2 day camping run - food!

One of the biggest difficulties in long distance running is food. The human body, when accustomed to running, appears to have enough glycogen to run about 30-35km. After that you hit what marathon runners call 'the wall'. For anyone fortunate enough not to have experienced this, it's no fun at all. I'll post more on the topic of runners nutrition another time.

The body also stores huge amounts of energy in the form of body fat (at 9kcal per gram, I reckon I have around 50 thousand calories of safely usable body fat, and I'm on the lean side). But it needs glycogen, or some other carbohydrate, to be able to burn the body fat (and not keel over from hypoglycaemia).

So I don't need to carry enough food to replace all the calories I burn, just enough to keep the fires burning. Just as well. My quick rule of thumb calorie calculation for day 1 would be:

(80kg [me] + 10kg [my pack]) * ( 50km + 18 [hundreds of metres of ascent])  = 6120kcal

plus base, which is about 2500 - so 8600kcal for the day. Day 2 doesn't matter so much, since I'll be at home at the end of it, and able to eat my own body weight in fruit cake or something.

A more stingy calculation based on doubling a GPS calculation of 25km/500m would be 5000 + base, so that's still 7500kcal. That's over a kilo of neat ethanol, not that I could drink a kilo of neat ethanol, especially on an empty stomach.

So I need to carry as many calories as I sensibly can, preferably a mix of carbs & fats (more on that topic another time). Preferably starches in my case, since high GI foods tend to make me feel like crap. But really what I'm doing is making sure I have enough calories to keep the fat burning, and to feel reasonably comfortable and not hungry. Trying to carry enough to cover depletion is a waste of time (unless you're talking about much longer trips extending to a week or more).

Mushroom Cheesy Porridge

• 125g porridge oats
• 25g dried porcini mushrooms
• 1 stock cube
• up to 50g of dried parmesan
• dried onion & dried vegetables to taste

place in a 'boil in the bag' bag, and pack. To use, add 750ml of boiling water and stir for ten minutes or so. It's pretty palatable, and very energy rich. I tend to take a few tortillas to have with it.

The planned food list is:

daytime food day 1

• 1 soreen malt loaf
• a couple of hard boiled eggs
• a loaf cake on the train up to Dent

evening food day 1

• mushroom cheesy porridge & tortillas
• a malt loaf
• 250ml of port (calorific, muscle relaxant, sleep inducing and delicious)
• tea. lots of tea. I carry ceylon teabags, because they make palatable tea without having to carry milk

breakfast day 2

• 125g porridge with some drinking chocolate powder added

daytime food day 2

• yet another soreen
• chocolate

I'll probably take some small quantities of chia seeds to try out too. They're very energy dense (almost as much so as dried oats) and can be eaten without rehydration.

I expect to spend the last 20km fantasising about food. Ho hum.