the school of hard knocks will teach you that w/ strenuous +1 hour activities you will be losing electrolytes to your detriment, the longer the activity the worse off your going to be- straight water isn't going to cut it on long runs

my post exercise drink (talking home not on the trail :)) is a homemade smoothy that contains a cup of nonfat yogurt, orange juice, a banana, an egg, a cup of frozen mixed fruits (buy it at Cosco) that has strawberry, mango, pineapple and papaya and scoop of whey protein

I take three endurolytes caps w/ the smoothy

the taste is good enough I could sell these at a booth :)

Edited by mtwarden on 05/03/2012 07:10:23 MDT.

In addition to electrolytes, which you can get from an Emergency-C or similar instant electrolyte fizzy drink, you'll need protein. I recommend always carrying the post-endurance event recovery sports drink of your choice that has the right ratio of carbs, protein and fats.

Of course everybody is different so the exaact amount will vary with the size and fitness of the individuals as well as the environmental conditions. IMHO, that means arguing about it here as if one answer fits all is kinda silly and smacks of one-upmanship. And as far as nobody in the sports world getting it right, well I wouldn't tell anybody involved in the Tour de France that! Just because technology is continually changing, doesn't mean the current thinking and products are completely wrong.

Endurox and Hammer Gel make some good ones for average endurance athletes, but there are so many on the market, a trip to the local running, cycling or triathlon store may be in order.

My 2 cents - I'm still fscinated at how many avid hikers on this and otther forums have yet to discover that from nutrion, to shoes, to clothes, runners have been donning UL and SUL items for decades now. A lot of the materials introduced in hiking gear (and priced quite high) have originated from these other endurance sports communities. And better quality items are a lot cheaper in the running stores than from backpacking sources as a result.

So before plunking down several hundred dollars for the latest cuben fiber SUL wind shrirt or rain jacket, you'll be surprised to see what a similar quality SUL runner's jacket sells for - hint about 1/3 the price!

Edited by veganaloha on 05/03/2012 04:32:15 MDT.

Reviewing the threads, I think maybe SUCCEED S Caps (or better, Salt Stick?) might be best for me. I can go with water, and add caps based on conditions or feel. They say if you feel your stomach slosh, you need electrolytes. I've felt that.

Interesting:

Succeed S Tab: 341 mg Sodium, 21 mg Potassium

Salt Stick Capsules: 215 mg Sodium, 63 mg Potassium, plus other presumably good stuff

12 oz. Original V-8: 600 mg Sodium, 670 mg Potassium, plus other known good stuff

Man, I am getting the potassium from V-8.

John

Update : fix copy paste error

Edited by JohnJ on 05/03/2012 10:49:43 MDT.

Unless you're toeing the line against Patrick Makau, I really think the average person will get by just fine with a normal diet and simply remembering to drink a lot after a hard effort. I've done a good deal of research and reading on Kenyan distance runners and have always come away absolutely amazed and humbled by how casual they are about their diets, training regimens, etc. They eat regular whole food, not too much, and drink a lot of water. Supplements are alien to them.

I think we tend to SERIOUSLY overcomplicate things out here.

I speak from experience here. I went through Running Overcomplication Syndrome BIG TIME when training for my first marathon (Mind you, I completely failed on that first marathon attempt, didn't even make the starting line. I was so wracked with different forms of training anxiety and injury, my first marathon didn't happen until the following year, only after I learned to relax and start to run the way that felt natural to me). I was out slogging 12 minute miles with a heart rate monitor on, checking my splits, watching my "zone", listening to beeps on the watch, timing my calorie and fluid intake, obsessing over electrolytes, worrying about my footwear, strapping on Batman-like utility belts full of gels and fluorescent colored fluids...

I seriously started feeling like an absolute chump. Those days are over for me (well, I do often still feel like a chump, but for other reasons now). Since when did it become so complicated to simply go out and run or take a hike?

Kenyan schoolchildren would be chuckling at us.

"My 2 cents - I'm still fscinated at how many avid hikers on this and otther forums have yet to discover that from nutrion, to shoes, to clothes, runners have been donning UL and SUL items for decades now."

+1 I would also add long distance biking especially in regards to nutrition.

One reason that this area seems to have so much varying opinion is because there is a huge spectrum of "need" based on the trips and events that folks are doing. The 10 mile a day backpacker won't have to optimize nutrition at all whereas someone shooting for sustained 40+ mile days had better have all aspect of nutrition dialed in. I know as I have bumped up my level of intensity over the years I continue to find new weak points in my nutrition plan that I have to address. I'm sure that will continue for some time to come.

Susan... I've noticed that price difference somewhat with gear/clothing and with items like Clif Bloks and GU.

Craig out of curiosity, on our GC run were you taking any electrolyte supplements at all? I think my nausea bout at mile 26 was possibly due to lack of sodium (this gleaned from several ultra running articles) even though I was taking endurolytes regularly (1-2 every hour), many advocate a much higher dose- in the neighborhood of 350mg/hour (I was getting roughly a third of that)

next long run I'm going to try a higher dose of Sodium, clearly something was wrong w/ my "plan", I prefer not to suffer through three hours of nausea my next long run :)

Mike

No electrolytes for me, other than what would be found in gels or some Perpetuem.
I did eat about 2 oz. of Fritos, but that was already at ~30 miles.

I've actually been reading a few interesting articles about eating/drinking during exercise, all by elite distance runners, all arguing for actually training on fewer calories in order to teach the body to require less during an event. Makes a lot of sense, especially as an elite, to want to minimize how many calories you need during a race/hard effort. They argue essentially teaching the body to try to run on less food and water, and to pschologically get comfortable with that. I was experimenting with this during a lot of my longer runs. I really do believe now that you can teach yourself to be too reliant on too many calories or visa versa, within limits. I know I now carry half as much food and water during training than I did when I started. I think people get a lot of unnecessary anxiety over calories. But who am I? :)

On the post-exercise note, at the R2R2R, pizza and beer certainly seemed to be the post run fuel of choice for everyone...I didn't have anything else except a quart of water before bed. Breakfast for me was coffee followed by an IPA :) Recovered just fine.

I would have to disagree with your Dr also. I have a doctorate in Nutrition and have treated hi level athletes for many years and I always get a better response with the right portion of electrolytes with plain water. The real issue is how you get that balance. Salt, potassium and magnesium being the most important ones to replace immediately. Calcium is stored in the bones so there is a large supply available. Of course you want to replace it but it's not as important as the others during say a marathon. With the majority of Mg being stored in the muscles it's one of the first to be fully depleted along with salt and then Potassium. You can lose large amounts of salt during vigorous exercise. That's why pedialyte for infants tastes salty(unless you buy the fake sweetened one which I don't recommend). And gatorade has very little of any of this. It's just sugar water. The RDA for potassium is 3500mg and I checked 1 type of gatorade and it has 35mg. And the RDA is too low. Optimal daily allowance for this nutrient is much higher. So 35 is just a drop in the bucket. Sodium RDA is 2400. Gatorade is 110 for sodium.
During a hot race an athlete can lose 1 liter/hr of water and there is about 3000mg of salt/liter of sweat. To get enough salt from gatorade you would have to drink about 1.5 gallons/hr or something like that. You would be severely dehydrated though due to all the sugar.
They have tested the Ironman finishers and 40% of them are dehydrated and hyponatremic.

Craig W. said -
"I've actually been reading a few interesting articles about eating/drinking during exercise, all by elite distance runners, all arguing for actually training on fewer calories in order to teach the body to require less during an event. Makes a lot of sense, especially as an elite, to want to minimize how many calories you need during a race/hard effort. They argue essentially teaching the body to try to run on less food and water, and to pschologically get comfortable with that."

Training can reduce your caloric Intake requirements. As you become more efficient your body is better able to metabolize fat at higher exertion levels. Elite women distance runners can approach 50% of their caloric requirements from metabolizing fat. The Total caloric requirements remain the same though.

I don't believe this extrapolates to fluid and electrolyte requirements. Calcium, yes as it can be sourced from bone. But sodium, potassium, etc. are not stored.

Edited by greg23 on 05/03/2012 17:03:27 MDT.

alan and others!
while good ole' fashioned h2O may hold substantial merit,
the bitter truth remains:
i'm easily bored with it!
besides coconut water (which i believe qualifies as an optimal post-exercise refreshment),
what other drink measures work well?
often i'll douse my water with fresh squeezed lemon or lime,
or in summer, will brew loose-leaf herbal tea for something soothing and nourishing.
(most herbal teas are vitamin/min. rich)
i typically don't purchase sports drinks and the like
(kombucha i drink after exercise sometimes as well)...
but plain ole' aqua, as good as it may be,
sometimes just doesn't hit the spot.
anyone else?
lt

About 50% of magnesium is stored in the skeleton and the other 50% is stored in soft tissues include skeletal muscle, liver, heart muscle. That means most magnesium is stored in the skeletal system. It's doubtful that magnesium will be depleted first in a marathon in the healthy runner.

Edited by jshann on 05/03/2012 12:35:01 MDT.

The most important thing to remember about Mg is that it is involved in 250+ reactions in the body behind Zinc which is 300+. These are two nutrients you don't want to run low on. Low Mg levels are highly associated with heart attacks. Just think of those athletes that drop on the field and have heart attacks out of nowhere. It's also highly involved in the kreb's cycle which is for energy production so letting it run low in extreme exertion is not good.

What's missing are data on rates of loss versus replenishment of Ca and Mg from bones during and after exercise. Alan gave numbers for Na in sweat. I take it that replacement of useful Mg from bones doesn't occur fast enough for the endurance athlete.

Until I get better source info, I'm inclined to go with recommendations from say, Hammer on good replenishment protocols during and after exercise. For a typical 165 lb male, 500-600 kcal/hour exertion, moderate temperatures, and multi-hour effort, they recommend 3 caps of their Endurolytes product per hour:
Na 120mg
Cl 180mg
Ca 150mg
Mg 75mg
K 75mg
Mn 48mg
and a whopping 10 times the RDA for B-6 per hour.

And for poor Leslie who only wanted tasty drink suggestions, I like weak Emergen-C to slake my thirst, or sun tea if I'm so lucky to have remembered to have some brewing.

+1 on the fewer calories Greg M.

Endurance athletes know this. Yet with long distance hikers there is the constant advice to just keep shoveling in calories no matter what their nutrient profile is. While eating snickers is great and all, cramming in 3500 calories worth of simple sugar versus 3500 calories garnerd from a good mix of quality protein, carbs, fat, vitamins, minerals and water (which are the 6 basic nutrients needed by humans) is hardly the right thing to do.

I get that the best food is the stuff you'll actually want to eat, that's why I advocate a variety of whole food items as well as a good quality meal replacement and a sports drink mix to ensure quality nutrition instead of just looking at total calories. By doing this, you actually need less calories to sustain your activity and to recover from exertion. Of course, like any endurance athlete, you actually have to train this way in advance to dial in your nutrition plan and to have your body adapt, especially to taking in calories while you're moving, ie. eating while you hike. A well-conditioned body will use calories more efficiently and then need less. total calories to preform work.

For hikers, this also means you carry less and your food budget is less. Bonus and bonus!

That said, I do love a cold, dark beer and a good pizza as a reward, first meal in town.

Cheers,
Susan

"The funny thing is when you call most of these sports drink manufacturers, they don't even have a clue what you're talking about when you ask about the osmolality of their product."

That is very likely because you're talking to a front office type. If you analyze the label on Hammer Perpetuem, for instance, or First Endurance's Ultragen, I think you will find there is a method to their madness that would indicate that, somewhere within the bowels of their respective organizations, there is someone who probably has a clue as to what osmolality means. I mention these two companies because I have had a lot of experience with their abovementioned products, as have others I know. We have all found them highly effective as compared to what were using beforehand. If anyone checks out the nutrition label on Ultragen, they will notice that it contains 60 grams of GLUCOSE per serving. It has never caused me any trouble at the end of long days backpacking, nor anybody else I know of. It definitely improves my recovery, as evidenced by how I feel the next morning after a long, hard day of hiking as compared to before I started using it. YMMV, and there may be better options out there that I am unaware of. My reason for this post is primarily to dispel the notion that everybody at every sports drink company is either clueless, a charlatan, or both. I simply know better from experience, my own and others.

Tom,
Perhaps there has been a change -

"Total Carbohydrate (100% from Dextrose) 60g"

I don't have a clue how dextrose compares to glucose.

"During a hot race an athlete can lose 1 liter/hr of water and there is about 3000mg of salt/liter of sweat. To get enough salt from gatorade you would have to drink about 1.5 gallons/hr or something like that. You would be severely dehydrated though due to all the sugar."

Pedialyte contains 1035 mg NA/liter, per their website. This means an athlete would have to drink 3 liters of Pedialyte/hour to replace 3000 mg og NA. I doubt that is realistic either. Do you have a solution, or is the idea just to keep the deficiency within physiologically tolerable limits?

One solution is to make your own "electrolyte caps" by filling "Double Ought" gelatine capsules with "Lite Salt" plus what ever else you want. One capsule with regular salt contains about 500 grams of sodium.

I take two (regulars) per every liter of "re-fill" water. And then adjust as needed, depending on how I feel, moderated by my training experiences. I get enough potassium from race day bananas.

Doing capsules lets you moderate and balance water versus electrolytes. It's the same reason my "phood" is separate from my water.

Edited by greg23 on 05/03/2012 17:20:43 MDT.

"all arguing for actually training on fewer calories in order to teach the body to require less during an event. Makes a lot of sense, especially as an elite, to want to minimize how many calories you need during a race/hard effort. They argue essentially teaching the body to try to run on less food and water, and to pschologically get comfortable with that."

I have to agree with Greg M on this one, Craig. It requires a certain amount of clories to do a certain amount of work, in this case moving a certain amount of weight(the runner) a certain distance(the race). That is basic physics. It is a question of where the calories come from. The higher a person's VO2 max, the greater their capacity to derive the required calories from body fat, thereby reducing the requirement for dietary calories. He and several others have it nailed on electrolytes, as well. Your experience during R2R2R was distorted by the cold weather. If it were as hot as it typically is, you would very likely been in deep doo doo without supplemental electrolytes. I hope you give this some serious consideration in your planning for any ultra you do where the weather is expected to be hot. My 2 cents.