Fuel Strategies for OCR Athletes

by | Feb 13, 2017

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Last updated on January 11th, 2024

How Much Fuel Do You Need For An Obstacle Course Race?

I am always shocked when I see athletes at races with absolutely no fuel or hydration, especially at a longer race like the Spartan Super or Beast.

IF you have an ideal performance diet and show up to a race with a full supply of glycogen, it only provides about 1,400 to 1,800 calories of fuel. During steady exercise at moderate to high intensity, you can burn through that in less than 90 minutes.

If your diet is not ideal and you don’t pay attention to your food and fluid intake in the 4-hour window before your race, you are likely starting without a full supply of glycogen.

Pre-race hydration is key, as you don’t want to be showing up to compete already dehydrated. But even if you’ve followed sound fluid strategies, you need more water during an event than you probably think you do.

Your performance will benefit from consuming 30 g of carbohydrates per hour. More may be needed for high-intensity output or when some muscle glycogen depletion has already occurred.

If you’ll finish a race in under 45 minutes, fuel strategies are likely not necessary. For a race lasting 45 to 75 minutes, you’ll want to consume up to 30 g of carbohydrates per hour. For an event lasting 1 to 2.5 hours, you’ll need 30-60 g of carbohydrates per hour. For any event lasting more than 2.5 hours, you will need to seriously consider your food and fluid strategies and aim to consume 80-90 g of carbohydrates per hour (320 to 360 calories per hour).

For example: 1 Endurance Tap Salted Maple Energy Gel contains 23 g of carbohydrates. You would need to consume 1 per hour for an event lasting 45 to 75 minutes. You would need to consume 2 per hour for an event lasting 1 to 2.5 hours. You would need to consume 3-4 per hour for an event last more than 2.5 hours.

You likely don’t want to be sucking back 2-3 gels per hour, so you will need to consider your food and fluid strategies and plan other snacks to make up the difference. Adding a powder to your fluid would increase your carbohydrate consumption.

Let’s Keep The Conversation Going

Do you have any questions or comments? I would love to hear them. My favourite place to connect is on Instagram. 

You can also join my free community on Facebook: Sports Nutrition for Teen Athletes, to ask questions and get support from my team and me! I hope to see you there. 

Written by Melissa Boufounos

I’m a certified holistic nutritionist in the Ottawa area. As a longtime athlete, my focus is in performance-based nutrition coaching for young athletes and obstacle course race athletes. My mission is to help the next generation of athletes optimize their nutrition so they can optimize their performance.

Hi, I’m Melissa Boufounos!

I’m a certified holistic nutritionist in the Ottawa area. My mission is to help the next generation of athletes optimize their nutrition so they can optimize their performance.

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