answer page

Questions from Tracy Thomas:

Q: When making a gel out of your products, does heating the water to “near boiling” as you
suggest, kill any of the nutrients in the product? And…

Q: What happens if you are unable to consume the product within 24 hours? For example, if you
have to mix it up the night before a 100 and put it in drop bags and you don’t get to it for say 36
hours on the next night during your 100?

A. No, the nutrients are quite robust. Vitamin B5 is affected by heat, but the mixing procedure
doesn' t maintain the heat, so the B5 in the drinks should be ok.

A. 36 hours in the heat is tough on any drink. Some runners report having good luck with freezing
the drinks in a bottle ( not 100% full - leave room for drink expansion on freezing ), and then putting
them in a drop bag.
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Questions from Herman Richards:

In the recent exchange on the List Jonathan Toker wrote:

"Note that Karl King has no problem suggesting the use of 24
capsules of Succeed over 24 hours (equivalent to about 18g of sodium),
but he objects to the inclusion of Vitamin D in SaltStick Caps because
he handily demonstrates that it exceeds a 2000 cal/day diet. "

It seems to me that the large amounts of sodium taken in would be leaving your body through
sweat, but what about the Vitamin D? Is Vitamin D water soluble? Is it metabolized at the same rate
as the sodium?

A. Large amounts of sodium are lost in sweat, so we have to replace sodium as we go.

Vitamin D is not water soluble, it is fat soluble and stored in the liver where it is doled out as
needed by body processes. Thus you need not take it during an ultra - before is fine.

The use of Vitamin D has nothing to do with sodium use. The two are essentially independent,
which is why it makes no sense to pace Vitamin D to sodium intake.

There is calcium in SaltStick and Vitamin D helps in absorption of calcium, but let's look at the
numbers. You don't have to be a PhD to see the problem. One capsule supplies 2% of the Daily
Value of calcium, but 25% of the Daily Value of Vitamin D. There's a major excess of Vitamin D
relative to the calcium that has to be processed.

Consider the runner who takes 24 S! Caps in a 100 mile run. To get the same amount of sodium,
that runner would have to take 38 SaltStick caps. Those 38 caps would contain 83.6% of the Daily
Value of calcium, and 950% of the Daily Value of Vitamin D. Taking more than 500% of the DV has no
benefit, only risk.

Ultra runners generally do not need any additional Vitamin D. 20 to 30 minutes per WEEK in the
sunshine is enough to get you your Vitamin D for the week. Most runners get more than that in one
daytime run.
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Question from Dan Hazen & Shannon Wells

Received our order this week. I use the Ultra and Amino products currently. (Great stuff). In
regards to the clip-2, when mixing and refrigerating, how many days will the product stay drinkable
after mixing?

A. It will be drinkable for 2-3 days, but the flavor will degrade after 1 to 1.5 days. If you intend to
keep it for a while, it is important to mix in clean containers. Remember, this is highly nutritious to
you and to any bugs lying in wait.

If you want to keep it for more than a day or two, consider freezing any un-used portion. Some
runners have good luck freezing the drink in bottles ( don't fill them 100% full ), and putting the
frozen bottles in drop bags.
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Q. How much magnesium and calcium is lost in sweat compared to normal body stores and dietary
intake? I know sweat has quite a bit of sodium and chloride, and some potassium, but I'm curious to
know how much of these other minerals are lost. And..

How well absorbed are supplemental magnesium and calcium? I recall reading once that they were
best absorbed from leafy green vegetables, rather than pills or compounds.

A. Only small amounts of magnesium and calcium are lost in sweat compared to sodium and
potassium. The amounts relative to total body stores are miniscule because calcium and
magnesium can be released from the bones in minutes if needed.

From Noakes, Lore of Running, the mmol of electrolyte/Liter of sweat for a fit but unacclimatized
subject are:

Sodium          60
Chloride        40
Potassium     6
Magnesium   1.5

Calcium didn't make the list. Including calcium and/or magnesium in an electrolyte supplement is
just for show, in my opinion, and has no discernable value to the runner.

Again, I'll refer to the reference:

Macroelements, Water, and Electrolytes in Sports Nutrition
Edited by Drikell and Wolinsky   ISBN0-8493-8196-7

Chapter 10 Magnesium, Phosphate, and Calcium Supplementation and Human Physical
Performance by Henry C. Lukasi

Let me summarize the findings on magnesium:

Athletes who are magnesium deficient do show considerable improvement in response to
increased magnesium intake, but the intake has to be over WEEKS not just what's taken on race day.

Athletes who are NOT deficient in magnesium show "no improvement in running performance, as
well as no increase in resistance to muscle damage or muscle function. These findings confirm
that magnesium supplementation per se does not enhance physiological function or performance
when magnesium status is normal."

Bottom line, runners should be sure to get adequate supplies of magnesium on a daily basis, and
not look for a supplement the day of the race to bail them out. One good dose on race day isn't
going to be enough.

As for Calcium:

Since you have an enormous supply of calcium in the bones, and biochemical mechanisms to use
that supply to maintain plasma calcium, supplementation in a race is of little benefit. Once again,
the athlete should work to have an adequate daily intake over weeks and months, rather than use
abnormal amounts of day-of-race supplementation.

From the reference: "The findings summarized in this review confirm the results of large-scale
surveys of athletes who received vitamin and mineral supplements. The generalized use of
supplemental magnesium, phosphate, and calcium does not support performance improvements if
individual athletes have adequate nutritional status."

A serious runner should maintain good calcium and magnesium intake all through training.

The reference also discusses problems with taking large amounts of supplemental magnesium and
calcium. Basically, that can interfere with normal absorption of phosphate and iron. That's much
less likely to happen when the minerals are obtained from food.

Q. Don't you need real food in a long ultra?

A. First of all, what is "real" food? Are Coke, M&Ms, pretzels and Snickers
"real" food? From which tree were they picked? How about condensed milk or
Ensure - are those "real"? How about honey - is it "real" or is it from the
Bee factory? Is anything from MickeyD's "real"?

A mathematician would say that this is a complex issue, so there must be a
real part and an imaginary part. Finishing a 100 miler on imaginary food
would be difficult indeed.

Muscle fibers use Adenosine Tri Phosphate for their energy requirements. Is
ATP real food? Mitochondria produce ATP from molecules such as glucose,
acetyl coenzyme A, and individual amino acids. Are those real food? At these
molecular levels, the body does not know or care where the molecules came
from.

In the digestive tract, what we eat is ripped apart by hydrochloric acid and a
host of enzymes. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich does not ooze unchanged
through the walls of the small intestine. For food to be taken up by the
blood stream, it must be in very simple forms, which come from digested, or
broken down, food. You can input the food as pizza or as a simple mix of
carb, fat, protein, vitamins and minerals. Your digestive tract will process
as needed, which may be a lot, or it may be very little if the bulk of the
work is already done before you eat.

The debate of "real" or something else is missing the point. Which is, that
for good digestion and energy flow, the body needs a mix of carbs, fat and
protein in "normal" proportions. What is "normal"?

Studies of Tour de France finishers show a remarkably similar macro nutrient
profile despite the fact that different riders make different food choices.
What they take is 7-10% protein, about 20% fat, with the rest coming from
carbohydrate. One can concoct all the advertising hype and bs about 30-30-40
plans, but when high performance is required, "real" people do not use
30-30-40. My experience and study suggest that 10-15-75 ( protein, fat, carbo
) is a workable choice for 100 mile runs. Very fast, competitive runners may
need more carbs than that.

Nearly all of the "energy" products on the market do not come close to
meeting that kind of profile. Exceed, PowerBar, GU, etc either have
insufficient fat, protein or both. The problem isn't that they aren't "real",
it is that they are not formulated for being the sole source of energy in a
very long event. And, some of them have ingredients such as fructose that
will ruin one's digestion during the event. There are a
lot of runners out there who had a miserable run or a DNF not because of their
training or the course, but because they consumed a
poorly designed energy product.

Most people run long ultras with too little fat and protein. The stomach and
small intestine become overly acid, and nausea is the result, with puking the
final chapter. What is "real" food? In this context, it is food that
contains fat and protein. Peanut butter, cheese, milk, mayo, hamburgers, hot
dogs, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, etc are all effective not because they are in
some sense "real" but because they are supplying the fat and protein not found
in common energy products. I know from personal experience that if you have
an "engineered" food that does supply the proper mix of nutrients, one can run
for more than a day with no with no stomach upset.

Again, the commonly available energy products are not well designed for long
ultras, and may cause a lot of the problems runners experience in these runs.
Maybe one of the reasons that Kenyan and
Tarahumara runners do so well is that they are unaware of such products and
eat the stuff they've learned over the centuries works well for them. I'll
bet it isn't loaded with fructose/sucrose and citric acid, but it does contain
modest amounts of protein and fat.