Episode 467: Cooling, Hydration, & Fueling for Peak Performance | Jeff Mogavero
In this episode, Jeff Mogavaro joins the podcast to discuss his exciting year in trail and ultra running, including his impressive second-place finish at Javelina (2024), notable performances at Canyons and Western States, and a nail-biting win at Ultra Trail Cape Town. Jeff dives into the specifics behind these successes, highlighting the impact of fine tuning his hydration strategy. The conversation also explores Jeff's unique approach to cooling during hot races, his thoughts on nutrition and fueling, and his plans to tackle races like Western States and UTMB in the future.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Awesome. Jeff, thanks for coming on the podcast. I'm looking forward to chatting with you. Yeah, super excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, you've had an exciting, I guess it's technically just about a year if you include Javelina, but I wanted to chat with you because it seems like you've been running trails and ultras for quite a while now.
But it seems like in the last year or so you've really started to pop off on some really impressive race results from your second place finish at Javelina, where you were dipping under 13 hours for a good portion. And then following that up with a good performance at Canyons, the Western States Showdown this year was just one of those kind of historical type days where you had.
Huge field, really competitive and a bunch of guys kind of mixing up upfront, yourself included. And then end of the year at Ultra Trail Cape Town with a win that came down to the wire. Just was something that I thought really stood out that you made a little bit of an upgrade maybe in the last year.
So maybe we dive in with kind of a [00:01:00] broad topic of is there anything that you are looking at that stands out that sort of allows you to make a bit of a big jump in the sport of ultra running, trail running? Yeah, it's a great question. 'cause it, I've been doing this sport for 12 years now, like a long time.
And I have, I've certainly made progress over the last decade or so, but the last year has felt like so much has clicked and I attribute a whole ton of it to my hydration more than my fueling. I think. I found out I'm quite a salty sweater, so I had a sweat test done and. I was, you know, losing 1800 milligrams of sodium per liter of sweat, which is a lot.
And I think I'd been having like 400 milligrams per liter and so I was tripling or more my salt intake you know, by volume. And I found out though that I was a salty sweater like three weeks before halina. So I [00:02:00] basically had one long run that I could try it with. And it's not, I was in Montana, it's not like it was hot out and it felt like a huge leap of faith.
I was like, okay, I just need to trust that like I do need this much salt. And it worked, which was so cool and it, I don't think I would've ever fueled that or just been able to fuel and stay hydrated for so long had I not found out those, that number. And when I look back at all the races I've done well at and poorly at, I can almost point to hydration as the determining factor.
I've done a lot of my better results in 50 Ks and I think it's because you can fake it in a 50 k. You don't pay for your errors quite as, as dearly as in a hundred miler. And I always felt like I was a better hundred miler and continually ran poorly in a hundred milers. And so it's so nice to finally feel like I'm racing the way I feel like I always could.
And I really think hydration was the big point with that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because hydration, I always [00:03:00] find this one to be interesting with working with other people too. 'cause a lot of times I find it to be like the first thing to really fix if there's a lot of weird stuff going on.
Because so much is downstream of that. Like you kind of mentioned, like you're fueling, so if you're messing up your hydration, then it's only a matter of time before the fueling is gonna start going backwards too. And now you're also getting compounding problems from that first potential mistake.
So if you can get the hydration electrolyte thing dialed in, then you sort of give yourself the foundation to start working on the proper fueling and everything else that goes along with it. Yeah, totally. And I think I was always pretty good at barreling through poor hydration and fueling decisions and so it kind of disguised it a bit more where like I could kind of get away with things and it feels so good to just know I need way more sodium and I take way more in and everything works better.
Yeah. Yeah. This was actually a topic I wanted to jump in with you on a bit too, because one thing I really love is that [00:04:00] precision with their athletes. They do a bunch of post-race analysis stuff where they'll share things like your fueling and your hydration and your electrolytes with these Instagram clips or visuals that kind of show how things play out.
And one thing that stuck out to me for you at Western States, and then I saw it kind of reoccur again at Alter Trail Cape Town, was that your fluid intake actually looked really low compared to what I would expect for a warm weather race. I think I have it at right around 684 milliliters per hour at UTCT and then closer to 6 35 at Western States, which for those of you working on ounces or just bottles, we're looking at like a medium sized bottle per hour on what would be considered a very warm race.
How does that work for you? Yeah, great question. 'cause I, so the first sweat test I did was in a lab. My friend works at the [00:05:00] postdoc at the University of Montana's Physiology and Exercise Metabolism lab. And so I was like in a heat chamber running on a treadmill. We were doing sweat loss, sweat rate, all that stuff.
And, you know, it was 90 degrees and I think I was losing like two liters an hour. And this was before Javelina last year. And I remember the academic who was helping me out with this test. He was like, you can't lose two liters an hour for 10 hours. Like you, that is not sustainable.
Like you need to, you'll, that's too much. And so I internalized that as cool aggressively. I was like, if I just make it so I don't have to sweat, then I don't have to worry about losing fluid. That has very much been my kind of the most important thing for me with the hot races I've done is just cool as aggressively as I can.
And then I don't sweat as much. And I also kind of think of it as you know, our skin is [00:06:00] this giant organ that we're relying on to help cool us. If I can have ice on me or just stay wet and the skin doesn't have to be producing sweat, I feel like there's probably some energy savings there.
And also it's just more comfortable and I need to take in less fluid. So that's been really helpful and it's been interesting 'cause I, after I add up everything at the end of a race and send it off to precision, I'm often like, wow, that wasn't that much fluid. It surprises me too, but I mean, even if I'm forgetting some fluid, I think UTCT, maybe I had another 500 milliliters of water, but it was not more than that.
So it's a, it's pretty close, like within a margin of error and if you click their, like case studies on their website, they'll actually show you how confident they are in the data. Which is cool too. 'cause it is, it is hard, especially in a long trail race and you know, plans change on the fly.
Yeah, that's really interesting because I agree, I think you're right [00:07:00] about that. I think people are catching on to cooling and topical cooling. I don't know that most people are catching on enough though, to the degree of how much you're leveraging it. So maybe we start with this. Is there a temperature where you say, once it goes above this I start practicing some sort of topical cooling type measurement?
There is. If it's 60, I have an iceman on. Okay. That's what I thought because I think people start thinking once it starts feeling warm, or when the temperature gets above room temperature, it starts to make sense to do the topic. So like these races that tend to be like moderate to warmer is when they start kind of getting into that world of planning for that sort of thing.
And maybe even upgrading their topical cooling from okay, I'm gonna sponge down a little bit, versus I'm gonna actually fully submerge myself with a bucket of water. Or, you know, whatever way works really, I think you gotta start doing that or you're gonna benefit from that well below room temperature.
So like for [00:08:00] desert solstice, I'll usually start doing some sort of topical cooling a couple hours in once it starts getting into the sixties. And I mean, it rarely even touches 70 degrees at that event. So a lot of people aren't topical cooling at all, but. It's a value add and I think your data set kind of shows that, like if you're losing two liters of fluid per hour in a hot environment that's controlled and now we put you in a similar environment on a race course, but give you the topical cooling side of things, now all of a sudden your fluid intake is maybe a, almost just a quarter of what you were losing in the lab is pretty insane and just kind of, I think gives evident to your approach.
Yeah, and it, I mean it just feels better, right? Like I don't like being hot and you know, I heat trains and stuff too but like for U-T-C-T-I, I did not heat trains. I, it was a stressful training block and like it was good, but there's just some background stress and heat training felt like one drop too many in the old stress bucket.
And so I was [00:09:00] like, I'll just cool super aggressively and I think you need to do that even if you are heat trained. I think then it's just even more effective. I think sometimes people think, ah, I did a ton of sauna work. I don't have to. Wear an ice bandana and you should still wear it, you're still gonna sweat.
Yeah. You sweat sooner if you're heat trained. Yeah, so I, I think yeah, the more topical cooling the better. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're spot on. I think you're looking at like the heat training stuff is one, it's something you can do pretty quickly too, like obviously I think there's probably some value in actually like training in some hot conditions just to kind of get comfortable in the uncomfortable.
But generally speaking, we're only looking at a few sauna sessions per week for essentially a few weeks leading to the event. And you're gonna get a lot of those benefits and then that's gonna be what it is. But then, yeah, if you can if you can add to that with a better race day procedure with the topical cooling, stuff like that, then you may as well, if you're gonna put in the time to do the [00:10:00] heat training, might as well put in the time to do the planning around cooling during the race itself as well.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think the only other person I've seen that's really attacked this thing as aggressively as you have is Nick Curry. I don't know if you've followed any of his stuff in the past, but he's like a very aggressive, topical, cooler, and he's always been about like, all right, start doing it early and often, most people aren't starting early enough.
Kind of similar to you. I think he's looking at trying to, he's trying to create like a microclimate around himself essentially where it feels like it's 60 degrees. I think his quote was like, it can be almost a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside, and I can make it feel like it's 60 by the way I'm topically cool.
And how much attention I pay to that. And, you know, that makes a huge difference. That's going to be the difference between running. What is your hive, like 1247 or something like that, and something like in the high thirteens? Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it, it makes it, he was a great example where it was, 'cause I think it got up to 98 or so, and there's this stretch between the [00:11:00] first and second aid station.
I think it's miles like four to 10 or 11 of each loop. And it's the longest stretch. And I realized on the second lap, I was like, I don't think my ice is gonna make it. I don't, I think I'm gonna dry out. And that started happening. And the third lap, someone passed me there and I went with 'em, and then I kind of glanced at my watch and I was like, huh, I think my heart rate's getting a little higher than I want it.
That is sustainable for right now. And I just looked around, I was like, there's no shade. It's so hot. My ice is about to melt. I'm out. And I just backed off, let this person go, let someone else go. And I just figured if I can keep my core temp from rising, if I'm running outta ice, I can just slow down so I can still eat and like just make it to that next aid station, jackass junction.
And then I needed to get so cold and it ended up being the next lap I passed. I passed those same two people at that [00:12:00] same spot and they were like, one of them was throwing up, one of, they were in like really rough spots and I'd realized that, you know, focusing on cooling and staying slowing down so that I could stay cool is what ultimately saved my race there.
Yeah, and I think that's where just the heat magnifies the need for cooling and also the need to like pivot and slow down if you have to. So that you can still eat and still function. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Holin is actually where I first learned about topical cooling in any valuable sense.
Where I was on, this is 2016, I was on the third loop and it was a really hot year that year too. I think it got, I think they reported it got up to 102, but I think that might've been like in Phoenix versus on the course. So it was probably a little cooler on the course, but it was plenty hot. And I remember going up that hill to Jackass and thinking, I don't know if I'm gonna finish this thing.
I'm coming up on 52 miles in the lead, and I was questioning whether I was gonna get the thing done. [00:13:00] And I remember I did like just dump cold water all over me. It was like a light switch went on and I was like, oh, okay. So from there on in, it was just like dumping water on myself at every eight stations and it just was like such a big difference and kind of how I felt from there on forward.
And since then, I've sort of gone down that rabbit hole and looked at it. Okay, there's gotta be something to this in terms of really exer, like hitting performance at almost any race, but especially the hot ones. Yeah. Yeah. I had I. Halina was my first hot race and then before Western States this past year I watched the whole live stream from 2024 in real time.
Like I wouldn't do anything else. I'd just sit there and watch it, which was fun. I kinda would feel the nerves of each person in the race and live those. And I was kinda like, I'm just doing this in advance so I don't have to worry about that in the race. I can just race. But then I'd also watch.
The top 10 men and women go through every aid station and I'd see people cooling and they'd use a sponge and like the [00:14:00] crew would be like dabbing them with a sponge. And I kind of took a step back and I was like the goal is to get wet, right? They're trying to cool them. I feel like a dab with a sponge isn't the best move.
And so I got pictures from my crew and they just had pictures of ice water. I just had people pour ice water on me the whole time and then refill it and pour it on me because I was like, it's a better sponge. It's delivering more water per second. And that feels like what I need. And maybe it's getting in the nitty gritty of like how much does that really help?
I don't know. But it feels so nice. And I think, there's a little bit more like micromanagement of cooling that's starting to happen now as well. I mean, if you look at the research too, it's like complete submersion is what you really want. If you're dumping buckets of ice water on you, that's about as close to full submersion you're gonna get outside of actually fully submerging.
So it's like at least a step closer to that than the sponges, I would imagine. Yeah, totally. And at states, like I laid an ice bath at Mile, [00:15:00] right? Michigan Bluff, what's that? 55. And I had no idea it was gonna be there. I was just running in and my wife was like, Hey, there's an ice path up here, you're gonna lay it.
And I was like, wow, that sounds awesome. Yeah. Let's do it. And I was trying to get up and I, like she, wouldn't let me get up. They were like, stay in there. I was like, oh, okay. This is awesome. Yeah. And it feels really nice. Yeah, it was fun following the race as a spectator this year because they had Jim come on early on and he was talking about some of the stuff that he had done and some of his better performances there.
And he would talk about scouting the course and finding some sneaky spots where you could just hop off real quick and completely submerge. So I feel like he was thinking about these things maybe a little bit earlier too, which is maybe why he was maybe, I mean Jim is Jim obviously, but again, he's been doing all the things before everyone else.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it's one of those spots where it's just okay, some of his times that people are getting closer to now are starting to make a little bit more sense outside of him just being as good as he [00:16:00] is. And it's just fun to hear everyone talk about that and see these things emerge as best practice as opposed to just okay, here's a trial and error thing or something that one person did, and being more of an anecdotal word of mouth.
Yeah, and I think a lot of this too, extends to everybody in the race, probably more than any other like training takeaway or whatever it is, 'cause the slower you're going, the longer you're in these hot sections. And I've had athletes do, like I ran Broken Arrow and an athlete I had, I was coaching, ran Broken Arrow.
She did it in eight hours, I did it in four. It was hot. My ice never melted between eight stations. And she was completely dry, no ice out there. And it's the hotter part of the day. I'm like, oh my God. Cooling matters way more if you're moving slower because you're just, you have to cool for so much longer to get through it.
And I think that's one of the cool things that hopefully, people do at Western States, you know, throughout the field is [00:17:00] just the canyons. If you're moving slower, they're way worse than if you're moving fast, they're fine. If you're moving fast, your ice doesn't melt. But I think it's harder for the people moving slower.
Yeah. It's almost like an exponential time penalty the slower you are because of the, just the exposure point you have in some of those harsh areas and the resources between, yeah. So it's like you have double the distance from an eight station to an eight station at that point. Yeah. I'm looking at like 45 minutes tops between eight stations as opposed to hours.
So that's a big difference. Yeah. When it's 99. No doubt about it. Yeah. I do wanna back up a little bit and get into some of the stuff too around the races itself. Maybe start with Western states. Did you go into the race thinking, alright, I'm gonna mix it up with the top of this field, or were you going into the race thinking, I kind of know what feels right and I'm gonna do it, and you just happen to be in that lead group for large portions of the day?
Yeah, I think, you know, in training for the race, I [00:18:00] feel there's a lot of hype around the race and I kind of listened to it in January and then I just fully. Blacked out everything and you know, wasn't on social media. I don't like it, I go Strava blind. I don't, I mute every person I could potentially compete with on Strava and, or don't look at them and stuff.
And it helps me feel so good about my own training. But I just figured someone was gonna break 14. If conditions were right, I was like, okay, I just need to be ready to go sub 14. 'cause I wanted to win. And heading into the race, I figured there's a lot of unknowns. I'd never done it before, but I was like, I feel like I can run 1430.
Who knows if I can get sub 14, but I'm gonna try. And I say that, but I also didn't know a single split. Like I, I hadn't looked at splits at all. I looked at them roughly to figure out like, oh, how long are these stretches between aid stations? But then I was talking with my friend Adam [00:19:00] Peterman before the race and.
He was like, oh, do you, are you following any splits? And I was like no, I'm not. And he was like, I just know. What did he say? Duncan Canyon. He was like, three 30 to Duncan Canyon. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Good to know. And then once the race started and me and Rod were heading into Duncan Canyon and we were like, well under that.
And I was like, huh, I guess we're having a good day. I don't know if that's the course, I don't know if Adam was referring to the course record pace when he ran it. Like I had no idea what that time was. I just knew it was like something that was positive. And yeah. So the whole day I didn't know any splits.
I didn't know where the course record was. I didn't know where his, like history was, so to speak. Just running by feel and pushing hard. Yeah, and I went into it, you know, telling myself I could win and. Racing like I could. And I think in hindsight I'd do some things differently and push more in certain places.
But yeah, it was totally running by feel [00:20:00] which was, yeah, it was a blast. Yeah. Was there, was it more just like when you made moves and stuff that you would potentially change in hindsight? Or were there any mistakes that kind of stood out where if I could do it again, I would've done this differently and maybe that would've given me a bit more to push in certain spots fueling I could make some big improvements on.
There's just some things that I want to tweak that I think would result in me feeling better at various points. And then I carried way too much ice. I'm cool. I cooled too aggressively. I left some aid stations with the world's biggest ice bandana and like my whole neck was numb and now I want, now I'm like, okay, how can I want to run more in the heat and figure out what is.
The least amount of ice I can take where it's just as effective. And I don't know, carrying five extra pounds of ice for 40 miles probably adds up. So trying to kind of fine tune that a bit. And it was cool 'cause like in the race I Kilian and I [00:21:00] went back and forth for 40 miles and it was almost comical.
Like I, I thought back after the race, I think we swapped leads 25 times and I would pass him every single downhill and he'd pass me every single uphill. And every time I'd be like, oh, Killian, you know, coming up on your left, I'm gonna squeeze by. And he'd be like, oh, I'll see you on, I'll see you on the uphill.
Or I'd say that, and he'd be like, see you on the downhill. And we were just, you know, chatty. And then eventually as the race wore on those, the same sentence just became no you know, delirious. But from that, I mean, Killian's one of the best uphill runners in the world and. If there's a place for him to pass me, that's probably where, but I also see that as, you know, I can work on my uphill running like that.
It just feels like there is time to be gained there. So I look to that as well. And that experience with Killian, I'm like, okay, I just wanna be able to hang on a little longer on the uphill so the downhill sticks more when I do make a move. Yeah. Given how close the times [00:22:00] were in that top group of guys, maybe if you would've given Killian some of your ice, you would've been a little more power weight efficient.
And he would've been a little cooler and you guys would've gone won too instead of Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Seriously, you seemed like an ice handoff on the passes. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. So are you thinking Western States again this year? Yeah. Yeah, I definitely wanna go back. Like I said, I feel like there's a bunch of small areas that could add up.
A lot of time back and I almost hope the race is. I hope it's a snowy year and then something catastrophically hot or something crazy happens where I don't really, I don't care about the time that much. I like to race. That seems more exciting. You know, people talk about time trialing these things and that's interesting.
It's cool, going fast is fun and historically fast, but the course is gonna change next year. Like it's a new trail through the high country. The [00:23:00] course always changes. All these courses always change. And so I'm just excited to go in and as prepared I can and have a good proper foot race.
Yeah. It's funny, when I lived in the area, I would go and I'd run with a group in Auburn every once in a while and these folks were like western states historians, and they would always talk about how there would be these like progressive years where we'd get faster and all of a sudden there'd be like a reset year.
Where like everything would kind of come back for just not indefinitely, but for a year. And you'd have a winning time that looked way slower or like all of a sudden, like the 10th place finishes like a couple hours slower than it was the year prior. It's maybe we have one of those, we have a fire and ice here where there's tons of snow in the high country and then blazing hot in the canyons and it's just sets up for more mistakes to be made and similar, more death, marching and implosions, and you'll have a proper battle from that end.
Yeah. I do think people are fueling better, hydrating better, and cooling better and preparing better. But I think those, like [00:24:00] in racing things like the fueling, hydration and cooling, I feel like the reset years are less and less of a reset. Like it's not like people are running 18 hours. Yeah. Which is really cool to see like the people are learning, which is awesome.
Yeah, maybe now a reset year will be like, oh, like 10th place was 1559 instead of, yeah, it was funny to think about with all that stuff. But one other thing I was gonna ask you too, around Western states that you mentioned was like fueling optimization. So if I recall, I think you had 97 grams of carbs per hour at Western States.
Is there something about the total that you'd maybe change or planning on changing or is it more about the way that was distributed to average out at that over the course of the race itself? Great question because I think that the way it happened is more important than the total amount, at least.
If I was to go back and I had that same amount but distributed it differently, [00:25:00] I think I would've run faster. I started out quite heavy with carbs and I think that could've. Could have been okay, but I just was, I did too much in bottles that were quite salty and it just wasn't what I wanted then.
And so I kind of had to do some pivoting and was stuck with like really carb rich bottles. And I've now learned I like less carbs in my water and more just gels and like separating the two, you know, fueling from hydration seems to be helping me out. And so I started out like my first hour, I think it was like one 50 or something, or I had a one 30 s like pretty high.
And then towards the end it was pretty dire. And that was where, you know, that's where a lot of time was put on me was the last 10 miles and I don't think I was eating much. Yeah. Yeah, that is interesting 'cause I, I remember looking at kind of some of the charts that were reported and it did look like there was a fair bit of variability, not just with you, but with other runners too, with a [00:26:00] general trend of more early and less at the end.
But I was curious about that too. 'cause I've been just playing around with higher carb this second half of this year and did a race, I hit a hundred mile race, I did like just under 96 grams per hour. And I was assuming that going in was gonna be something I had to do a little learning on the fly.
And for whatever reason, I just, maybe I got lucky, I don't know. But I was like between 90 and a hundred basically every hour, really consistently. And I was like, okay, if that can keep working that way, that's the way I would like it. I'd rather have like my low B 90, my high B hundred than have a 60 in a one 40 or something like that.
So yeah, I think there's maybe. Some playing around with these totals that people are targeting, that's a little individual that kind of maybe helps find that balance where you're able to tolerate a more even amount over the course versus having those higher peaks and lower valleys. Totally. And I've seen too. I think Ben Die wrote about it having I think he started low at a certain race.
It wasn't UTMB it was Laredo like, started low, got high [00:27:00] through the middle, and then backed off to a mid range. But it was very intentional. And I wonder how that'll flux too with the time of day that a race starts, like a, like an evening start, like UTMB fueling overnights, just weird no matter what.
And so you know, how do we approach that? And I feel like that's where there's, there is not an algorithm to it, you know, it is very personal and we're figuring it out. What I'm learning about myself is that if I start at my upper limit or even a little below it, it's still too much. And I end up.
Tanking later on. And so I'm trying to figure out, similar to your experience at your base, what if I just, what if I just start at 90 and then I eat more? If I feel better? Not if I don't think, it seems like I don't decrease too much from around 90. I did at U-T-C-T-A a bit, but I'm getting better.
I'm holding the decrease. It happens later and later. Yeah. I don't know if maybe I got lucky because for me I [00:28:00] was a little bit terrified about the prospect of a digestive issue just because I was basically gonna be targeting double what I'd ever taken in a hundred miler before. Yeah. I think the idea of pushing up too high above a hundred, or even above a hundred at all, was scary enough that I just didn't do it early.
So I was sitting in that mid to low 90 range early on, and then that just made it a little more sustainable. Then I'd be curious to see what would've happened if I would've just gone for 150 for the first two hours, if I would've had that tail off too, where all of a sudden I was doing closer to 60 near the end.
But I'm not sure if I wanna run that experiment or not. I did, I just did some long, six hour long runs with one 50 an hour and brushed my teeth with prescription toothpaste afterwards. I'm like, oh God, this is terrible. But, I think that gave me false confidence that I could start really high and maybe I don't know if I want it.
I don't know if I could do a 14 hour race at 150. That's just a lot of consuming stuff. But doing that in training definitely makes, you know, a [00:29:00] hundred feel really manageable and so I'm trying to, yeah. Fine tune that balance of how to pace that out over a hundred miles. Yeah, that's a good point.
If you can normalize one 50 in training and then all of a sudden on race day, just even just logistically like the mental burden you take on from the logistics of constantly doing all that is, is probably relatively low then and maybe a little more manageable. So yeah it's funny 'cause you get like David Roche doing a pretty much averaging 150 grams at some cases and then all of a sudden you set that bar that high, then it's I talked to him on the podcast about this too, and he's I don't know that everyone needs to be going after that.
I think that's probably gonna be a little bit more individual to me that I maybe have a strength or something that, a relative strength that lets me to get up to one 50 that most people shouldn't shoot for. But it does seem like with the men's side of the sport that a hundred gram number is getting pretty routine or pretty approachable for people who are putting in the work to get themselves ready for it.
Definitely it [00:30:00] does feel like that. Yeah, a hundred feels pretty normal now, which I just think back a couple years ago and I think all I was fueling with was I got a bunch of expired vanilla cliff shots from the Missoula marathon and I exclusively fueled on those for a year. And I had one an hour and it was horrible.
Yeah. Yeah. It makes me really appreciate nice gels now. Precision's been so great. Yeah. Are you, so I'd love to hear what your protocol is on race day. Are you doing some blend of like the carb mix in your bottles and then the gels? What I've settled on that works quite well is like 15 grams of carbs in a bottle with 750 milligrams of electrolytes.
So per 500 milliliters. That's worked really well for me. And then the 90 gram gels, 'cause then it's about 1 0 5, 1 10, depending on how much fluid I take in. And usually I end up going through an aid station, fill up a bottle of plain water, and then I'll have the [00:31:00] . They make little blister packs with electrolyte capsules that are two 50 milligrams each.
And so those are super easy for just oh, I filled up a water bottle or two, and I'm not like, mixed and drink powders and stuff. I'll do some of that, but it's so much easier just to pop the little electrolyte pills. And that way too, if I can't tolerate any sweet in my drink mix, it's an easy pivot.
And it's easier to troubleshoot that way. Yeah. That's a pretty similar setup to what I had. The big difference is just our electrolyte loss. I'm six 14 milligrams per liter. Oh you're a lucky guy. You're like three x. Yeah. Yeah. So like for me, I put I, I think I had pretty close to 15, 20 grams per bottle of carbohydrate.
And then I would just flex that up or down. Based on my needs essentially, or what I felt like I was probably doing almost double the fluid intake that you were doing though. So that's where maybe I had a little bit, maybe I should have been doing more topical cooling, I guess. I don't know. But that, so like I would end up [00:32:00] with a kind of, usually a range between 20 to maybe 40 grams from that drink.
And then I would just spike myself up to around a hundred grams with the precision 90 packs, which are super convenient because, I mean, I was on a two mile loop so I could grab something. That's awesome if I wanted to. That's, yeah. So I just always had a pf 90 on me, and then when I would start getting low, I would just ask for a new one on the next loop.
And I just basically be, I think I went through eight of those over the course of the a hundred miler. And then the rest was basically the drink mix that was in with the hydration. Yeah. Those of the nineties are a game changer because you got a screw top too. So if all you can manage is like the tiniest sip, that's okay.
Yeah. You're not committed. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah. It's really cool to have that sort of setup with it where you can Yeah. Keep and even keep the gel off of you Yeah. It is something that seems trivial, but it's so annoying. Your vest is ENC coated in wrappers. Yeah. Like I only felt like I had to kinda wash my hands off maybe twice over the course of that hundred miles just to get the stickiness that found its way onto my hands one way or the other.
It was actually [00:33:00] probably more from the top of the bottle leaking out onto my hand than it was the gels themselves. But yeah, that's always been something that's nice to avoid if you can. Absolutely. Awesome. So I did wanna maybe before we jump into UTCT talk a bit about Ultra Trail Mount Blanc and I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
'cause it seems like guys that are finishing races the way you have been recently. Met with this decision or this consideration to make between, do I peak for Western states or do I peak for UTMB? Because the sport just seems to be at a spot now where the competition is good enough, where it's very difficult to say, all right, I'm gonna prepare for Western states and go for the win, and then double back and try to do the same at UTMB.
Is that kind of what your perception has been, or what are your thoughts about the proximity of those two events, the differences [00:34:00] in courses? I guess maybe if I wanna summarize that long-winded question up and say is can someone win them both in one year? I think someone will, I mean, women have shown us they can do it.
They've been doing it for a while. I think the men will figure it out, but it's taken us a little more time. But they're tricky. Like they're very different races with different skill sets required to do well at both. And people certainly have both skill sets, right? Jim's won both. I will not be surprised if he does win both in the same year.
I think it's just the space in between them, the amount of time you have. It's really easy to screw things up and do too much. Too much. I don't think anyone's doing too little and that's why they do poorly at UTMB. I think it's almost always doing too much and jumping back in before you're ready to yeah.
So I think honestly, if some of the men were a little more conservative, I would bet it could happen. Yeah it's funny 'cause it seems like the [00:35:00] window's getting a little tighter because if you take Jim for example, maybe there was a better opportunity a few years ago when he was winning Western states by larger margins.
And then it's okay, could he have, I mean, Jim's probably never gonna do this, but scale back and just do enough to win at Western States and then jog it in the last 10 miles. Yeah. Phone it home and then have okay, now I'm a little more fresh going into UTMB or since that's probably not a very good option nowadays.
You should, it's probably, we're probably at a point where it's gonna be rare we see someone going to Western States like, oh, I can 80% this and win it. But maybe there is a way in terms of structuring either say like a three year plan where over the course of three years you're doing enough of both those skill sets that you're not having quite as much of a development need so that after Western States, it's not okay, now I need to become a mountain runner.
I'm already a pretty good mountain runner and now I just need to recover from Western states and do just enough to sharpen my skills for UTMB. Then [00:36:00] has that person who's got that kind of top of the sport talent and then I guess get a little lucky too, is probably the other part of it.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, I've often thought, like I do, I do uphill skiing throughout the winter and some winters I don't run much at all. And I've always thought that would be a good way to do it . You know, you're doing 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,000 feet of climbing a week, depending on the seventies a lot, but people do it.
That's not unheard of in the schema world at all. That really translates well to mountain running. And even for me this past year, I think I only ran 20 miles in January and February, or there's like a six week stretch heading into the states. It was only 20 miles. I wasn't even skiing that much. I was racing a lot.
But it keeps you fit and gives you a break from running. But I think it can really build mountain legs and. Wouldn't shock me if that kind of approach is what works for the double. [00:37:00] I could definitely see that being the case, but then I still think so much matters in between the two races of what you do.
It's so tempting to do too much. That's what I usually like to do. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it gets enticing because if you win Western states you're likely really excited to get back to training too, because I've always found, like when I have a really good race that draw to say, all right, I gotta get back into it.
Now I'm, you don't have that. Okay, I gotta talk myself back into this again in most cases. And then it's so you're riding that wave, which might be short-lived when you get midway through that build towards UTMB and then you realize, okay, I did too much. Now I'm kind of overcooked. And once you're overcooked you're basically done at UTMB at that point.
'cause you're gonna have to take an off season to really get yourself back into a position where you could compete at the top of that event in most cases. Yeah. Yeah. I do think the double is, I mean, it's a beautiful double, right? You got this like hot, fast, runnable, a hundred [00:38:00] miler, and then a slow cold overnight mountain, a hundred miler in the same summer and it's a, it feels like a worthy thing to try to tackle. That's why I did this last year. I was like, this is just, it's silly. Like it, yeah, ideally you don't run a hundred miler in late June in preparation for UTMB, but it's, to me , exciting. Like how do you change gears? How do you prioritize recovery and then get into training and not cook yourself well? That was really interesting to me.
It didn't matter to me. I had to drop out anyway, but.
Yeah I mean that might be the three year plan type of thing where it's okay, you're gonna need a few reps at this to really figure out where the balance is. Sort of the same thing with the ice and cooling. It's okay, there's a balance here between power weight, and there's a balance here between staying cool enough and if you can straight that that's where you're gonna do your best.
Maybe you just need a few reps at the Western and the UTMB to really figure out where that is. And then hopefully do that early enough in your career where you still [00:39:00] have the legs and the ambition to kind of keep going after that goal. Yeah, I don't know, with Ludo we'll be doing this still.
Yeah, that's true. 60 or something, like 20 more years. That's what I'm telling myself. It's a good mindset to have at the very least. Awesome. So you're really layered up, I guess, for Western States and UTMB next year. That's gotta be kind of what the calendar is focused around, I would imagine then.
Yeah, and I'm actually taking a year off from UTMB. Okay. Which was hard . You did say that. Yeah. Yeah. Hard decision to make. I keep getting worse at it. I've done it four times and seem to, the first year I was the least prepared and I've only gotten worse. And so talk about a three year plan.
Like I am taking spec, specifically taking time off this year to spend the next two years figuring out how to solve that UTMB puzzle. For me, there are some complicating factors. Like I get motion sick at night, and so [00:40:00] there's only so much of it I can control. There's everyone's oh, use a waste lamp.
I use a waist lamp. But the motion sickness makes fueling even mild motion sickness makes fueling next to impossible. And figuring out alternative foods to just carbs and then. That's the whole thing to figure out. And then also hydration becomes a confusing part of the puzzle. So the nighttime is challenging for me.
And if you notice all the races I've done well at have been in the daytime, not overnight ones. And I'm acknowledging that now and especially trying to spend the next two years cracking that code and figuring out how I can manage the nighttime. Are you thinking I'm trying to think running Rabbit Run maybe would be a good practice race for something like that?
'cause you're gonna get nighttime for their So similar timeframe. I've done rabbit run twice and not had motion sickness issues. The reason being run Rabbit run [00:41:00] is like, it's not this year, but it's usually clear and. UTMB, like it, it almost doesn't matter what preparation I've done. If it's like a whiteout on top of a pass, which it has been three or four years I've done it where like it's just foggy, you know?
Or it's raining and like the flashing in front of my eyes and I just become drunk. It's like I am useless. And there's, going through that doesn't actually help you get better at it. I've done physical therapy, vestibular therapy to essentially make yourself a little motion sick every day to increase your tolerance, but even that is not a guarantee that it's gonna work on race day because I can't just run in fog every day.
It's fairly debilitating. So trying to figure that out is interesting. I'll need some luck. All if a good, clear night I'm ready to rip. Sign me up. Yeah. That is kind of a funny variable. That is, it is similar to, I [00:42:00] had Killian Kerth on the podcast a while back and he, you know, he is been crushing these 200 milers recently, but he wants to crush Coca Donut, but he gets this weird allergic reaction on that course and he thinks he has a solution to it, but it's not I guarantee it's a solution.
So he is. I'm gonna try it and hopefully it works, but I'm not gonna end up in the ER again because of it. So if I feel it coming on, I'm just gonna have to bail 'cause I know where this goes. And it's just one of those things where what do you do? You know, you kind of don't, there's no clear answer 'cause it's not a universal problem that anyone's gonna try to solve and you kind of are left in your own laboratory trying to troubleshoot this interesting situation.
Yeah. And you know it, like I'm sure Killian wishes he didn't have that allergy and yeah, I wish I had an emotion sickness, but also it's kind of cool in that trail running is so diverse and there's I can race in the daylight or places that are sun, not sunny overnight, but clear overnight.
And like there are, there's so many places to test yourself. And I also just see UTMB has all these things that I am [00:43:00] bad at. And so it's really fun to try to figure out how to crack that code. And beyond just fitness, which is fitness wise I'm usually doing well until it gets dark. It's not just 'cause I'm going out too fast, it's the nighttime undoes me, so I'm figuring it out.
It'll be a multi-year plan. Yeah. I mean, it's just exciting that it isn't just like a perfect linear projection where it's oh, this person with a VO two max of this is gonna have this result. It's yeah that's a variable, but it's not all of them. And when you add 'em all up, sometimes you end up having to navigate things others aren't or just have 'em not add up perfectly for you.
Cool. So you ended the year with Ultra Trail Cape Town you got the win. So I found myself kind of closing things with a really optimistic experience, I imagine, but it wasn't a nice little hobby, jogging to the finish line. From what I understand, you had a little bit of a throw down in the final kilometers.
I wanted to tell us a little about how that kind of [00:44:00] played out. Yeah, it got pretty exciting. I had been leading the race for 35 miles and then I missed a turn into an eight station off the beach and just ended up at the end of this beach. And I was like, wait, and where's the race? And there's a live stream guy with me and he was like I don't know.
And I was like, oh no. I was just like, Hey, does anyone know where the race is? And they like pointed me back, you know? So I started running back, and I rejoined the course and I looked and I'm like, oh, there's Dmitri. My five minute lead is now 20 seconds. And yeah, I had to go to that aid station and I was thinking about it.
I was like there's nothing I can do about it. I'm still racing. I just have to race. I'm not permanently lost. That's great. But I knew Dmitri had, he was probably thinking he had just closed five minutes on me in a 10 mile section. And I figured he was pretty fired up from that. And sure enough he passed me [00:45:00] and got seven minutes ahead of me over the coming miles.
And I didn't see him for maybe two hours. And then on the final climb I looked up and he was like three minutes ahead of me and it just lit this fire in me. I, and I was pushing pretty hard already 'cause I had fallen back to third and so just moving second, I looked up, I saw Dmitri and I'm just.
I came all the way to South Africa, I better really empty the tank. And started just pushing really hard. And it's this really awfully named trail called the Contour Path, where you're like, oh, great, I'm just contouring along the mountain. It's gonna be chilly. And it is chilly for like a hundred meters.
And then there's just the story of UTCT, it's just everything that breaks your momentum. It's like there's all, you're running quickly along the contour path and then there's a little scramble you have to go over and then it's super tight switchbacks and it, there's [00:46:00] actually is a climb and like super chunky and just really hard to find a rhythm or push and like hard to make up time and also hard to see the person in front of you.
So I saw Dmitri like twice in the next three miles, and I just kept holding faith that I was closing in on him and kept pushing and pushing. And yeah, it came down to, I think I passed him with a mile and a half to go, and I was just outta my mind and running, we went five 30 past on this dirt road that was just like big baby head chunks on it.
Like they just, I mean, I don't know how neither of us broke our ankles or the camera runners. And I passed him and he went with me, which was also horrifying. And there was like 20 seconds where I was like, oh my God, I started kicking. And he's about, it's not gonna work. Like me, I cannot go faster. I also can't maintain this.
Like I am trying to break him and or pass him and break him and it might not work. And we started going this little [00:47:00] uphill, which felt like the biggest hill in the world and it felt like the whole race all of a sudden. I just felt that moment and it was like, oh my God, my legs don't work anymore.
And I could feel him kind of come up next to me. We crest this little hill and start going downhill again and. I'm like yelling and just everything is out there. Then I hear him wail. And for some reason I thought it sounded different than when he'd yelled in the past. I mean, we were at it and I glanced back and there was a little gap and I was like, oh my God, that yell was my gap.
That's it. Yeah. I gotta, I can't stop pushing. And yeah, I ended up beating him by 30 seconds, so he really didn't slow down that much. I didn't think I'd win until I literally crossed the line and I was like, oh my God, I stayed in front of him. Yeah. That was horrible and awesome. It's almost like I would say in those situations, [00:48:00] I always think regardless of who I'm cheering for.
Or if not cheering for anyone, just like if someone goes off course and then finds their way back on and then loses that battle, I'm always like, oh this, what if, kind of a thing. It's kind of nice that you're able to pull off the win with a little bit of a detour because, you know, 30 seconds is easily something you can find some space when you go off course, you definitely can, but in general you can find like opportunities where oh, if I would've done this a little differently, I would've been a little further up.
Yeah. And that, I mean, for hours I just kept telling myself like, you have to make that time back up. If you lose by anything less than five minutes, you lose this race. Yeah, this is your fault. And I just kept thinking, you know, when Dmitri caught me at mile 36 or 37, I was, I just kept telling myself, it's okay.
You put five minutes on him in the first half. Just keep running what you've been doing and you'll finish five minutes ahead instead of 10. And. I kept [00:49:00] kind of trying to find solace there or just keep doing what I was doing and I'll be good, but then he put seven minutes on me. So I had a kinda, but that mindset there, that, that mindset is probably what helped you stay close enough to be able to do what you eventually did because if you get too excited at that point and try to make that all up in the next like 10 k then maybe you're the one getting kicked down at the end versus the one kind of surging to the finish line.
Totally. Yeah. I had another moment where Nibi with eight miles to go, it was before the last aid station Matt Healy, who's from South Africa, he I just heard something behind me and looked and I was like, oh my God, there's a person. And it was one of those moments, like your heart just, your stomach just drops.
You're like I thought I was alone. I thought I had a cushion. Oh no. And I kind of realized I'd been complacent for the last 30 minutes and I was like, shit. I'm about to get third and Matt, you know, we start taking off and then he ends up dropping me like a sack of potatoes. And so I'm in third going to the last aid station and I was like, dude, I'm [00:50:00] gonna get fourth.
I like, I bet someone's coming up right behind me. And like my stomach did not feel, I felt really bloated for 40 minutes randomly and it passed. But I was like, I don't think I've eaten anything to the finish. I don't know where this is gonna come from. I don't think I'm gonna get a fourth.
And my wife was teasing me because I was fourth at Canyons this year, fourth at states. And I was also fourth at the rut, 28 K, which I hopped in. And I could just hear her voice being like, Jeff just don't get fourth again, like joking. And I'm in third place not feeling great. I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna get fourth again.
Damn it. And it definitely lit a fire under my butt, whereas like I, I have to claw my way back up there. I have to. It's funny. What little things that you wouldn't think would be a motivator, become a motivator like that? Going into the race? What are the odds that you're thinking? At some point I'm gonna find myself in fourth place, and that's gonna be my motivation to push up and keep the pedal down and eventually move into [00:51:00] Hearst.
Yeah. Yeah. Something fun too. My coach John Fitzgerald, he will tell people to dedicate a climb to someone. And that last climb, I'd already thought, I was like, I'm dedicating that to Madison, my wife. I was like, I, it's like she's not here with me. I miss her and it'll be fun just to think of her on that last climb.
And that last climb was where I moved back into second, looked up and saw Dmitri, and it's a steep, it's always hot, exposed climb. And I was just like, I have to run, like this is my last climb. I have to empty myself. Like me, I don't wanna be able to climb another foot by the time I get to the top of this thing.
And I feel like. Thinking about Madison and just grounded me in that moment of just I don't know, my, your mind's all over the place thinking about the race and eating gels and drinking water. And it was just like, no, I'm right here. Just grind to the top of this climb. You have loved ones, you're not alone.
You know, and that was really fun and I'm so appreciative. John told me [00:52:00] that. And then, yeah, fun to run the last one for Madison's last climb. I love that. I think that is such a smart approach, just to have those things preloaded because I think there's just a cognitive loading thing going on with a lot of these long races too, where like you're gonna drain your mental bandwidth at a certain point and then you just don't have anything left to give mentally, regardless of whether you're physically, you know, have it or not.
And if you do some work ahead of time and do some visualization or go in with what you and your coach came up with was like, you already have those loaded up and ready to go. So you're not like digging for those and spending mental bandwidth trying to figure out how to motivate yourself. You already know what you're gonna lean into or you have a small list of things to pull from that you've pre-planned for.
So you're not hunting for those and spending that bandwidth while you're out there having it as a finite resource. Yeah, totally. And I mean, my mind was mush. I wasn't thinking it was, if you asked me who the president was, I probably couldn't tell you. Like me, I was [00:53:00] just, all I could think about was trying to get myself to the finish line as fast as possible.
And so entering that last climb and it's like, it's like I passed a gate that was like, Hey, remember this one was for Madison and it just brought me back down to real life for a second. And yeah, it's really cool. Awesome. So I imagine you're in the off season now after that race. Yeah, so part of the reason I did that race, I've toed around with it for a while 'cause it's such a, you know, spectacular place, tough to get to.
But it was late and I did that race so that I could lean into the off season right now and tomorrow my wife and I head on our honeymoon, so Oh, nice. I won't have to train, which I'm thrilled for. Yeah. Taking it easy for a couple weeks. Yeah. Cool. Are you guys going somewhere exciting? Back to the southern hemisphere?
Headed to New Zealand oh, that's where my wife and I honeymooned. Oh, awesome. Yeah we're super jazzed. Hang, I skied this morning hanging up the skis and fleeing to summer. Yeah. So you're gonna [00:54:00] do both the north and south island, or are you gonna pick a spot and kind of dive in a little deeper?
We'll do a little road trip on the north island for a week and then. I think it was like three weeks on the South island, kind of in one spot. Perfect. And we'll, you know, do stuff from there. Yeah. It's nice to be able to have that timeframe because I've talked to other people who've done it and they said you probably need about three weeks to really thoroughly explore both the north and south.
We actually went two different times. One was our honeymoon and the other was around Terra. So we did the north island the first time in the south island the second time, and. It is pretty easy to sightsee though, like you can get a car and you can drive basically all over the north island really effortlessly and see a ton of stuff in a relatively short period of time.
But getting 'em both done is a multi-week process. I think if you wanna really ring that sponge dry. Yeah. And she's in graduate school right now, so it's a hard [00:55:00] winter break, so we're making use of that time with an off season and enjoying a good chunk of time down there. Very cool. I got one more question kind of for you in terms of just how you're like looking at things and I'd be curious, like when you come off season, do you have a scaffolding of the type of training you're gonna do leading into Western states in terms of just different things you tend to prioritize?
Or is it more of alright, let's figure out where my fitness is at and where the strengths and weaknesses are and start attacking from that angle. All of the above. And it's that I'm notoriously bad at having an off season. Normally I tell myself my off season's, like after my last fall race, and then it'll snow and then I just go haywire on skis.
And so I never have as much of an off season as I'd like. And then when I start running more, it always, I'm always coming at it from a different place, which is, it keeps it interesting. This will be, you know, not skiing mid-December to [00:56:00] mid-January is a new thing for me. I'll be running, you know, I'll start running while I'm in New Zealand, but normally I transition to a lot of skiing and that won't be in the picture this year as much.
I'll come back, I'll definitely ski but we'll probably run a bit more. January, February, I'll probably race. I'm looking at the KIATI one 20 K in March. Oh, nice. Gold. I like doing golden ticket races without needing a golden ticket. It's good mental training to chill in a high pressure environment.
And so I'll run a bit more just with that in mind. And you know, right now, like my coach and I are looking at what worked well from training last year that we want to repeat and then what feels like areas where I can improve. And really kinda getting the nitty gritty of, oh look, I was telling you like when I was wondering with Killian, I was like, I am, I'm losing too much time on these climbs.
How do I get that back? And you know, focusing on some more uphill specific stuff and I think that'll be a [00:57:00] big focus this spring. But yeah, I'll, I can usually get up to higher volume fairly quickly. And then I love high volume and I joke that if I didn't do this professionally, I'd run 150 miles a week every week until I just broke in half one day.
Just zone two all day, every day. Oh yeah. I mean, I love it so much. Doing this for a living makes me do less of it, which is funny. Which is probably good too. Yeah, that is funny. I can have friends that way. Yeah. Yeah. It's oh shoot, I have to stop training and do something else. Yeah. Are you, do you do any sort of structured interval stuff for earlier in the year to kinda work on the top end?
Yep. Yep. And that'll actually be, I'll do a little bit of that while I'm in New Zealand. Yeah. Shorter, faster stuff, which I really don't touch on a ton, so it'd be nice to do that. And what's kind of fun? S schmo racing, they're like sick threshold workouts, right? It's just a lot, some of the races are just every Thursday night we've got a little local series here and it's about 45 minutes to 50 minutes of [00:58:00] racing.
And I mean, it's just going all out for 50 minutes. It's so much fun and you get kind of a break when you descend for a minute, but you're going like 50 miles an hour, just like trying not to fall. And so it's really fun. And Schmo is often where I do some of my higher end stuff. You know, shorter intervals, higher intensity.
Yeah. The awesome thing about long ultra marathons is like you can do a lot of that higher end of the aerobic intensity spectrum on non-running like devices because it's like you don't really need the mechanical necessity of that the way you would if you're running like a 5K or 10K or any Olympic distance type thing.
So yeah, if you can get it from skiing, cycling, you know, any of that stuff, it feeds in, I think a lot more clean, a lot cleaner than it maybe would if you had to actually run a race at those intensities. Definitely. And you know, January, February or so is my time for that shorter stuff, you know, touch on it early season but definitely touch on it and then move into.
Get more [00:59:00] specific still on the workouts. Yeah. Awesome. Jeff, it's been great to chat with you. I've had an exciting time following your racing the last year or so and kind of watching you kind of progress through the sport and it's been fun to kind of hear from you how things were kind of working within all of that.
Yeah, thanks so much and thanks for having me on and fun to chat through all of this. Perfect. Yeah. Before I let you go, if you want, you wanna let the listeners know where they can find you if you have a website or social media or anything that you're hanging out at. Yeah, I am on Strava and Instagram and I have a Substack that's probably the most interesting place.
Very cool. I can definitely link all those to the show notes, so if you wanna check out what Jeff's up to on any of those platforms, head to the show notes and click on over. Awesome, Jeff. You have a great time in New Zealand.