The Food and Hydration I'll be using at my 2026 CCC
Disclosure
I am posting this article after I finished my CCC, whose article will soon be published here, bear with me!
Context
A quick one, mostly to keep track for the next races: which food and hydration will I be using at my CCC in a few days.
I'm just back from a 3 days trail camp *nd I tested most of it.
Approach
For 2 years I'm only using food and hydration which I tested during my training; the only things I take at ad stations are: water, Coke (when I feel like it) and few things that I crave at the moment (e.g. some cheese).
For the rest, I carry everything with me; my watch vibrates every 15 minutes:
- I drink 3 or 4 sips at that time,
- and one time ouf of 2 (so every 1/2 hour), I eat a bite, aiming for 10 grams (see calculation below).
Hydration
I'll be using my Instinct Eklipse 12L backpack, which comes with 600 ml flasks.
As for the flasks content:
- Maltodextrine dosed at 30 grams per hour (so roughly 36g per 600 ml flask),
- Naak Salted Soup: it contains 55g of carbs, 850mg of sodium, an "breaks" the monotony / disgust of always having sugar.
I'm aiming for 50g of carbs er hour, so let's do some maths, will you?
- In between most aid stations, I'll have 2 flasks of Maltodextrine and 1 flask of Salted soup, which means 120 grams of carb.
- 3 flasks are meant for 3 1/2 hours, which makes 33 grams per hour
- I have roughly 20 grams of carbs left to absorb.
Keeping cool!
It will likely be hot during Saturday (I'm starting with the 9:15 wave), so I'm planning on refreshing myself as much as possible, using the rivers and aid stations to wet my cap.
I will also refill my flasks outside the aid stations when I can (e.g. Refuges Bonatti or Elena), having electrolytes added in those - this should help keeping me cool.
Food
Probably one of the areas of caution for me: I struggled with it during my 2 last finished Ultras.
I can't be sure that the below strategy will work, but the goal is to be able to absorb enough carbs for as much time as possible:
- starting with solid food (bars) for the first 4-5 hours,
- then moving to compotes,
- and finally gels.
I tested all the products I'll be using:
- bars: Naak, Atlet (20g carbs),
- compotes: Atlet Apricot, Strawberry (46g carbs), Precision Fuel (90g carbs),
- gels: Naak lemon (30g carbs), Naak mapple syrup (27g carbs), Overstims coffee (25g carbs).
Of course I'll be just eating a bit every 30 minutes - so some of the above are specially interesting in terms of carbs/space ratio, e.g. the Precision Fuel one: 90g means 5 hours running.
Also, I'll be "shuffling" the food, i.e. not taking the same thing for 6 hours in a row.
Assistance
My wife will provide me assistance at the 2 allowed aid stations (Champex-Lac and Vallorcine), which will allow me not to take all the food with me, but also get some "feel good food" and also change shoes, socks and t-shirt!
Tags: Running