I recently partook in a fat ass style event run by a local community running group. It was a super fun day out attended by a mixed bag of runners.

I shared some of the early kms with a local legend who had at least 30 years on me in the world of trail running. We shared some laughs and some stories early on, and then the heckling started!

There were 5 laps of the course on the day and I went in with a race strategy and was treating the event as a practice for goal races later on in the year. I had crew helping me out (he was crewing himself out the back of his car) and as i passed on my instructions for subsequent laps (like requesting a spare pair of socks to replace the soaked ones I was wearing) he proceeded to mock and ridicule all my decisions.

Now at this point I'll add it was all done very tongue in cheek and with the good spirited banter and camaraderie I love about semi competitive trail running. There was certainly no malice behind it and to be honest I actually ended up listening to some of the taunts... my socks had mostly dried by the following lap anyway.

I should also add at this point... that he crushed me in the race.

On the drive home debriefing with my crew chief/partner she brought something interesting to my attention.

Her: "Did you see what he was eating between laps"

Me: "Whilst he was abusing me? haha no."

Her: "baby food! he was eating pouches of baby food."

That explained it all. It certainly wasn't the many years of hard work and training or just general natural ability that saw him leave me in the dust... it was the baby food!

Ok, maybe it was the fact he was both fitter and faster than me but the more I thought about the baby food the more it made sense. I have since been experimenting with it and incorporating it into my long runs and training and have been pleasantly surprised by how well it sits in my stomach and how easy it is to get down even after some harder efforts.

It has its pros and cons. It is certainly a lot cheaper than a maurten gel whilst a quick scan of the nutritional information on the packet shows it to have the same number of total calories. The packets are bigger and more cumbersome though and you would certainly have to be particularly careful of where the lid sits when stowed away.

I have yet to try it out in a proper race set but think I will use them at aid stations from early on in the race and carry gels for in between. My thought process is that if I can line my stomach with more natural real food early on in the race then it should help me to stomach gels for longer (As I currently get very sick of them by the time a race hits double digit hours).

I can say with certainty though that if baby food is the key to a long successful ultra career and sees me crushing runners half my age with banter and wits to match - then Im all in!

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