Type 4 Fun!

I finished the mountain running championship in 256th place. We will kindly ignore the fact that anyone can run and there were only 279 finishers.

The fact that it was a USATF Mountain Running championship is noteworthy simply as a fan of the sport. The caliber of the runners was exquisite and included a few friends, just being there was great time.

I’ll get right into the nitty gritty details. and then expand into nutrition and planning.

9.7 miles with 3,261 feet of vertical gain completed in 2:54:02

https://www.strava.com/activities/14673898395

This was a two loop, up and down course.

The first lap passed by in about an hour which was slightly behind schedule which didn’t bode well as it was on paper (and in reality) the easier of the two loops. If found myself feeling tired way too early but it did mean I was hiking and alert when the elite women’s field came trucking through. The front runners passed us by before we even made it to Mt. Sunapee!

The second loop was a slightly longer and significantly more technical and also featured a summit of Mt. Sunapee. There was a flatter section towards the top of the climb and before a repeat of the descent back to resort. It was also far sloppier and included a full on creek crossing. Unfortunately, I was pretty well gassed and wasn’t able to to much running until the big descent.

There was quite a bit of rain in the area recently, so the entire course was slick with mud. Mud certainly adds to the whimsy of the race, it also added to the challenge of keeping solid footing on the climbs and maintaining balance on the fast descents. I didn’t fall nor did I see anyone fall but there was much slippage and I definitely found myself breaking and descending a bit more gingerly than I might otherwise.

While I was about a full hour slower than my goal had been, I remained uninjured and had a lot of fun so all in all I have to say it was a great day. Could have been just a tad warmer. Too cool for me to comfortably wear a singlet but too warm for long sleeves.

Already aware that my training has been lackluster thus far for reasons, there are still some key takeaways from this race.

The first and perhaps most crucial is how I handled my nutrition the morning of the race. I often eat too much at breakfast or eat too close to the race start so that if I’m not already hyperglycemic, my blood sugar is still rising at the start of a race. I’ve begun to suspect recently that this starts me at a disadvantage as I can not consume additional calories early on in a race without spiking my BG even more.

Sunapee Scramble was a good opportunity to test this theory as it has a later start time at 9:00am. Historically, I’ve given myself the bare minimum amount of time to get ready in order to maximum the amount of sleep I can try to get before an early race start (7:00am or earlier). Pre-race nerves exacerbates an already generalized sleeping problem, so I never end up getting a good night’s rest before a race.

I woke up at 5:00am in order to ensure that I complete my breakfast with enough time for my blood sugar to restabilize before the start of the race. I also kept breakfast simple with a oatmeal cup from Kodiak (230 calories, 37g carb; 4g fiber, 12g sugar – 11g added).

About an hour before the race my BG had stabilized, so I kept a banana handy in the event that I started to feel hungry before the race started. Fortunately, I did not need it so I could maintain my experiment.

Predictably, my blood sugar started increasing almost immediately upon heavy exertion and would continue to climb well out of range for around an hour to hour and a half before starting to come back down. Unfortunately, I was already feeling pretty low energy at the start of the race so it would be difficult to draw any conclusions about how this spike impacted my performance in the first half.

Nearly 3/4 of the way through the race I decided to take in some calories, I consumed a UCAN mocha flavored gel. I’ve been trying UCAN out a lot as their marketing suggests the starch they use has a lower glycemic index than other more popular starches like maltodextrin.

I haven’t come to any conclusions about UCAN yet however I can say that I will avoid the mocha flavored variety. For the second time, the mocha UCAN gel has seriously inflamed my throat.

On a training run a few months ago I consumed a mocha UCAN gel and had an extreme reaction to it. The UCAN gels have a graininess and it felt like I had some of these grains were stuck and cutting my throat. I chugged water, hacked up mucus, coughed, cleared my throat and whatever else to try to alleviate it but it would linger for hours. It was painful too, my eyes watered, my nose ran and I ultimately cut that run short.

I had hoped this was just a fluke as I had consumed other flavors of UCAN without issue, however after consuming the mocha flavor again during this race I had another bad reaction. It was not as severe as the first time, but it was still very uncomfortable. The coughing and hacking was an very unwelcome distraction.

Fingers crossed it is limited to the mocha flavor.

As far as the blood sugar impact, the UCAN gel contains 100 calories and 33g of carbs (no sugar). My blood sugar was in range and declining at the time of consumption but was still around 150 mg/dL. The fact that the gel didn’t immediately cause my BG to climb back up appears to be an affirmation of their marketing. However, in the last approximately 30 minutes of the race – when the final push and eventually the long descent into the finish occurs – a spike is clearly there. While the spike caused by the gel was smaller than the oatmeal breakfast – which did contain more carbs, as well as added sugar – it was still around 50 mg/dL which could be impactful in high or low BG scenarios.

The jury is still out on UCAN for gel nutrition.

I’m currently pretty sore still, a couple of days removed, but I am looking forward to the next race; The Edge Hill 50k in Ashfield, MA on June 21st. This will be a bigger test of my fitness and will help inform some decisions regarding later events.