I Used to Guess My Race Nutrition

I have bonked properly twice that I can clearly remember. Once on the second day of the Jurassic Coast, once on an ordinary training long run about 25k in, when I got lightheaded and had to sit on a stile for ten minutes feeling sorry for myself.

Both times the training had gone fine. The fuelling was the bit I never controlled. I would grab whatever gels were in the drawer, eat them roughly when I remembered, and hope.

The fix was boring

It was not a new gel or a magic drink mix. It was writing down what I ate on every long session and how it felt afterwards, every single time. Dull. It also worked.

ulTrain does the writing down part, and then it does something useful with it. Log your fuel and hydration on a session, rate how it sat, and after a few weeks What Works ranks it for you. The stuff that consistently felt fine rises to the top. The stuff that sat like a brick is right there in your own data, not buried in a forum thread from 2014.

From history to a plan

The Race Fuel Plan takes it a step further. Give it your race, the aid stations and the conditions you expect, and it builds targets per hour and per aid station for fluid, calories and sodium. It uses your history, so it is not just handing you a generic 60g of carbs an hour and wishing you luck.

It is a Pro feature. It is also the one I would have paid the most for, back when I was guessing.

Standard advice still applies. Test everything in training and put nothing new in your race vest. The app just keeps the receipts so you are not relying on memory at kilometre 70.