Alex Cook, 38, is a sports nutritionist, dietician and running coach who competes in endurance running events herself. Here she describes her training and diet for the Lavaredo Ultra Trail race 2018. Held in the spectacular Dolomite mountains of north-eastern Italy, the 120 km run starts and finishes in Cortina and is notorious for its tough and technical rocky terrain. It has a maximum permitted time of 30 hours and includes 5800 metres of climbing. Over 1000 competitors enter each year. The 14th Lavaredo Ultra Trail will take place 26-7th June 2020.
Alex Cook is a nutritionist for Lift, a range of glucose chews and shots designed for ultra-runners; they come in four flavours and are free of artificial sweeteners, colouring and flavouring, caffeine and gluten. See www.liftglucose.com.
See more about Alex Cook at TheSportsDietician.co.uk and @thesportsdietitian. She tweets at @diet360_
Images courtesy Lavaredo - Jordi Saragossa/Alexis Berg
First a bit of form
Alex Cook: Nutrition and endurance exercise have been part of my adult life right from the start, since I was a student. I began training as a nurse, but I decided on a change and instead went to Birmingham to study Sport and Exercise Science. And in the gap between the two courses I did my first marathon. I have been running ever since, 20 years now. I have worked clinically with the NHS and in dietetics in the Army, both for the troops and for the Army’s many athletes, so my interests have come together. And I am also a coach.
Moving from road running, where you’re watching the clock and your times, to off-road ultras filled a need in facing all the side-pressures of life - the chance just to put on a backpack and go is an amazing escape. And at 20 hours in the mountains, that’s what Lavaredo is all about. It’s incredible.
In the winter I tend to do shorter events, cross country races, for instance. This keeps up my speed work and strength, which is important for the longer runs – particularly in the descents in an ultra. In the spring I often do a road marathon and then over the summer I try to do an ultra run, though it doesn’t always happen. With kids it’s hard to take the time to train. It’s quite a selfish sport and despite all the physical effort it feels a bit indulgent. Still, I am pretty sure that I’ll manage to do a long ultra in summer 2020.
Lavaredo wasn’t my first ultra, but it was certainly my longest mountain race. I have built up gradually over the years since I started running off-road in 2105 – first a 50km race, then 100km over two days, then longer. I know I could just go out and run 100 miles and see how I get on, but I want to do well at what I choose to do, so I structure it carefully.
Training
I maintain my fitness all year round and I have good base endurance - I have been running for 20 years - so training is mostly about strength and hills. But the winter before Lavaredo was terrible. I got flu at the end of December and it put me out of action for a whole month. My weakness is my immune system. I’m lucky in that I don’t really get injuries much, but in the winter-time I’m susceptible to illness. So I came out of the winter without the consistent training and without enough time out on my feet.
The longest run I did was about 40 miles, but this isn’t a problem. Training for an ultra is about running back to back runs, running on tired legs. I coach ultra distance runners and in a weekend I may suggest two 4-hour runs on consecutive days rather than one long run, which requires too much recovery. I live in the Chilterns so I cannot replicate the two-hour climbs of the race. Instead I did continuous hill reps to condition the body to ascent and descent. My maximum weekly distance was about 60 miles.
My training doesn’t involve a huge change in diet - I don’t eat perfectly, of course, even though people imagine that I probably do. I just paid attention to recovery, ensuring that I was eating enough carbohydrate each day to maintain my training levels.
I did practice one important thing - Lavaredo is 20 hours long and therefore your body has to be accustomed to eating while on the run. I started my runs sooner after eating than usual, about 45 minutes, intentionally setting off with breakfast still inside my stomach. I would also eat on my runs. My parents live not far away and I would stop by for a cup of tea and toast and then set off straight away. It’s what you need to do in the checkpoints and so it gets you used to stopping, eating and getting moving again.
I say to my athletes to try to keep moving. If they are eating a bowl of pasta then obviously they will need to stop, but for cold food you don’t have to. I take plastic bags with me and then eat from them as I leave the checkpoint. I’ll walk for a minute rather than run immediately. It keeps the body moving as much as you can.
Planning?
It’s important to have a race nutrition strategy, but also to know that in an ultra it’s more likely to go out of the window, so you need to plan for it going wrong too. My plan for Lavaredo was to take in between 30-50 grams of carbs per hour for as long as I could - and then to have some protein as well. You get hungry in a race that long. I managed to stick to it for the first two checkpoints, about a third of the race, and then I just ate what I could.
Lavaredo had an 11pm start, which slightly blew my mind. I hadn’t run through the night before. I decided I couldn’t actually train for it, so I could only hope for the best. On the day before the start I was really nervous and found it hard to eat anything, so I drank a lot of shakes that contained carbohydrate and protein. It wasn’t perfect, but it amazed me how resilient my body was.
What was Lavaredo 2018 like ?
Oh my God, that race… the vast blue sky, and the mountains… huge rockfaces all around us… and just what an escape it is from the rest of life. The Dolomites are incredible and we were really lucky with the weather. In fact the whole thing was so perfect that it’s hard to imagine ever doing an event that good again.
The race went well and I was competitive, finishing 30th female runner in a field of 150. It was hard, of course. I had a niggle in the run up to the event, and so I hadn’t managed to do anything for a full eight days beforehand – and then as soon as I started the pain returned, which was worrying. But it eased as the race got going. After that everything went well till about half way through, when I suddenly got an incredible pain in my right knee. I have no idea what it was. I’d never had it before and it has never come back again. But it meant that I was using my poles as crutches and navigating the decents with straight legs. My progress was affected – people who I was passing going uphill then passed me on the way down.
Towards the end, I did get a bit delirious. Ideally I wanted to finish in 20 hours, and at the last checkpoint, with 10km to go, all downhill to the finish line, I looked at my watch and saw 19 - but I couldn’t work out if this meant 19 hours had passed, or it was 1900, ie seven pm. So I just went for it and made it to the finish in 20 hours and 9 minutes.
How did race nutrition go?
The race went ok. I didn’t have stomach problems, luckily. Or at least the only moment when I did was some small stomach cramps. They happened in the night, not long after the start – my body’s way of saying “What the hell do you think you are doing…?!” But they weren’t that bad and I did what I tell my athletes to do, which is to keep sipping at their drink and keep taking the carbs in. I was able to take on carbs throughout the race.
Lack of coffee was an issue, though. It’s my rocket fuel for an event like this, but there was none in the checkpoints and I really needed it. Instead I had to use Coke, which I never have before. It was a risk, but if you’re starting to fall asleep you have to do something.
What were the lowest and best moments?
There was no real down point: the most challenging moment was probably when the injury kicked in. I had to try and run without bending the leg much and put more weight on the other leg. Even so, I never questioned myself. There was no point where I said to myself this is terrible, or I can’t make it.
My highest point was as dawn arrived. It hadn’t been easy, first running at night and second because my headtorch didn’t work and I had been running the whole time in the light of other people’s torches, usually into my own shadow. But then the sun came up and I could hear the birds singing and the mountains’ incredible beauty was revealed all around us. The sun coming out made a real difference. I was off, and managed to leave lots of people behind.
Can your diet affect state of mind?
Yes, absolutely. I say to my athletes to make sure that they have something with them that will give them a boost. Mine’s a Snickers Bar. And of course warm food makes a real difference. I reached a checkpoint at the top of a climb at 7am and it was incredibly cold, and I found that the only warm food they were offering was a stew with meat stock and pasta. It wasn’t ideal - because I’m a vegetarian - but needs must… and it was a real lift.
What did you learn?
Even though I have been running for over 20 years, I still get things wrong. I think we’re always on the path of learning about our body and what it’s capable of. Never think you know it all as there will always be surprises!
