This piece is shared by Rachel Drake, a guest writer and trail runner who recently competed in the Mammoth Trail Fest. She shares her experience fighting for the podium, fueling strategy, and tips she thinks fellow athletes could learn from when the race day nerves come around.
Race morning comes and with it, the nerves. I’ve improved drastically in managing my nerves
over the past couple of years, but still have to choke down my oatmeal on race morning. I’ve
also found that if I don’t ruminate too hard on the task at hand, my body will take over and do
what it does best. This applies to both digestion when I’m nervous on race morning and the
racing itself.
For Mammoth Trail Fest last month, this meant taking intermittent gulps of my
Spring Energy Blueberry Endurance meal as I got dressed, another swig before braiding my
hair and some more as I applied anti chafe cream. Before I knew it, I’d consumed 310 calories
and was ready to head out the door. Aside from distracting myself, another way I've found to
augment race day calorie intake is to eat gels before the race. Depending on how much
breakfast I’m able to take down, I’ll have a gel about 60-80 minutes prior to the race start and
another about 20-30 minutes before the start. This can be done on the drive and even during
your warmup. The way I see it, you’re signaling to your body that your digestive system needs
to be functioning and kept online. The stress hormones associated with competition are known
to do the opposite of this. If you’ve heard of “fight or flight” versus “rest and digest,” this is
exactly what I’m referring to. With trail races, we somehow need to get our bodies ready to
perform while simultaneously keeping our digestive system online.
The race went out HOT as expected, and I found myself in the lead for the first mile or so until I
was swallowed up by a pack of about 10 incredibly strong women. I tried to use their energy to
pull me along, and it worked quite well. For my hydration, I started with a calorie dense drink
and switched to straight water at the halfway point. At the bottom of the main climb, I was sitting
in 6th place and could see 5th and 4th every so often on switchbacks and through the trees.
Since I was running so hard up this climb, I wasn’t able to consume any of my gels, but was
slowly sipping on my calorie drink. I grouped up with a few of the women up ahead of me before
putting a small gap on them by the top of the climb. I’d made it up to the 3rd position by the
summit, and had no other decision but to go full send from there.
For my in-race nutrition, I stuck with what I’d primarily been consuming in my practice sessions.
The low viscosity consistency of the Spring Energy Snack packs tend to work well for these
higher octane races. I had one Orange flavor and one Acai flavor tucked into my sports bra,
which I was able to take down during the descent along with some water. About halfway down
the climb, 4th place had caught up with me. Usually when you get caught in a race, that’s that.
You get passed and fall behind. Rather than succumbing to this, I vowed to do everything I
could to hang as long as I could. I hung on to 3rd position, neck and neck with the great Anna
Gibson until her blistering kick delivered the final blow with just a mile to go. Without her, I would
have never gone as deep into my well of effort than I did, and for that I’m eternally grateful. To
me, this is what sport is all about; elevating one another and challenging us to be the very best
versions of ourselves.
In the end, not including any pre-race or start line fuel, I had about 60 grams of carbohydrates
per hour. Retrospectively, this was quite a bit lower than what I should have aimed for (more like
80-90 grams of carbohydrates), especially in such a high intensity race at altitude where energy
demand is higher. In a lot of ways I’m grateful for this relative “miss,” since it has me practicing
my fueling even more fervently for the next objective, the JFK 50 mile.
Header Photo: Matt Shapiro
