Training Tuesday: Testing Hydration Packs & Belts

0:09Jake Hutton: Welcome to the Running Public with Bracken Crocker and Kirk DeWint. It's Tuesday, folks, and you know what that means. Training Tuesday.

0:15Nick Symmonds: We are going to take every rabbit hole, follow tangents, use useless metaphors, get lost in the weeds. This is Training Tuesday.

0:32Jake Hutton: When you're ready to take your training or racing to the next level, go to the running public.com. We have both monthly subscription training plans,$19.99 a month. And Bracken and I both offer one-on-one customized coaching. Again, go to the running public.com and check out our offerings.

0:51Nick Symmonds: Kirk, I'm stuck on a reoccurring loop of frustration with running gear currently. and it's 50 % paralysis by analysis and it is 50 % touch issues on my body.

1:04Jake Hutton: Yeah.

1:04Nick Symmonds: I have sensory issues with packs.

1:07Jake Hutton: And then you get fixated on how it's just not sitting perfectly in this one spot and then you can't ignore it sort of thing.

1:14Nick Symmonds: Yeah. Plus I'm extrapolating what does this feel like 10 hours later. I'm doing the hydration and gear testing version of doom scrolling with my training right now. and it's driving me up a wall.

1:27Jake Hutton: Well, good news is you are way ahead of the curve considering you're not racing until June or July. Is it July? July. July. So that's next year. That's a long ways away. So good job. Two, how much money are you blowing? I'm not blowing a lot of money.

1:42Nick Symmonds: I have a lot of options here. I'm trying to acclimate to them or Frankenstein them into one good option. But it suddenly feels like I'm not even going to have enough time because I'm never going to get used to this. I might need five years to desensitize myself. So what are you going to do?

1:58Jake Hutton: What are you struggling with the most? Is it the pack situation? Yeah.

2:02Nick Symmonds: So here, I'm going to break it all down for you in nauseating detail, and people can wake up in like five minutes.

2:09Jake Hutton: Nothing like trying to tune out the listener off the rip, huh?

2:12Nick Symmonds: Yeah. I have packs that I can load up relatively heavy and sit relatively nicely on me for a relatively long amount of time unless it's really hot outside. And that's like the crux of my issue. I have waste packs that I can load up relatively heavy and wear for a while, and they only moderately irritate my gut until it's really hot outside. And if it's hot or humid or I'm very sweaty, the packs change how they feel, and it's really difficult for me to handle. So I know this is like a, it's such a weird personal problem, but I have a few packs that feel fantastic in the high heat and humidity, but they don't carry as much.

3:05Nick Symmonds: And I'm trying to figure out a way to carry two and a half liters of water without having sensory issues when it's really hot and humid. Because the packs that carry things the best, I've found also tend to change when they're drenched in sweat and they breathe less well because they have to be a denser pack in order to sit nicely. And so I need to either keep searching and find one that just fits and feels nice on me or go in on handhelds and just get to the point where I'm comfortable holding 18 to 20 ounces in each hand. And then I can carry a minimal amount in either waist or vest.

3:50Jake Hutton: As you were saying that, that was exactly my follow-up question is, are you married to the vest? And what about a hybrid option of a waist pack plus handhelds or a light vest and handhelds? That's exactly where my mind went right away.

4:03Nick Symmonds: Perfect world. Nothing squeezes my stomach, but I'm holding it on my waist. And I don't have to carry more than a thousand on my waist and I can have a thousand in my hands. Milliliters for our American friends. No, you need to use ounces for your American. Well, I'm letting them know what a thousand is.

4:20Jake Hutton: It's not a thousand ounces. Half people don't know what a liter is or a milliliter is. So I've run half my Ultras carrying a bottle, but only one bottle.

4:32Nick Symmonds: And then I just switch basically every mile. My fueling during an Ultra is I don't – with a non-OCR Ultra, I don't have a feeding timer. It's just every mile or every K, I take a sip or two and I switch hands. And it's rhythmic and I like it, but two hands just feels exhausting if I'm going to have to do it for. It'll probably end up being 10 hours of that. But can you just build it up that I'm not wasting energy? Like I'm not leaking any extra energy by holding a half a liter in each hand.

5:04Jake Hutton: I mean, there's a lot of ways to do it. I'm sure this would equally drive you nuts. But like a combo, like you have your waist pack, but then you have, gosh, then you have a soft flask strapped into your waist pack, like not even in the actual holder it's supposed to have flopping around. You can switch back and forth hands with your handheld if you had one free hand. I don't know. I think, unfortunately, you need to fill those suckers up and get time in them and be like, well, this is how it feels after, I mean, even three hours. But you're not to that length of long run. So now it's just still guesswork.

5:37Nick Symmonds: Yeah. The feeling option is to wear a minimal waist belt and a minimal pack and put in 250 to 350 milliliter flask everywhere. Yeah. And then have two little ones in my hands as well. And then nothing's overloaded. Everything feels nice. And I've done that. But then every aid station have to fill up like 10 bottles. And that's obnoxious.

6:01Jake Hutton: What's the longest time you think you'll be between aid stations?

6:07Nick Symmonds: I have to plan for two and a half hours.

6:08Jake Hutton: but realistically it's going to be around a little over.

6:11Nick Symmonds: Yeah. Just call it two and a half hours.

6:13Jake Hutton: I mean, you need to have so much on you mid ultra on a hot day. I have to be able to carry 2.5 liters. If it's a hot day. Yeah. You just, you can't risk it. So you have to have a lot on you. That's tough.

6:23Nick Symmonds: Well, so the comfortable way means that aid stations are now tedious and that I have to fill up a minimum of eight bottles. If I do little ones spread out everywhere. If I just put two 500s in a belt and two 500s in my hand, It's the simplest.

6:40Jake Hutton: I have to get my arms ready. May I ask a question? It's adjacent to what we're talking about.

6:50Jake Hutton: Why are you so in the weeds right now with this already? And not saying you shouldn't be. You're ahead of it, which is great. But for me, I probably couldn't quite be bothered to this extent until maybe spring, let's say. But you're kind of all in right now. And you're, well, what's July? eight, nine, nine months away.

7:10Nick Symmonds: Well, uh, because I'm afraid and I know that the things that are going to kill me on course are going to be muscular endurance of just being able to handle all the nonsense of that course and fueling slash heat tolerance. And I want to get, I, The uncontrollables are out there. I want to control as many controllables as possible to make up for the fact that, yeah, there are nine months, but really I'll be coming in with nine months of fitness. I'm making the good move slash mistake of following the previous winners on Strava. And one of the guys just averages 100 mile weeks. And I'm not going to be able to come in with that fitness.

7:57Nick Symmonds: So I'm going to have to come in with all the other semi to controllables. I have to do better than everyone else if I want to do well. and I will come to this having never raced longer than seven hours and 44 minutes, and I'm going to have to go 40 % longer than that. So with all the unknowns for me, and because of my training volume, I'm not going to be able to do a lot of that race style leading up to it. I'm going to have to get as many things right as possible, and so I'm trying to button them all down from the beginning. Also, all the incline walking and hiking and jogging I'm doing is tedious, and testing out packs each run gets me through the runs.

8:37Jake Hutton: That'll make sense. I'm just, it seems, it's never too early to test. It's never too early to have this experimenting and conversation. It's just, you know, it's not even November yet. But I suppose I'm thinking like, how are you going to simulate like July running when it's winter? But you're on your treadmill a bunch too. And so you're getting hot, sweaty, right? And so you're getting right on purpose. And so you're getting what you need out of those experiments there versus like a cold run where it's not going to be even close to how much fluid you need, what you need on the fueling front. I guess you can still replicate that somewhat indoors.

9:15Nick Symmonds: I'm also making a mountain out of a molehill a little bit. A little bit. Because this molehill can turn into a mountain in hour 10. How come you're not sitting here splitting hairs about high rocks?

9:24Jake Hutton: That's way sooner.

9:25Nick Symmonds: Because for me, high rocks is simpler.

9:29Jake Hutton: I mean, sure. I'm not trying to be sharp for high rocks.

9:32Nick Symmonds: I just need to be able to handle sleds, burpees, lunges, wall balls. The whole race. Just handle the whole race. Yeah, but if it goes wrong, you're out there for 15 minutes of – 20 minutes maybe of misery. Yeah. And it's a rust buster and I've done it. I've felt it. It's not – it's scary in a different way. It's not unknown. If this goes wrong in the dark at 11 p.m., I'm going to be staring down the barrel of five more hours of misery minimum. Yeah. The stakes just feel higher for that. And I don't know. I don't have to worry about gear for Hyrox. I already know what shoe I'm wearing. That's all that matters.

10:10Jake Hutton: Yeah. There's just like, in a sense, so many, but so less moving parts, depending.

10:16Nick Symmonds: There's probably the same amount of moving parts, but they don't terrify me. I just know I will or won't be fully prepared for them.

10:22Jake Hutton: And it's just going to determine my time. So funny because I would look at it the opposite. Like Hyrox is objective. it's going to be illuminating and you will be exposed either way. Like for sure you're, you, and, and so, and there's a lot of eyes on it. Whereas like, nobody's really going to know if you like shit the bed in the ultra, they're not going to have the, the, the right reference between, let's say you run 10 hours or you run 14 hours. Everybody's going to be like, great job. Like, well, I mean, from the outside,

10:51Nick Symmonds: whereas I don't want to be puking in the dark somewhere. I don't want you to do that either with rolled ankles, just like, out there failing because I got gear and fueling wrong.

11:01Jake Hutton: You know what also this is telling me is just how much your heart is on the trails in the long stuff. Even though you don't have a huge history of it, you've done some, of course, just like me, but all of your attention, for me, I'd be the exact opposite. If I had an Ultra in July and a High Rocks in February, I would be splitting hairs with everything High Rocks related and I I would worry about the ultra details later.

11:28Nick Symmonds: Well, that's fair. And I think that that may be more of where I'd be leaning if I had your engine currently. I know I'm not going to crush this first high rocks regardless of what I do. So I'm going to run the whole thing just under the line and get a rust buster in. I'm not trying to set the world on fire with this. But I don't have anything near the resilience or durability or engine to even complete half of the course right now for Ironstone. And so that's way more like, that's way scarier to me. That makes sense.

12:06Jake Hutton: I've blown up in a high rocks already and I survived. Yeah, you're still here and smiling. Well, I remember how icky last winter training was. we had a couple of really tough spells last winter like didn't get above zero for i don't know how many days in a row it was like 11 or something it was awful so i'm i'm pretty much gonna be having a skier gonna new rower coming to the house and getting and we might start we will start playing this winter to what extent we will find out i hopped on the scale uh the other day i don't know if you can tell i'm like i'm a little leaner like lighter than i have been you can see it my face i I don't know if you've noticed.

12:46Jake Hutton: I am as light as I've been in 15 years. My running is going fantastic because of it. But this fall just wears me out. I'm just hiking through the woods with packs on and then I'm still getting my runs in. I'm probably stretched a little thin, not eating enough. And I 166 like flat when I hopped on the scale. I haven't seen that since OCR. I haven't seen that since 2007, maybe 20 years.

13:13Nick Symmonds: maybe college i don't know if i hit got below 67 or 68 in ocr i'm embarrassed in colorado for a

13:20Jake Hutton: little admit that this morning weight don't get me wrong but like part of that i saw that and my heart sank i could tell like by looking in the mirror i'm like yeah you're you're not but again running's going well so it's like have your cake and eat it too what do i really want but i said this ain't right like you got to get well ocr days i was like almost got 10 pounds heavier when i started. And so seeing that - You ran heavier than me in OCR. Yeah, I did. I'm relatively lighter now. But point being is seeing that literally made my heart sink. And I'm like, all right, Kirk, maybe you get back in the gym three days and get focused and start doing some station work and just play and see if you even like it.

13:57Jake Hutton: Because I don't like it. I don't like being lighter. Interesting. I like it when my running shoes are on, but I don't like it anytime else. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Don't. Yeah, I do. So we'll see what I do there. All right.

14:09Nick Symmonds: So to put a bow tie on this, Because I think I know what I'm going to do for at least the... Oh, you want to bring the conversation back to you, do you? Yeah. In my mind, it never really left us. I'm just ribbing you. You said all of that just to get back to this. If you had a race, let's say it wasn't nine months away for you. Let's say it was whatever window is that period of time where you were thinking about it now.

14:32Jake Hutton: Yeah.

14:32Nick Symmonds: And you had to carry minimum two liters. but you probably have to bring an extra 500 flask on you for an aid station to fill up prior to like one big stretch where you need two and a half liters so just put it at two liters how are you carrying it because i know you don't like vests either but you also don't like big waist belt you just run with the nathan peak belt which holds one what is it 18 and a half 18 ounce flask a hard flask and then you swap out like crazy at this race uh crew cannot interact with you other than at the crew accessible stations, which are every other aid station. So what would you be doing?

15:11Nick Symmonds: You have to reliably carry two plus liters. How are you doing it? Or how are you going to prep to do it?

15:18Jake Hutton: Well, so part of this race is flat and part is mountainous, right?

15:21Nick Symmonds: The flat part, I'll have a different system for. I'm just planning for the 10 hours after the flat.

15:26Jake Hutton: Okay, because I was going to say I'm going to have two different systems. So, damn. All right. So it's very different systems. and you can swap right before you get to the terrain. There's an aid station right at the transition. And a transition. With crew. So early on, I'm doing waist belt and handhelds, no questions asked on the flat. Yep. Is that your plan? If there is terrain involved, and in this case, if you're really going two and a half hours between potential water stops, I hate to say it, but when vert is happening, I can tolerate a vest. Yeah. I just can. It's flat. flat oh my goodness i would rather pull my fingernails off one at a time than wear it on flat however if it's mostly up and down and technical i'd be putting the vest down as an insurance policy and i would that's what i would do i would just play with i don't know you have a ton of vest options right but i would i would do that and i would have handhelds as well on top of the vest yeah i would have two systems what are you thinking well that's that's the thing right

16:27Nick Symmonds: The vert messes with it. So I really like waist belts until I'm power hiking. And then they can put pressure right on the spot you don't want pressure, which is your little gut. Yeah. Yeah. I don't mind packs up till about a liter and a half. So I've still got to put an extra 500 milliliters to a thousand somewhere. so if i had crew accessible everywhere i would have a light belt and a light pack and i would divide it up with like a little bit everywhere but i'm going to alternate between a full pack and a thousand on my waist thousand in my hands basically every run all my aerobic work just get a bunch of time with both until it comes to you.

17:17Nick Symmonds: And then if it, if both are bad or both are fine for a little bit, then I'll alternate crew points four hours, one four hours in the next four hours and one, and then hopefully you're done. And you could switch out packs and such then as well. Yeah. There'll be three stations I can swap and four stations I cannot. Okay.

17:36Jake Hutton: I think that sounds like a plan. I like that you have a plan, uh, for the initial cause you start flat, right?

17:42Nick Symmonds: Yeah. And with that, there's every hour and a half, I'll be able to see people. And there's water every 45. So I could just go with like a 350 in my belt and a 350 in my hand and be totally fine.

17:57Jake Hutton: Yeah. Are you going to be doing any extended flat damaging work into uphill tempo type work on the treadmill? I assume so. But are you going to shrink it down, but simulate a little bit?

18:09Nick Symmonds: Well, like for example, Saturday, I did 10 flat on pavement and then finished with 2K vert treadmill. 10 flat what? Miles. Oh, okay. Yeah, perfect. 2K vert coming off of that. Came in, tried to get a swap under three minutes, socks, shoes, shorts, shirt, pack, bottles, like simulate what's going to happen. Get the salt off and lube up and go just again, And every little thing, I'm going to try to have more button down than anyone else. And then I'm going to shrink that three minutes to two minutes and the two minutes to 90 seconds. And then if I can do a full kit change in 90 seconds, then I've just cut off whatever running advantage someone had on the first part.

18:48Nick Symmonds: Like that's the way I'm going to look at this whole thing. But so I'm doing a lot of transition pieces. Yes. So the answer is yes. Yeah, you are doing that. Perfect. And again, I'm starting at nine months out.

18:57Jake Hutton: Yeah.

18:58Nick Symmonds: Awesome.

18:59Jake Hutton: It's good to hear 10 mile run followed by 2000 feet of vert. You're probably looking at an hour 45 session or something like that. You probably ended up hitting. So back to some volume. It's good. Yeah. I think it was 155 total.

19:11Nick Symmonds: I dogged both. My bad. Just lower than you expect. So what is your main goal with the race?

19:22Jake Hutton: I mean, just since we're on it, let's stay on it for a second. What would you consider it a success?

19:27Nick Symmonds: Honestly, nothing's changed since last year when I first thought I was going to do this race, which is a success is finishing this thing. Never gone past seven and a half hours. This course record would be six hours longer than that. And that's course record pace. So it's going to almost double the biggest effort I've ever had. So finishing it will be a success. Not pulling the plug because I want to pull the plug. Everyone will want to quit that race.

19:57Jake Hutton: So not quitting it will be a really big thing. It doesn't start at midnight or something silly.

20:02Nick Symmonds: It starts at 2 p.m.

20:02Jake Hutton: 2 p.m. So then it ends at 3 a.m.

20:05Nick Symmonds: or whatever. Yeah. Okay.

20:08Jake Hutton: Well, you're a dreamer.

20:10Nick Symmonds: Yeah. The dream is everything I'm doing is predicated around a course record pace. Okay. Which the record is 13 hours or something? Yeah. 13 and what's closer to, I think, it just got set this year. And actually someone set it even faster but was DQ'd because they went off course. Oh. But. But to win it this year, it's going to take, I think, sub 1320. So I'm going to prep for trying to build the fitness to be able to do that, but build the mindset to be able to finish in 18 hours if needed.

20:41Jake Hutton: Yeah.

20:41Nick Symmonds: Yeah. Okay. Well, it sounds like you got competition now. People are showing up to this thing. Oh, yeah. No, there's plenty of people. This is not realistic. Go out there and expect to win it. But I'm going to train with that as the goal because that's what gets you out of bed. Well, good. The guy who won it, I want to say he ran 16 hours at, or 14 hours at Tunnel Hill 100. He averaged eight something, 820, 830 for 100 miles. Well, I can't run with that guy in an ultra, but yet doesn't mean I'm not going to have any intent of doing that. All right.

21:19Jake Hutton: Well, anything else you want to talk about with nuances there?

21:23Nick Symmonds: This pack thing is absolutely driving me crazy. And I think I have to just sit in it for like two months straight over fall and winter.

21:31Jake Hutton: Everybody flood Bracken's personal Instagram with your recommendations and shove it down his throat and make him deal with it. Maybe somebody will have a gem in there.

21:40Nick Symmonds: The biggest problem is there's great options out there, but everything's expensive.

21:45Jake Hutton: Yeah.

21:45Nick Symmonds: And I don't have connections in the belt world. Like there are four different hydration belts I'd want to try right now. The Ultra Spire Mountain Racer, Vertex, Lightning, and Speedgoat just from Ultra Spire. And the average cost of those is like$125. I'm not going to spend$600 on waist belts and then another grand hydration vest. That's foolish.

22:14Jake Hutton: Personal Bracken GoFundMe Fitness Gear Edition.

22:18Nick Symmonds: Putting together over$1 ,000 for gear testing is foolish for a hobby. It's also semi your career. Yeah. I mean, you coach, this is your domain. You can justify it.

22:28Jake Hutton: You can save 35 % by writing it off. Dirt to dirt.

22:32Nick Symmonds: And I look at it and be like, that's a whole race weekend for Brayton. Yeah.

22:35Jake Hutton: That's fair.

22:37Nick Symmonds: Anyway, no, I'm done. Just, I had to vent. I really wanted to know, did you think it's foolish? Because there's, I should rewind. And there is a very good study that kind of everyone, every hydration company references that tested running economy impacts of waist belts versus vests versus handhelds. And they found that there's a less than 2 % difference across the board between all three. It's personal preference, but they tested it in up to 60-minute efforts. What they didn't test is what is the fatigue? Is there a compounding effect of one versus the other with core temperature and or just like structural fatigue over the course of 50 miles?

23:22Nick Symmonds: Yeah.

23:22Jake Hutton: I'm surprised they were that close, actually.

23:25Nick Symmonds: Yeah. They found that nothing really – it changed the running dynamics you had, like your arm carriage and your posture changed. But it was minuscule, the cost to your actual running economy.

23:37Jake Hutton: but like two if it really if the number is two percent in a 60 minute effort what is that i'm not even a minute and a half a minute and a half difference if we're just talking like

23:46Nick Symmonds: i don't know well i mean i know you're talking about running economy not even on pace but like

23:52Jake Hutton: i'm telling you for sure pace wise like if you put a vest on me and filled two flasks in the front i would be more than a minute and a half slower no no no the variance between the three options

24:01Nick Symmonds: So it's like a 1 % or so difference between the three options, not counting versus standard. So a vest is no more than 1 % to 2 % less economical than handhelds. It is no more than 1 % or 2 % less economical than a waist pack. That doesn't sound right to me. That's what they found.

24:22Jake Hutton: I mean, don't you find when you wear a waist pack and you got like, I guess it depends how much what they had in it, right? If it's just like, that would be the thing. Like a waste belt with 16 ounces of water disappears. I don't even know I have anything on me. Whereas like, I guess that would matter. Yeah. I don't remember the details. It was probably one liter.

24:43Nick Symmonds: But between the three, it was basically they came up with whichever one you prefer, go with because you're not really losing compared to the other two options. Okay. I trust it. So you would be fine approaching 10 hours of handhelds if you had enough time to prep your arms for it?

25:00Jake Hutton: Yeah, I would.

25:02Nick Symmonds: Would you be comfortable not having a free hand for 10 hours of wayfinding and six in the dark? Or would you not want two handhelds for that section?

25:13Jake Hutton: It'd be really inconvenient. I don't like the idea of tripping hazards, catching yourself.

25:18Nick Symmonds: Yeah.

25:19Jake Hutton: I would really like it.

25:21Nick Symmonds: station before the sun goes down, you just got to swap to a vest.

25:25Jake Hutton: Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't want in the dark to have two hands. No way. That would be a health risk, honestly.

25:32Nick Symmonds: And if you go down on jagged rock gardens, there's a chance you lose a liter of water. Yeah, true. Because you rip them both. Yeah, yeah.

25:40Jake Hutton: I agree with you.

25:41Nick Symmonds: Okay. Well, here we are. 30-minute intro. What do you want to talk about with your training?

25:46Jake Hutton: You said people could fall asleep for five minutes. You really messed that up. because I knew we were going to get to the good stuff five minutes in. Oh, God. I bet you half the listeners are like, move on. Actually, all of them, probably. Maybe there's one other person who's trying to figure out the best thing. They're very intrigued.

26:01Nick Symmonds: All right. Well, with the time we have remaining, I'm just pivoting this thing to this is only a hydration gear chat.

26:07Jake Hutton: Okay. We're going to do a Q &A. I didn't even get to the fact I'm in a Super 8 by Wyndham in Cresco, Iowa, and I've got a limited window today, and our internet's already cut out once. So the fact that we're even having this chat is really bonus material. It is. Go ahead.

26:25Nick Symmonds: So your current setup for racing is you are the Nathan Peak Belt, correct? With their proprietary hard-sided bottle?

26:33Jake Hutton: Yeah, and it's like, I don't know, it's like$29 or something. It's a very cheap belt. It's built pretty sturdy. It's not flashy. And then I was carrying a 16-ounce soft flask. I think it was a Nathan as well. um, handheld. Uh, but in your case, I would have, you did have a handheld for my last two. Yeah.

26:56Nick Symmonds: Yeah. Yeah.

26:57Jake Hutton: Uh, it was nice though. Cause I did swap hands on occasion. Like, ah, this hand hard sided or soft,

27:02Nick Symmonds: soft. Okay. did it have a built in little like plasticky or, or nylon or, or just nylon Velcro.

27:10Jake Hutton: Yeah. I really liked that. In fact, it was so comfortable. This Nathan handheld is very, very comfortable. I would highly recommend it. It's very simple shot. I got to look, I don't know what the exact name of it was, but it was very comfortable. It disappeared. It sat well. It crumples up nice. Like when the water runs dry, like it disappears, you could actually just stow it away if you wanted without a problem. So that worked out really nicely. But I'll tell you what, going dry on course when it is hot and you have to be out there that long, like it's over if you miscalculate, like it is over.

27:41Jake Hutton: You're not going to come back from that. And it can get scary really quick in July. If you're out there and it's noon and it's 90, which you know what? it's going to be. And you end up dry and you're like, I have a half an hour still. A half an hour is an eternity if you're empty. And then you're just hoping to stay alive. Like legit, sometimes you can get that dry. And then the, what's the point after that, once you get to the aid station and you refill, and then you're kind of scared a little bit for your health, which I know sounds silly, but it's true. It's like, I'd be, I'd be strapping them to my back and having them taped to my leg and stuck it.

28:15Jake Hutton: Honestly, I would do all that before a vest if I could avoid it.

28:19Nick Symmonds: Well, what you just described is the issue because we come from track where you wear the lightest, most minimal everything. We're weighing our shoes. You might weigh your socks. You're choosing your lightest shorts. It's almost foolish how many grams you're trying to shave on the track. And then we went to OCR where you carried the bare minimum. And there it was, how little can I bring and get away with the race. And that's the mentality we brought into the trails. And now when you get to ultras, you have to realize like what's worst case scenario. And that's what I should have on me because the science says you don't lose performance up to 4 % of body weight loss through hydration, through dehydration.

28:58Nick Symmonds: Which is substantial, honestly. Yeah. The reality is you go 20 minutes in the heat in the middle of a race without water because you've run out and you feel like your performance has fallen off of a cliff physically and mentally. You have not approached your 4 % of your body weight loss yet, but it doesn't matter. You start to crack. And so you can't have that occur.

29:24Jake Hutton: Well, aren't you a racer too? If that occurs one time while you're out there, Just one, you go from competing to surviving. Thriving is not an option anymore. And you're going to enter survival mode at some point. I mean, you should if you're racing this thing, right? Right. Like you're gonna, but, but to enter survival mode and you're halfway done or whatever it might be, I guess that probably won't happen just because it's a 2 a.m. start, but, or 2 p.m. start.

29:51Nick Symmonds: But nonetheless, I mean, the reality is you shouldn't physically be in survival mode after 30 minutes being dry of water if you've been drinking up until that point. But you do. And it doesn't matter if the science says you should be fine. You're not. And that's the scary part. So, yeah, you have to carry more. And it's a foolish thing, I feel. It's not. People who just got right to the trails and they developed running through trail running and ultra running are probably shaking their head like, what are these two even on about with this? But coming from the track and the roads, it's really hard to even fathom bringing water whatsoever.

30:30Jake Hutton: Can you hear the vacuum going on in the hallway right now? No, I cannot. Seriously, it's really loud even through my headphones. Just one second.

30:41Nick Symmonds: I wanted to put a sweatshirt on. Hoodie Kirk's back.

30:43Jake Hutton: I can't have the hotel heat on because it's loud.

30:47Nick Symmonds: Yeah, that's a real thing.

30:49Jake Hutton: And it's only 50 degrees outside, and I think we're getting chilly in here.

30:53Nick Symmonds: Yeah. All right. So what – and then what would you be targeting for – let's say you have to fuel for 13 hours. What would you be targeting with grams of carbs per hour for race day in the heat? How would you be approaching this?

31:10Jake Hutton: Well, I'd be heavy on the liquid nutrition experiment, which I know is predominantly what you focus on anyways. So I'd be experimenting a good bit there.

31:21Nick Symmonds: I'll be carrying two, like one or two 90 gram pouches as backup in case something happens. But my goal will be not to have to use them.

31:32Jake Hutton: So I would be definitely starting there. I also, what I'm realizing is if I'm taking like any sort of like gel or chew or anything too consistently, I just don't think they sit very well tummy wise. And so I probably would start looking at like mashed food options to actually be taking in, which I know during the day, I'm not exactly sure. But you're going to have a good bit of night running. And so for me, I might keep things light with the liquid early, but I'm finding, I think things sit better with me as such as like, because you're going to be out there for so long. Like homemade oat bars, for example, I've done in one of my ultras, some sort of like banana bread that almost just melts in your mouth, that sort of thing.

32:20Jake Hutton: So for me, I might end up pivoting to that at some point, honestly, but not early. I would actually do the opposite. it. Maybe when I start moving a little bit slower, it's probably where I would go with that. What are you thinking?

32:34Nick Symmonds: Yeah. The nice thing is that by the time the sun goes down, the fast running is done. Correct. Not that any of it's fast. I shouldn't ever be moving fast out there, but I can drink my calories and try to get good density there and just get all the liquid in I can handle. And then by the time that I might need to start thinking some other source, I'm shuffling through rock gardens for hours. That's pretty easy to digest. That's easy to chew it through there. I'm not going to be doing anything that's so crazy exertion-wise that it would necessitate drinking all the carbs at that point.

33:16Jake Hutton: That's how I would look at it. And plus, you're going to have power hiking sections and technical areas and it's not even going to slow you down that much to like grab something out of your pack and actually choose something if you so choose or needed to like that'll pay dividends in the future just by getting sustenance in your body because this is i mean you're out there for if you're really talking 13 to 15 hours depending um at that point i know people are on the liquid nutrition train i know we talked to dj fox and i believe for how many three days all he did was liquid nutrition. I don't have that gut, I don't think.

33:48Jake Hutton: I need something with weight in my stomach to feel decent at some point. I'm guessing you're maybe somewhat similar. I don't know because I've

33:58Nick Symmonds: never reached that. I've reached six multiple times on just Tailwind. I've gone seven plus on just gels shaken up in water.

34:08Jake Hutton: Also, I don't know if you pay attention to how you feel after you eat, but I do. And like, if all I put in, even if I wasn't competing, if all I put in my body was sugar for 12 hours straight, how do you think your tummy would feel? Yeah. It's going to be bad. It's going to be bad. So like, why do we expect on race day for some people, like not to have tummy troubles when like, if I ate sugar all day, I would be, my stomach would be a wreck by the time night came and that's without running hard in the mix. And so there's also like that to factor and everybody's like, I don't know how my stomach turned at six hours.

34:41Jake Hutton: It's like, really? Well, if at home you just ate gummy bears for six hours, where do you think your tummy would end up being? And so that's something to think about too.

34:50Nick Symmonds: Well, Matt, the reality is that rolling an ankle, cramping, and your stomach turning are the three quickest ways to give up minutes to hours. Those three things will take your pace. and like nothing I can do for optimizing pace can undo one of those things. And so, yeah, I think you do have to fuel in a way that is the most reliable, not just the highest performing.

35:19Jake Hutton: Or you've got the Natasha Manziel approach, which is put a sandwich in your sports bra and just go with it. I had an athlete just run Killington Ultra, and it went fantastically well for him, Jared. We've had him on the podcast. I've had both him and his wife on the podcast, Jared and Hannah, and his hack is mashed potatoes. Makes them the night before. I mean, gums them down, and apparently that's been his hack, and he never complains. I haven't heard him complain about his stomach once. That's interesting. A little Ziploc bag full of mashed potatoes, all salty and nummy for you.

35:54Nick Symmonds: The other thing that this whole process, I think I mentioned this one other time, probably the last time I went through this, is this isn't just like trying to get people to on my side like hey look how supportive i am but this gives me a different level of respect for people who have to run in sports bras

36:11Jake Hutton: specifically thick sports bras every day i'm having a hard time with a solomon s lab pack and those sports bras are containing breasts i have a hard time with front loaded flasks right you don't have breasts it's anyway i'm dealing with things that i know are not like

36:31Nick Symmonds: a big problem but they're causing me grief so i feel like if you wore the vest backwards it might be more comfortable just be hard to access stuff i am finding that a good lower bottle and then one vertically up is like my favorite setup 500 a month in the lumbar uh pouch just disappears for me.

36:51Jake Hutton: Yeah.

36:52Nick Symmonds: I don't know how people go with the big old camelback. I mean, you see a lot of people do it. I could do that before I could do two 500s in the front with nothing in the back. Yeah. The 500s in the front are tough. Some people have no, and that's the other thing. I keep looking at UTMB and Golden Trail Series and you've got these extremely tiny individuals running with two 500s or two 600s up front. 100 pound women. Yeah. And 100 pound men. These are tiny people and they can handle a leader hanging off the front of them. And I'm sitting in here like pouting in my basement because this feels funny.

37:28Jake Hutton: That's exactly right.

37:29Nick Symmonds: Pathetic.

37:30Jake Hutton: It really is. But that's what makes us fun. We got to have something to focus on and keep us engaged. And the fact that you're so invested in these things this far out says everything about your headspace. Whether it's out of fear or enthusiasm, I don't really care.

37:43Nick Symmonds: I keep telling myself that this is why it's going to go well on race day. is because I'm going to have thought of everything I'm capable of thinking of and I'll have tested it out and have it buttoned down. And you know what happens in that situation? You put your pack on at the aid station, you take two steps and you snap a bungee cord on it. That's the kind of thing that... Do you remember when that happened to Chad Trammell in Tahoe? I don't. He had to tie it together and then he eventually started stuffing his vest inside his compression shirt and pulling his shirt up over it to hold it down in front.

38:16Nick Symmonds: Because going over an A-frame or something, he snapped the cord across the front of it.

38:24Jake Hutton: Those weren't my years. That was pre-me discovering Spartan, I assume. I got it. Okay. So I've only got like three minutes. So let's just keep this thing about you. Anything else that you're experimenting with? Endlessly shoes. Both. Endlessly shoes. Which if you had to race tomorrow, which one are you landing on?

38:44Nick Symmonds: I'm going to run the first 10 miles in the Brooks Hyperion Max. And then I'm going to do a fast change into the A6 Megablast for the next 11 miles. And that will bring me to the end of the buy-in portion with as little damage as humanly possible.

39:06Jake Hutton: I had two people. One sent me a screenshot of their cart with the Megablast in it. And another just text me saying, damn you, Bracken, the Mega Blast. And guess who else is going to end up buying it? Me.

39:19Nick Symmonds: There's a pair on Poshmark right now, Kirk, for 150 in size 10 and a half. Actually, as of today, you just looked? As of this weekend. All right. I'll take a look. All right. That shoe is the best example I've ever felt of a super trainer unplated. Every characteristic of it, you think, this feels super. but I know there's no plate. It just has all the characteristics, but it's still a regular shoe. I like how it looks too. Yeah. Which helps. I have the worst color. I have the all black, but it's like kind of glossy and it's almost purpley black in a few spots. But it's just like Lisa said, those are the ultimate dad shoes you're wearing right now.

40:01Jake Hutton: There is nothing that looks slower to me than a black shoe for whatever reason. Unless it's the right shoe, then suddenly it can look fast. But I mean, I had a pair of black Clifton's for recovery running and I felt like a hobby jogger every time I put them on just by pure aesthetics.

40:17Nick Symmonds: I do like black shoes with a chunky white bottom with black crew socks on top of it. It reminds me of when Jim Walmsley pulled that out for UTMB that one year and he was just like the man in black. I thought, yeah, there's something dangerous looking to that. I like it.

40:31Jake Hutton: There is nothing uglier than a black upper with a white bottom or traction.

40:37Nick Symmonds: Are you crazy? No, that's so icky. What are you going to show me? But like, this is a bad example of it.

40:45Jake Hutton: Yeah. White bottom, black upper. I don't like that at all. But it's okay. We all have different preferences. Don't love it. Yeah. Is that an Alpha 2 there? Alpha 2. Nice. All right. Well, I don't know if anybody learned anything today. I think you should apologize. I will not apologize, but I will keep going.

41:01Nick Symmonds: Then on my bridge section up onto the ridge in the first section in the daylight, I'm going out as of right now, I would be in the North Face, the Vectiv Endurus 3. Big, chunky, super foam, but just a little bit of stabilizing non-carbon in it. And then I'll be VJ Ultra 3 and or Tecton X2 alternating at aid stations the rest of the way. You haven't brought up the North Face before. No, I don't love most of their shoes. They're not made for my foot. It just like all of the parts I agree with and they don't work for me, but this is the one that does the most. Yeah.

41:39Jake Hutton: I tried one of their shoes after seeing John Albin wear it and it was, I turned into a lawn mowing shoe after the first run. I was like, there's no way. The shoes.

41:46Nick Symmonds: The original versions were legitimately bad.

41:49Jake Hutton: Bad, right?

41:49Nick Symmonds: Like bad, bad. Yeah. So they've improved when you go from running in VJ IROC and extreme to anything else. It feels amazing.

41:59Jake Hutton: Yeah. I don't have a thing to say. Oh. No, nevermind. It's not important. We're going to wrap this thing up right now. Well, thanks for being here for my therapy session. I contributed nothing to this episode, but we are going to, we're going to do a Q and A. We got too many of them and we're going to get right to the rip. We're going to say, welcome to the running public guys. And then immediately question one. And we're just going to, we're going to bang them out later this week. Should we even set a timer? Keep them short. We should do the classic three, one repeats.

42:32Nick Symmonds: Perfect.

42:32Jake Hutton: Three-minute question answering, one-minute rest. Whatever we do with that rest is up to us, and we should just ride that through. People can train along with it. We did that once. We did an interval session. People said we should do more of it. Enjoy hunting, Kirk. I'm going to go bury myself in the woods yet again. Stay away from ticks. I've had one crawling on my hand just yesterday. I know, they're gross.

42:57Nick Symmonds: If anything resonated with you on today's episode, and you're curious about taking your training to the next level, check out therunningpublic.com where we have a training plan to fit your needs