gut strategy because philosophically i i think and this is a totally an i think statement i think that those adaptations can stick around for a little bit longer period of time and in addition to that all of this up regulate up regulation of the you know fat burning capabilities is harnessed through months and months and months of hours and hours and hours and hours of aerobic training and to up regulate that anymore unless you're taking on an extreme strategy like a ketogenic type of strategy i just feel it is very i just feel that those adaptations are kind of very marginal and they tend to once you take in food once you take in additional carbohydrate they tend to those adaptations tend to not be very meaningful so that both of those things kind of from a from a practitioner's perspective have kind of uh forced me to come to the conclusion to just lean on the training the gut

strategies more not in all cases but in more cases than the fat adaptation strategies not black and white but that's typically where i'll i'll skew towards and i want to know if you have any thoughts or disagreements on that i you know again everything is so individual based on the athlete and their needs in the event but i would say for athletes who tend to have gi issues when they try to take in a substantial amount of calories you know more than right 90 grams of carbs an hour things like that um fat adaptation might be a better strategy uh athletes who are going to be out there for you know more than i'd say even eight to twelve hours fat adaptation might be a good strategy for them um so yeah but i i do see the benefit of gut training like you can see those changes um people are able to tolerate more calories and it gives them more energy so yeah it makes sense um but i'm not going to give a blanket statement and be like yeah that's the best strategy for for most athletes because it it's so variable i agree with you that uh the athletes that have more of a history of gi intolerance that just can't stomach things you need to i almost take an all of the above approach like you need to do everything and just kind of solve it and the biggest linchpin in all in all of it is honestly just getting into the routine of practicing your race day nutrition because also that makes it more comfortable for the athlete this is something that we don't talk about a lot as well we tend to we tend to think about gi distress as solely something that's physiologic but there's also a psych like a

psychological part of it as well if you have an athlete that is continually experiencing gi distress race after race after race there's absolutely a psychology behind that yeah and so if you have them practice their race day routine during training over and over and over again it'll reduce that or it can reduce that psychological burden so it's just one less thing that they have to kind of encounter and battle on race day right and absolutely no matter what the strategy is even if they're fat adapted they're still taking in calories during a race like it's not mutually exclusive by any means and so i always as you do i'm sure advocate training your race day nutrition while you're out there on your long runs getting as comfortable with it as you can even down to like which flavors work for you in different conditions because that is a thing people don't realize is you know it's hot outside and maybe your favorite flavor is sea salt chocolate which is mine but not when it's 85 degrees not a western states rock tank right so you might want to go with like a lighter citrus flavor something that's gonna be lighter on the palate and encourage you to want to take in more versus something that's gonna kind of sit there like a chocolate and you're like oh man this is just not the right environment for this at all i totally agree with that yeah okay so since you mentioned rock tank i've got a like a challenge problem for you a little bit so buckle down okay so rock tank is his has is pitched as this ultra endurance drink right and i do have a contention with that with that uh with that

strategy mainly from the perspective of and i'm talking about ultra marathon maybe not ultra cycling so much ultra marathoning is my world um but mainly from the perspective of the calorie content in it and in an ultra marathon especially the longer ones in western states is a great example you have these wild temperature swings starts out in the morning it's 40 or 50 degrees you get in the canyon it's 110 degrees and then for a lot of athletes it'll go back down to 50 degrees and when you have a drink that is such high calorie and you're going to be blowing through so many fluids just to keep up with your hydration needs you're going to end up overcalorate right if that's the only thing that they're if that's the only thing that the athlete is is consuming and i know that you wouldn't advocate for that but i've seen things in the space it's like oh then magda right has kind of come out and said that's the only thing i drank during western states and i look at that as a coach i'm like well if that message gets propagated i'm going to have an athlete out there that needs a liter or maybe even a liter and a half of fluid per hour and if they're if they're doing that solely through rock tank as per the advice they're going to end up having way too many calories on board at some point during that event and so i just bring that up just to get because i i know i know that you know i know i know that you're going to have a perspective on this and i just want to hear like how do you how do you kind of like square that advice that's kind of out there in the field when

it can be so disparate you're saying that the the advice that kind of it's all you need yeah yeah because that's out there i mean you that that that should be an omission that hey listen magda drank roctane through throughout the entirety of western states and that's the only thing that she had right yeah and again looking at differences of context is key right so somebody who's doing maybe like a sub 20 race versus somebody who's getting up into you know 30 hours and looking at nutrition and hydration strategies those are going to be very different contexts right so maybe you can get away with it for a certain number of hours but for some of the athletes who are out there longer uh that might not be the greatest strategy to be safe i we'll bring in your marketing department and see what they say but i'm like i think that honestly a lot of people can get away with just doing roctane and like a gel as needed every hour and that'll get you at 350 calories but you know if you're drinking more than a serving of roctane drink mix every hour then there is the possibility of overload the problem that you can do that when it's cool the problem is when it's hot yeah and you need more fluids because if you need if you need a liter of fluid which is that's the upper end of the range right for most you know kind of normal people normal races and things like that that's the upper end of the range and for sure there's only going to be a very small swath of athletes that can handle a liter of roctane from a caloric perspective per hour for more than three or four hours and

and that's a plausible scenario in an ultra marathon in a hundred mile ultra marathon unless you get them to train their gut with it there you go all right fair enough fair enough fair enough i know it's a challenging question but like i when i see that out there once again as a coach because i get those questions yeah right and i'm like oh should i just drink should i go to an all liquid nutrition program i think honestly i think it can work i think a lot of people might find that it gets tiring to just be doing liquids for that amount of time um and then you know maybe they feel like they're just drinking too much and then they stop drinking as much which for me that's a more concerning issue is if they just get tired of drinking at some point and then they kind of get dehydrated because of that so um you know i think calorically and in composition wise it's a safe bet if that were all you were doing you'd probably be okay um but yeah i i think for a lot of people it's just not sustainable for that long and so it doesn't become a realistic strategy because of that like people are going to want solid food at some point generally cool i appreciate that answer yeah you got to put up with this for just a little while longer okay challenge question number two okay this is this is around another one of your products so the roctane electrolyte capsule so electrolyte supplementation used to be all the rage going way back to the s cap days and it was it was prevalent you know hammer nutrition i would say was responsible for a lot of the uh proliferation and kind of pioneering in this uh um uh in this world to where you'd see them everywhere i mean they were on the tables at aid stations everybody had

them in their drop bags on and on and on that has slowly started to come out of favor and so much so that you're probably aware of the former uh western states medical director marty hoffman's research where he's contributing a lot of hypernatremia cases to exogenous sodium supplementation specifically from capsules yeah and i've always viewed there's a time and a place for that but you have to be like super super careful about when you're actually using those types of products and so somebody in the r&d world who actually makes sodium supplementation when you see those recommendations kind of come out in the literature i was one i just wonder what your thoughts are on it and then how should athletes perceive it yeah and uh we're actually very close with dr hoffman and we support his ultra sport science foundation um i think you know the research he does and and supports through that foundation is just so amazing and on for you know our type of athletes that we work with and that you work with um and so yeah it's it's always a little bit disheartening to see just like a blanket statement about you shouldn't be needing any sodium supplementation because i think there are obviously we make the product cases where athletes can benefit from sodium supplementation and what are those um again so people who are going to be in hot and humid environments where sweat logic sweat losses are going to be you know above and beyond normal situations you're going to be losing a ton of sodium and i think at least having it available on the

athlete themselves maybe not having just grab bags on the table full so people can take fistfuls of capsules i think education is really important right so not only just educating people not to grab a handful and take them willy-nilly but know you know how much is in each capsule and how much should you take at each dose if you feel like you need it if you get into the situation where you're like i'm sweating a lot more than normal i'm feeling a little bit you know dehydrated um maybe i'll take one or two and that you know see where it goes so i think educating on proper use and and proper times to implement a sodium supplementation strategy is huge so working with your athletes directly um and then you know i think that's okay so no that's totally fine i'll i'll finish that so i think a lot of the confusion around this area has been because in close proximity there's been two extremes of the advice given you have some of the advice and this is going back to the kind of the early 2000s where you need to supplement with a thousand milligrams an hour and for the life of me giving a recommendation of sodium in terms of per unit time has it's never been a practical solution because it always should be per unit volume of fluid that you actually need which is wildly different depending upon the temperature conditions the intensity and things like that that's another story we're not going to go through all that

right now but you had one point in time where it was we're going to put all the capsules on the table and we want the athletes to come by and take four or five of them because more is better and then not but just two years later sodium supplementation is bad it contributes to hyponatremia don't take them at all not just take less yeah don't take them at all and an athlete who doesn't keep track of all of the research when they see both of those two ends of the spectrum in such close time proximity to each other they're like well what do i do yesterday you were telling me the sky is blue and now you're telling me the sky is green and i don't know what color the sky is anymore i think that's where a lot of the like the confusion of it kind of kind of comes around to where we've got these two extremes and and athletes are just their heads are spinning right yeah so again i you know education is key and having kind of an open dialogue with your athletes and making sure that they've tested different environmental conditions if they think it's going to be hot or humid at the race then maybe find a way to train in that and find the appropriate supplementation schedule according to kind of those sweat losses that are going to be similar to race day conditions if you can what's the recommendation on the side of the packaging for those rock tank capsules um it'll say you know one or two capsules sort of as needed or as needed yeah yeah okay and there's how many how many grams of sodium in each one so there's 140 milligrams per capsule per capsule so at most

it's going to be a 300 280 milligram shot at the very most which is reasonable it's not a thousand milligrams all at once or it's not even 500 all at once right because we're we're assuming right that they're taking it in addition to other sports nutrition or goo products which already have sodium in them so we didn't want to make like a huge amount in these capsules so that you wouldn't be able to pair them safely with other products you're using yeah okay cool i'm glad we got to talk about that because that is super and people's lives are at stake with that with hyponatremia yeah so a lot of the research that marty has done is is i mean it has and it's going to continue to save lives i was a part of the research study that did western states i think it was 2009 where they introduced um uh for runners who finished the western states 100 that were hyponatremic they randomized them into three groups they had an oral rehydration solution they had an iv standard 0.9 saline uh rehydration uh protocol and then they had and this is the one i got randomized into it's either 100 or 150 meter bolus do you remember how much it was i think it was 150 milliliter bolus of three percent saline that they just injected in and so i got randomized into that one and that's like the standard care right now for somebody who has clinical hyponatremia because it works so it works so much uh so much more quickly from a purely personal and anecdotal perspective i went from completely discombobulated i couldn't form a sentence i was slurring all my words about slurring my words more than normal

to i felt awesome in 15 minutes yeah wow night and day it was crazy yeah so they do a lot of good they do a lot of good research there and i've always been really appreciative of it because it helps me in coaching i'm sure helps you guys in yeah in trying to formulate things as well yeah no i mean we we definitely respect all the work that that he's done and continues to do so it's definitely been helpful and just keep people safe and and educated yeah safety right safety before performance so okay last question for you yeah you can wave a magic wand and create any cool fancy product that you want and it hits the shelves with your face and name on it you get to take 100 credit for that would help athletes perform what would it be oh goodness that is a great question um you have to have thought about this like oh i really i it could be for you it could be for anybody else in your office could be for another athlete you had to have thought about this honestly i think finding it would be kind of an assortment of products so it would be for specific like choose your flavor depending on your adventure remember those choose your adventure books where you'd be like on page 29 you can turn to i love those yes so that would be like my product lineup and it would be like here's the specific gel you need for hot weather or here's the specific gel you need for high altitude because of the ingredients

that we put in it so it'd be like this battery or toolkit of you know specific condition sets gels which is like that is your go-to for whatever the condition is that it warrants it so i think for me having like a lineup where you can really customize your nutrition intake based on what your conditions are going to be like i think that would be so amazing because there's just so many variables and the places where i compete aka like mountains and i'm going to extreme environments i'm going to an arctica in four weeks i'm like there's definitely a different product that i want for that than if i'm out on a trail so what are you going to take to an arctica um looking at that but it's going to be a lot of chocolate based things i'll tell you that much because it's going to be like you want something that's going to feel comforting you want something that's going to coat the mouth and uh um our gels don't really freeze which is great so i'll be taking a bunch of those but sea salt chocolate for sure but definitely a lot of calorie dense and probably a little bit heavier on the fat side uh similar to maybe the everest bar but uh things that don't freeze readily well if you have any leftover you feel free to send me some yeah i would love to take your next polar expedition yeah you will not find me in an arctica i can guarantee you that i do not do i do not do very well in the cold roxanne thank you for your time i really appreciate it uh tell everybody where they can find you and where they can find goo yeah you can find us at gooenergy.com and um if you want to follow some of my personal adventures down to the south pole and to the tops of mountains you can find me on

instagram at at roxy mountain girl wow awesome not only are you total like physical badass you're also smarter shit so i always appreciate that combination of people you put your you put your money where your mouth is you test the products in the most extreme environments and there's no you know there's no other there's no better way to do it right because if you make something great you're going to succeed and if you don't yep you're going to have egg on your face i really appreciate that it's been great thank you yeah thank you okay trail runners what do you think thinking about your nutrition program a little bit differently maybe you're thinking about not taking the salt pills next time you see them or maybe you're thinking about situationally using them the the next time it's actually called for um i hope uh if anything you guys got out of this uh this conversation with roxanne is that you have to practice your nutrition program during training in order for it to work i can't tell you guys how many countless times i have seen athletes out there out on the course doing something that they haven't done in training and whether that's something different that they're eating at an aid station or whether that's just the number of calories that they're taking in uh during the race as opposed to training doing something different during a race is always a way to have things go south and just to quite quite frankly just mess it up so everybody would be very well served to practice your nutrition during training that you expect

to have during a race i've written a lot about this you can uh go ahead and check out our train right blog and we actually use this really neat nutrition report card at the camps that we use where athletes will actually take an inventory of what they're eating and drinking throughout the day and it's um it's quite insightful because once you're forced to take a step back and actually look at what you were eating drinking or were or what you weren't more often than not what you weren't eating and drinking um it could just provide some insights into what you need to do differently what you need to take more of what you need to take less of and things like that thank you to roxanne from goo for being on the podcast that was uh really fun very very insightful and i think as this podcast will air roxanne will be out tagging her seventh summit out in antarctica and she's gonna the plan is at least is for her to actually go and do the south pole as well so much much the best of luck the best of luck to you roxanne uh i hope you kick ass out there i'm sure you will you're well trained well prepared and it looks like you got some good uh uh nutrition things up your sleeve before i sign off today uh just something on a personal note um i had to say goodbye to a really a really trusty partner of mine uh eddie my uh faithful english pointer that we've had for i don't know maybe the last 10 years or so we had to say goodbye to him last week and i want to take just a moment to remember him uh eddie

eddie came to us in quite a bizarre and serendipitous set of circumstances uh we were looking to adopt another dog after we had moved into our new home and i reached out to the rescue organization that we had previously worked with and they said you know what uh you guys did such a good job with your previous dog we have a really we have a really unique uh case for you uh there's this dog that we wanted you to adopt uh at the same time that you adopted your your earlier dog which we had had for four years now uh he just became available again because his owner tried to commit suicide last night and we're on our way to wyoming right now to go pick this little guy up and would you take him in and i i remember this very vividly just without hesitation i said yes i mean you know how how else could the stars align where a dog that they wanted us to adopt earlier uh ended up getting adopted out and then became available the exact same day under these some horrific circumstances the exact same day that that that i called back uh looking to adopt another dog and so the rest or rescue organization they drove up to wyoming picked this dog up and what i can only imagine uh it's it's life before it got to us drove it back down from wyoming back colorado springs and dropped it off at our house later that night and the dog eddie uh god bless his soul was completely broken uh he was unkept he was

overweight completely unsocialized had zero confidence and for the first several months that um uh that we had eddie he would just go into a corner quite frequently and just shake just shake uncontrollably because he could not handle the whole situation around him it was just just too much for him and gradually over the course of of months and years and you know throughout uh throughout that process of training him to be a better dog and also taking him on a lot of runs and giving him a lot of just care and love he gradually started to to to turn the corner and become you know somewhat of a normal dog from this completely broken circumstance and he ended up accompanying my wife and i throughout just innumerable adventures out here in the rocky mountains and beyond he's been all over the lead bill course all over our hometown uh trails here in colorado springs colorado or all around the pikes peak massive all on the hard rock course uh he went out there and trained with me for many many weeks uh the two years that uh that i was fortunate enough to finish that race he even kissed the hard rock at the at the very end as i crossed the finish line apologies to all of you guys and gals that had to that had to follow suit with uh eddie slobber all over the rock um but he was just he ended up being uh just a just a delightful dog and you know as dog as dog's age he went from being a constant running

companion going on all these big bomber um big bomber ultra runs with me uh down to my recovery run specialist and then down to my walking specialist and then for the last several months of his life it was just hard for him to you know just get up and get around uh just because he had gotten so old but he always appreciated every single moment that that that we spent together uh whether we were on the top of handy's peak or we were just walking around the block he really did appreciate uh uh getting out there and and and just being a part of everything uh eddie was he was also a constant fixture at all of our camps uh i think the athletes that came to all of our running camps really did enjoy his company he'd be there waiting for us uh waiting for us at the gate of my house every time we uh we came back from a run ready to lick all the salt off of people and you know test out people's uh homemade nutrition products that they had left over in uh in their bags and uh he he loved it he loved the company and he loved being around people um so we're missing eddie a lot he really taught me personally that a lot of precious things can come in very imperfect packages and he was the the quintessential notion of that throughout his life that that we knew him so i miss you eddie boy uh i know that you're i know that you're fromping around shredding some trails somewhere and uh i can't wait to uh join you one day and to have one last good run together thanks buddy

you