Ultramarathon Daily News, Wed, Jan 18

Read this: Aliza reflects on lessons and experience in this silly sport of ours.

Science: Muscle cramping, nausea, dehydration all unaffected by sodium intake during an ultramarathon.

Read this too: Excellent essay about the wilderness and our place in it. Written in response to US Forest Services’ request for essays celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Read it.

Magness sounds off on strength and conditioning coaches and their attitudes.

Another reason I prefer my own two feet to two wheels. That dude went flying!

Oh, here we go again: The new rules of hydration.

Think you’re tired after a 50 miler? Try one of these road races and tell me how you feel.

Here’s a great video of Clare and Amy’s run at HURT 100 this past weekend. Amy finished last (with 8 minutes to spare!), and Clare got pulled for her first-ever DNF. Looks like they had a great time on a beautiful course!

Scottish readers: Is hutting something that could turn into something like the huts in the Dolomites, where runners and trekkers stay in a different place each night, or are they for single families?

Science: Turns out running is good for your knees!

Join Jamil, Sage, and Tim as they run and walk through Hong Kong. Cool video!

Holy cow, then watch this awesome video of Kilian climbing, skiing, and talking in Norway.

Site note: If you had/are a monthly subscription via PayPal, thank you! Now with Patreon up and running, you may want to switch over to that platform so you can see the benefits of being a Patron. Thanks!

Jill reflects on an analogy between her current fitness and that of her old burned out Toyota Tercel. Yes, yes. I know the feeling, Jill!

Take it from this guy, when traveling, keep your important docs on you at all times.

Stan says:

January 18, 2017 at 9:21 am

The sodium study is very interesting. Certainly the body does need some level of sodium, but does it provide any benefit if ingested during an Ultra outside of what metrics were studied perhaps?

Conclusive enough to quit taking salt tablets? Is there a minimum level of sodium maintenance perhaps and anything over that does not assist? Perhaps even an ultra is too short to necessitate the supplement.

SageCanaday says:

January 18, 2017 at 10:21 am

Sample size (n =20 was very small). Furthermore most of the runners took quite a bit of sodium…so there essentially was no control group that was actually on “low sodium” for that edition of WS100. There are likely individual differences is sweat rate and sodium loss that require differences in ideal sodium intake. I also would question the actual intake/recording methods as it appeared the monitoring of sodium intake during race was a bit flaky and retrospective.

I’d say most “muscle cramp” issues are caused by sheer muscle failure…but I don’t think that based on this small study, one can even remotely conclude that electrolyte intake has no bearing on nausea.

1. Camas says:
  
  January 18, 2017 at 4:47 pm
  
  I would agree that the sample size was rather small, especially for a human study. Controls are questionable yes, or at least omitted from the abstract.
  
  The sweat rates would’ve been nice to study, as well as the intake of water, as the terms “hyponatremia” or “hypernatremia” can be confusing. What I mean is that in normal states of physiology, hyponatremia is actually too much water as opposed to too little sodium, with the converse true for hypernatremia. Normal homeostasis keeps total body sodium tightly controlled, but this is relative to how much water is in the body. This changes during sweating. Thats why it may have been good to study or at least have some data on sweat rates/water intake over the course of the event, because excessive sweating can lower the total amount of sodium within the body.
  
  Muscle cramping may be more of a magnesium, calcium and to lesser extent potassium issue, as well as pure failure or fatigue as Sage suggests. Nausea can happen from a multitude of causes, but decreased blood flow to the digestive organs during vigorous and extended exercise is a likely cause, so its not a surprise that sodium alone would not affect that.
  
  I don’t think that the article is specific enough in its claims that ultra-runners may have false beliefs regarding sodium intake. In other words it doesn’t do as much to disprove that sodium isn’t beneficial for preventing those outcomes. Sure, intake may not affect ALL of the outcomes as pointed out in the conclusions, but sodium is regardless an important electrolyte in the maintenance of water balance within the body, and future studies may be more beneficial if these outcomes were studied with better controls and with more isolationist protocols. But then again this is only the abstract.

nick says:

January 18, 2017 at 10:17 am

I’d add a great norcal race to this list, the Truckee Firecracker mile on July 4th. Yes it is at 6,000ft altitude, but the 100ft elevation loss speeds things up a tad 🙂Reference

Steven says:

January 18, 2017 at 12:24 pm

Kilian is just a beast…love the nutrition portion of the video. 7 summits eh? I guess I better bring 4 snickers bar! Hahaha!

Ultramarathon Daily News, Wed, Jan 18

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