Let's talk about SWEAT baby; the science of sweat, hydration and sodium
This week, Charlie takes a dive deep into the essential topic of sweat, sodium and hydration with Andy Blow, founder and CEO of Precision Fuel and Hydration.
Understanding Hydration
Charlie explains how dehydration impacts performance, leading to symptoms like increased heart rate, GI issues, and muscle cramps. Learn about the average fluid needs for men and women, and how to adjust for sweat losses during training and races.
The Science of Sweat
Are you a salty sweater? Discover why sodium is the most crucial electrolyte for runners, with average losses around 900 milligrammes per litre of sweat. Charlie discusses the importance of adding salt to your diet, particularly in pre and post-run foods and drinks.
Precision Fuel and Hydration’s Andy Blow
Andy shares the journey of Precision Fuel and Hydration, from its inception to becoming a key player in the endurance sports nutrition space, and Charlie puts your questions to Andy about some of your favourite products.
Connect with Charlie online @therunnerbeans / www.therunnerbeans.com
Grab a copy of Charlie’s book ‘Cook Eat Run’
The Cook Eat Run Podcast is sponsored by XMiles - the One Stop Nutrition Shop - use discount code COOKEATRUNJUNE10 for 10% off site wide at Xmiles.co.uk
This podcast is produced by Buckers at Decibelle Creative decibellecreative.com / @decibelle_creative
Transcript
>> Charlie: Hello and welcome back to the Cook Eat Run podcast with X
Speaker:Miles. It is no coincidence that we've scheduled
Speaker:this week's episode of the podcast for the UK's
Speaker:heatwave, because today's topic is hydration and looking
Speaker:at sodium in particular. And we're also
Speaker:chatting with Andy Blow, one of the founders and
Speaker:CEO of precision fuel and hydration, later
Speaker:on in the episode, so make sure to stick around.
Speaker:Now, we know that running nutrition is very personalised.
Speaker:However, whilst we can make recommendations for the range of
Speaker:carbohydrate intake, hydration is even more
Speaker:specific. Both your sweat rate, the amount of
Speaker:sweat per hour that you lose, and, your sweat
Speaker:composition, like how many electrolytes you use per hour,
Speaker:come into play. Not only this, but we need to think about the
Speaker:weather, training duration, intensity.
Speaker:So chances are that every runner, has
Speaker:experienced dehydration, which has impacted your performance, whether
Speaker:that's having GI issues, whether that's just finding a run
Speaker:really difficult, whether that's feeling awful after a run.
Speaker:Dehydration impacts performance because we have reduced blood
Speaker:volume, increased heart rate, decreased skin and GI
Speaker:blood flow, increased core temperature and increased
Speaker:rate of muscle glycogen usage. Symptoms of
Speaker:dehydration while running include decreased
Speaker:performance, finding it really hard to hold the paces that
Speaker:you should have been running, or usually running.
Speaker:Fatigue GI issue so, feeling
Speaker:like you're needing to go to the loo, feeling
Speaker:sick, getting cramps, or getting that kind of stomach
Speaker:sloshing around, it increases perceived
Speaker:exertion and you can also get muscle cramps.
Speaker:Generally speaking, women need 2.2
Speaker:litres of fluid per day, two to two and a
Speaker:half, while men need about three litres of fluid
Speaker:per day to maintain daily hydration. So for
Speaker:us, runners and endurance athletes, we need to replace any
Speaker:sweat losses on top of this fluid intake.
Speaker:Sweat rate is how much sweat we lose per hour while
Speaker:training. This varies dramatically from person to
Speaker:person, as sweat rate is genetic. So if you've got
Speaker:a sweaty family, chances are you're going to be
Speaker:sweaty. Average sweat rates for endurance
Speaker:athletes are usually about
Speaker:half to 2.5 litres an hour,
Speaker:although they can range up to four litres an
Speaker:hour. An individual athlete's sweat rate also
Speaker:varies greatly throughout training, basically related
Speaker:to temperature, humidity, heat
Speaker:acclimation. So have you just landed on your first day of holiday and you're
Speaker:trying to go out for a training run? Or is it the end of the summer and you've been
Speaker:running in hot temperatures all year? Which is why a lot of runners,
Speaker:during things like the London Marathon, the Boston Marathon.
Speaker:Those spring races where you have a freak hot day
Speaker:struggle more than they would have if that race had been, say,
Speaker:in September. And they've been training all summer.
Speaker:So knowing how much sweat you lose based on kind of cold
Speaker:temperatures, hot temperatures, windy day, those kind of things
Speaker:during your training, allows you to make a plan for what
Speaker:race day conditions are likely to be like to make sure that you
Speaker:can manage your hydration to improve performance
Speaker:and recovery. Our sweat contains
Speaker:water, sodium, chloride, potassium and
Speaker:calcium. Sodium is the electrolyte loss in the
Speaker:greatest amount via sweat, which is why we
Speaker:talk about it so much. I think there was a big
Speaker:sway a few years ago when coconut water had a real peak where we
Speaker:talked so much about potassium. But actually it's the
Speaker:sodium m that we lose in such great volume that has such a negative
Speaker:impact on training performance.
Speaker:If we get the balance wrong, the average
Speaker:athlete loses around 900 milligrammes of sodium
Speaker:per litre of sweat, although some people can
Speaker:lose up to 2000 milligrammes per
Speaker:litre. Sodium and chloride are the electrolytes
Speaker:we lose in greatest volume, which I've just said. We do also
Speaker:lose potassium, calcium and magnesium, but in much
Speaker:smaller, smaller volumes. And actually, those don't really
Speaker:impact our performance in the same way that losing sodium
Speaker:does, which is why we really focus on it. Salty
Speaker:sweaters often have a bigger impact or negative impact
Speaker:on performance from dehydration, and can experience
Speaker:higher rates of GI issues than those with a lower
Speaker:salt sweat rate. You can tell if you're a salty
Speaker:sweater quite easily. You know when you've got that
Speaker:crusty feeling on your face, or you can see the
Speaker:white salt marks on your clothes. Other
Speaker:symptoms can also include headaches, dizziness,
Speaker:lightheadedness, salty cravings, and that sweat stinging in your
Speaker:eyes after your run. we've been told by our respective
Speaker:health authorities that we're eating too much salt in our diets.
Speaker:And whilst we, as a collective of humans
Speaker:are, many runners actually need to be
Speaker:adding salt into our diets, especially
Speaker:in the pre and post run foods and drinks that we're
Speaker:consuming. For salty sweaters, many of
Speaker:the everyday electrolyte drinks don't even contain enough
Speaker:sodium, so it's worth trying. The higher sodium drinks
Speaker:like precision fuel and hydration 1500, the
Speaker:sterka, 1000 milligrammes tabs, or the pure
Speaker:sport ultra electrolytes with 1000 milligrammes.
Speaker:Don't forget, podcast listeners can save 10%
Speaker:with the code cookeatrunjune
Speaker:ten. I'll have another code for you
Speaker:next month. So make sure that you subscribe and listen to
Speaker:get that so that you can save on our favourite products.
Speaker:Personally, I love the precision fuel and hydration products and have
Speaker:used their gels during my last three marathons. So I was really
Speaker:keen to chat with Andy Blow, founder and CEO of Precision
Speaker:Fuel and Hydration, about the brand and their products.
Speaker:Thank you, Andy, for joining me today. precision
Speaker:fuel and hydration, I feel like, has
Speaker:boomed over the last year, maybe just because I'm seeing
Speaker:it more and more aware of it. I see it more online
Speaker:or at races, but how long has the company
Speaker:and the products have they been around for?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Yeah, it's, good to hear that, because in terms
Speaker:of, you're seeing it more and more, because that's what a lot of people
Speaker:are telling us at the moment. And I think a lot of people think
Speaker:we're quite a new company, but we've actually been around
Speaker:for over a decade now. We just celebrated
Speaker:our 13th birthday in April
Speaker:of 2024. We founded
Speaker:the company in 2011 and really have
Speaker:grown. We grew very, very slowly for a number of years,
Speaker:and it's only been in the last sort of two or three years
Speaker:where the kind of level of growth that we've seen, I think,
Speaker:has put us on the map in terms of one of the
Speaker:bigger players in the endurance sports nutrition
Speaker:Space.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I feel like I only tried your
Speaker:products maybe 2022,
Speaker:so I've been using them for just under two
Speaker:years, but certainly I'm seeing more
Speaker:rappers at races and seeing more people on
Speaker:social media talking about it. What do you
Speaker:think has caused that kind of
Speaker:recent sort of spike in the slow burner
Speaker:growth and then the peak in the last few years?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: I think it's the same as how, hopefully, if you've got
Speaker:them, your savings grow in the bank. It's compound
Speaker:interest, really, in that we've been growing at a
Speaker:pretty steady rate for a long, long time. But when you're
Speaker:growing off a small base and if you're, say, doubling
Speaker:every year, then even doubling is not a
Speaker:big number when you're small. But as you get bigger, if you can continue
Speaker:that rate of growth, and we've managed to maintain a pretty steady level of
Speaker:growth for a number of years now, then all of a sudden when
Speaker:you start doubling and doubling again or whatever, then
Speaker:at a certain point, then, yeah, you suddenly go from,
Speaker:like, being on the fringes to really
Speaker:in the, in the limelight.
Speaker:And it does feel like in the last year or two, I
Speaker:was at a race this weekend just gone to Ironman Hamburg
Speaker:and Germany hasn't traditionally been a
Speaker:super strong market for us, but we've had some
Speaker:reasonable sales there. I walked through the transition area at
Speaker:Iron Man Hamburg and I was
Speaker:speechless about how many pf and h bottles I saw,
Speaker:how many pf and h gels I saw taped to the top tubes of
Speaker:bikes and stuff. And I thought, wow, this is, this is really
Speaker:cool. And it was actually quite a moment to sort of see.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah. Do you feel like there has
Speaker:been a rise recently in more people taking an interest
Speaker:in their fuelling or being actually aware that they need
Speaker:to be fueling? Because I feel certainly people are
Speaker:finally understanding that one
Speaker:gel, every hour or some M. Haribo sweets
Speaker:on the way isn't going to cut it.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think we, we have been
Speaker:involved in that, hopefully involved in some of that
Speaker:education because education is a big part of what we do as a business.
Speaker:But also we have definitely been the beneficiaries
Speaker:of a situation that's kind of grown up around us,
Speaker:where 20 years ago, when I was competing seriously
Speaker:in endurance events, there was not a
Speaker:lot of great knowledge out there or
Speaker:dissemination of information to athletes about how much fueling
Speaker:you needed to do. I distinctly remember doing one
Speaker:of my first Ironman races and listening to one of the
Speaker:pro athletes describe how, because they had a bit of
Speaker:a dodgy, stomach, sometimes they ate, really. They
Speaker:tried to skate through on as little fuel and
Speaker:hydration as possible. And that single
Speaker:nugget of actually really bad information really
Speaker:stuck with me and shaped a little bit
Speaker:of my philosophy for how I was trying to fuel
Speaker:myself. And it couldn't have been further
Speaker:from being correct, but there just wasn't
Speaker:a lot of information. The last five years in
Speaker:particular, obviously, we've had all these stories about
Speaker:elite athletes taking more and more
Speaker:carbohydrates in running. I think
Speaker:the, Nike break in two project with Elliot
Speaker:Kipchoge was very
Speaker:instrumental in the fact that they looked at every
Speaker:angle of how to make this guy faster over the
Speaker:marathon. And one of the things they pushed really,
Speaker:really hard was fueling, because they recognised that actually
Speaker:enabling him to fuel more would enable him to run faster
Speaker:for longer. And so I think it's definitely
Speaker:more in the conscience now. whether
Speaker:it's really filtered down to
Speaker:inadvertent commas, the masses, I'm not so sure. I think
Speaker:if you're a serious athlete now, you probably at least understand
Speaker:the benefits of fuelling. But I was talking to
Speaker:a researcher from Liverpool John Moores the other day, just in
Speaker:casual conversation, and she was mentioning that they'd done
Speaker:a survey of athletes, surveying
Speaker:their attitudes towards their understanding of
Speaker:fueling in races and what they actually did,
Speaker:and found that although a lot of athletes kind of now know they
Speaker:need to fuel a bit more, whether they actually managed to
Speaker:achieve that in races is a different matter. And so maybe we're in the
Speaker:phase next of where we've got to help people take the
Speaker:theory and put it into practise.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Well, that's what we're trying to do with this podcast. So, yeah,
Speaker:we're on the same page in terms of wanting to kind of
Speaker:educate people and show them sort of
Speaker:how to do that in terms of training
Speaker:with the gels, with carbohydrates,
Speaker:with sodium, that kind of thing, and making sure
Speaker:that they're getting everything right in training so that on race day they
Speaker:aren't trying something new. But also they're not getting
Speaker:to the point where they can't take any more
Speaker:gels because they haven't trained their gut in the same way they haven't,
Speaker:that they train their legs kind of thing.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: absolutely, yeah. I used to save my gels for
Speaker:race day because they felt, it felt
Speaker:like that would then allow me to unlock a little bit
Speaker:extra and it was about, saving money and I would train with
Speaker:cereal bars and bananas, if anything at all, and
Speaker:then expect to be able to eat jowls on race day.
Speaker:And if you're going to try and eat three or even four
Speaker:joes an hour, if you're a very fast athlete
Speaker:with strong aspirations, then you
Speaker:have to be practising that at least some of the time in
Speaker:training if you're going to expect to be able to execute it on race day.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the expense is definitely there, but then there
Speaker:are products like I've been using the, cup hydrate drink
Speaker:from you guys on the, on my treadmill runs, because it's just
Speaker:easy and it's, it's a lot cheaper cost per,
Speaker:sort of run than using gels on my sort of
Speaker:seven, eight mile treadmill run. And
Speaker:let's take it back, if that's all right. Just kind of how the
Speaker:brand started, how you, it started out being called
Speaker:precision hydration, I think you mentioned, and, it's
Speaker:grown obviously from there. But how did the brand come
Speaker:about? How did the company get started?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Yeah, I was a
Speaker:triathlete back in the late nineties, early two
Speaker:thousands. I was set
Speaker:initially on wanting to go to the Olympic games, because, triathlon made
Speaker:its way into the Olympics in the year 2000. And I
Speaker:was, relatively young then. I was in my early,
Speaker:just coming into my twenties then, so that was
Speaker:always going to be a bit of a stretch. But I felt maybe
Speaker:2004 Olympics was a target for me and I went to the
Speaker:University of Bath to study sports science and to train for
Speaker:triathlon. being brutally honest, it
Speaker:became apparent fairly quickly that although I was
Speaker:a pretty reasonable triathlete, I was only ever going to be in.
Speaker:I made the Great Britain squad a few times and I did a couple of, I did a
Speaker:world championships for duathlon and for long course triathlon.
Speaker:But I was never really in that top
Speaker:elite cohort that we're going to go to the Olympic games. So I was on
Speaker:the periphery of that and as a
Speaker:result I stepped up to Ironman racing
Speaker:as, another route to pursue. And
Speaker:it was doing Ironman races that I learned.
Speaker:Actually, looking back, I wasn't getting my fueling right
Speaker:particularly either, but I really made a mess of my
Speaker:hydration and I ended up in a medical tent in several
Speaker:races with having to be on a drip or having to be
Speaker:treated for a condition called hyponatremia, which is
Speaker:where you get lower blood sodium levels
Speaker:in the early two thousands. It was a friend of mine, who's a
Speaker:doctor, who suggested I get a sweat test done at a hospital
Speaker:because he felt the symptoms that I was having with
Speaker:underperformance in hot ironman races were to do with
Speaker:a catastrophic loss of fluid and electrolytes, because I have a
Speaker:very high sweat rate. And sure enough, when I had
Speaker:a sweat test done, he educated me around the fact that the
Speaker:amount of sodium I was losing in my sweat was
Speaker:more than double what the average person would lose.
Speaker:And that really changed my
Speaker:personal approach to what I did. I started to take way more salt and
Speaker:sodium in races, a little bit less fluid, and
Speaker:the difference was like night and day, like, I could then start to compete
Speaker:in the heat a lot, a lot better.
Speaker:It was very powerful for me as an athlete,
Speaker:finding something that
Speaker:unlocked that level of performance
Speaker:improvement by such a simple
Speaker:mechanism. Because as you know, as an athlete yourself,
Speaker:there are very few things, shortcuts that actually make you
Speaker:faster, you know, in running the.
Speaker:I've tried them quite a few times. I own a couple of pairs now, but the
Speaker:super shoes that have come out, definitely, they're one of those things,
Speaker:they make a noticeable, measurable difference. I reckon
Speaker:I'm several seconds a kilometre faster with
Speaker:those things on but that's really rare. Most things
Speaker:promise a lot of performance improvement and don't deliver
Speaker:it. This fact, for me, getting my sodium balance
Speaker:and fluid balance right in a long event, was a
Speaker:total game changer. And when I started
Speaker:to sort of phase, out of racing and
Speaker:competing full time, I was coaching some athletes. I was running a sports
Speaker:science lab, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could
Speaker:do that sweat test on athletes to help them as
Speaker:well? So I bought a sweat testing machine,
Speaker:ended up attracting the interest of the company that made
Speaker:those machines, because they were made for a completely different
Speaker:medical diagnostic purpose in the diagnosis of
Speaker:cystic fibrosis. And it was in conversations
Speaker:with their business development people that the idea of
Speaker:maybe sweat testing for athletes is a
Speaker:commercial service, was born. And
Speaker:that was the seed that became precision hydration. So
Speaker:we started off sweat testing, then we introduced the range of
Speaker:electrolyte drinks in different strengths, because that just didn't exist in
Speaker:the market. And it was very kind of
Speaker:organic. And that was around 2011, when we formally
Speaker:turned that into a company. But even then, between
Speaker:2011 and 2014 or 15, I
Speaker:wasn't running that business full time.
Speaker:I was having to pay myself through the other business that I
Speaker:was running with coaching and that kind of thing. And so
Speaker:it was quite organic. And although,
Speaker:although I've always been relatively ambitious to
Speaker:do something in business, I
Speaker:had no formal training in, you know,
Speaker:entrepreneurship or how to run a business. So
Speaker:it was a lot of, it was a lot of trial and error early on, and
Speaker:a lot of just honestly just. I'd found a way to solve a
Speaker:problem for myself, and I was trying to then help other people to
Speaker:do the same thing.
Speaker:>> Charlie: So you mentioned the sweat testing that you kind of went to the hospital for
Speaker:yours that you. I know that, the sweat testing is
Speaker:something that you guys still offer that's obviously
Speaker:not necessarily the easiest thing for
Speaker:everybody to come and book one in or travel to go and get
Speaker:one. What would you suggest that every day
Speaker:the masses do to figure out whether they
Speaker:are a salty sweater, a heavy sweater, how they can kind
Speaker:of figure out their own sweat rate ish
Speaker:to kind of create their own hydration plan?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Yeah. Sweat
Speaker:profiling involves looking at two different
Speaker:things, really. One of them is how much you sweat. So your sweat
Speaker:rate in terms of litres per hour of actual fluid loss.
Speaker:And then the other thing is, how much sodium do you lose in your
Speaker:sweat? Is that second factor. The
Speaker:first one, how much sweat you lose, any of us can test.
Speaker:And I'd already done. I used to do quite a bit of that with my own
Speaker:training. And we've got a blog on our website which
Speaker:we could send you.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah, I can share the link easily.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: it basically shows you how to measure your
Speaker:sweat rate. So you weigh yourself before you
Speaker:do a training session. You do the training session,
Speaker:ideally, you do a training session where you don't eat or drink anything because it
Speaker:keeps the maths really simple. If you do, you have to correct for
Speaker:that in the spreadsheet and then you weigh yourself
Speaker:again afterwards, after you've tied down and got all
Speaker:the sweat off your body. And, one
Speaker:litre of water weighs approximately. It
Speaker:weighs exactly one kilo. And so
Speaker:although you burn a bit of glycogen, there's
Speaker:other kind of respiratory fluid losses,
Speaker:really. It's pretty accurate to look at
Speaker:your body weight loss and that gives you an
Speaker:indication of your fluid losses over a short
Speaker:period of time. So, and then there's various tables out there where you
Speaker:can compare. You know, if you sweat half a litre an hour,
Speaker:that makes you a relatively low
Speaker:sweater in moderate conditions.
Speaker:Me, I lose nearly two litres an hour if I'm working really
Speaker:hard. So I have a very high sweat rate. And we've worked with athletes that
Speaker:lose three or four litres an hour. So there's a, there's a real
Speaker:range. So measuring your sweat rate, this is something
Speaker:you can do pretty easily yourself.
Speaker:That can be really useful, even on its own. But if you can combine
Speaker:that with understanding what your sweat sodium concentration
Speaker:is, and that involves someone like us
Speaker:taking a sweat sample and then analysing
Speaker:it, then you've got a really powerful bit of information
Speaker:because, you know, your net fluid and sodium losses
Speaker:and that can be used to sort of calibrate whether you need to
Speaker:replace a little bit, a moderate amount or a
Speaker:lot. And for me, obviously, I found
Speaker:out I was someone who needed to replace loads of fluid
Speaker:and sodium when racing. But my strategy would have
Speaker:effectively sort of drowned someone who has a lower
Speaker:sweat rate and a lower salt output. And so
Speaker:it allows a bit of individualization. The way
Speaker:that we summarise it, really, for people as well, is that
Speaker:you'll get exact numbers from your sweat rate tests and your sweat
Speaker:sodium tests, but you don't actually need
Speaker:exact numbers. What you need to know is, it's like knowing your
Speaker:t shirt size. You need to know if you're a small, which is like a
Speaker:low sweat loss,
Speaker:human, compared to, an extra large, which is me,
Speaker:and I lose loads of sweat and, fluid and
Speaker:salt and then we've got plenty of
Speaker:literature on our website and we've actually got some online calculators
Speaker:you can use really easily to
Speaker:put you in the right ballpark for how much you ought
Speaker:to be replacing for different events.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah, we'll link to all of those. I've been lucky enough to
Speaker:do one of the. You've got your precision
Speaker:fuel and hydration sweat tests and have a kind of
Speaker:sweat salt hydration plan
Speaker:sent over to me. And, yeah, I was kind
Speaker:of medium to high sweat
Speaker:salt output, so
Speaker:I use the 1500,
Speaker:the electrolyte tab. So you guys have a 500, a
Speaker:1000 and a 1500 that
Speaker:I was recommended to use the 500 kind of every day, and
Speaker:then the 1500 when I was doing workouts, long
Speaker:runs, especially in the summer, those kind of
Speaker:things. And why
Speaker:isn't there sodium in your gels? That is a question I
Speaker:was asked by a lot of people and
Speaker:have asked myself when I'm trying to balance carrying the m
Speaker:gels and the salt tabs and, you know,
Speaker:drinking fluid that's salty in the first couple, you know, that's got
Speaker:a sodium in for the first couple of miles of my race. So,
Speaker:yeah. What's the kind of the reasoning behind that?
Speaker:And is that something we might see at any point?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Yeah, so very good question. Because,
Speaker:a lot of other gels on the market do contain
Speaker:electrolytes because obviously there's a level of
Speaker:convenience for an athlete in being able to get salts
Speaker:and carbohydrates all in one solution.
Speaker:The reason we've decoupled those things, though, is when
Speaker:you're, as you'll know, when you're competing in any
Speaker:endurance event, you have three basic requirements from
Speaker:a nutritional point of view. We call them the three levers. You've got
Speaker:carbohydrates and you need to know roughly how many
Speaker:grammes of carbs you need per hour. And the thing that drives the
Speaker:amount of carbs you need per hour, really is how fast
Speaker:you're going or how much power you're producing
Speaker:and the overall duration of the event.
Speaker:So really, the longer the event and the harder
Speaker:you're going, the more that number of grammes per hour
Speaker:goes up. And the standard recommendations
Speaker:are around 30 grammes per hour for
Speaker:shorter, lower intensity activities through 60, and up
Speaker:to 90 grammes per hour for people that are working really
Speaker:hard over, say, a half Ironman or an Ironman
Speaker:triathlon.
Speaker:And that's fairly static. So on any given
Speaker:day, if you run the Boston Marathon in potentially
Speaker:cool conditions, or if you run the Tokyo marathon in potentially
Speaker:hot and humid conditions, your amount of
Speaker:carbohydrates per hour is going to be about the same. So
Speaker:let's say, Charlie, you're going to be two gels an hour. You know, is
Speaker:it?
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah, I am.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: There you go. you're always going to be
Speaker:that. Now, if you're though
Speaker:running in, Boston, and it's
Speaker:an unseasonably cold year, and you're not going to be sweating very
Speaker:much, then your requirements for fluid
Speaker:are going to be relatively low, and your requirements
Speaker:for sodium might be microscopic to non
Speaker:existent. So on that day, you're going to choose to
Speaker:continue to eat gels at the correct rate for
Speaker:you, but you're going to drink very little. You might just pick up some water from the
Speaker:aid stations when you feel like you need a drink on the way around.
Speaker:Contrast that with, say, doing Tokyo
Speaker:or.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Or this year's Boston, which was really.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Warm, hot and humid.
Speaker:Then your fluid requirement could double or triple
Speaker:from what it was on a cold day. And your sodium
Speaker:will move, to a certain extent, will move in
Speaker:step with that. And the problem there is, if you're getting most
Speaker:of your sodium, if we put 250 milligrammes of sodium in your
Speaker:gel, if you're still taking two an hour, you're
Speaker:getting 500 milligrammes of sodium, whether you need it or not.
Speaker:if you're someone who is using some of the really fast
Speaker:elite athletes we work with, might take four gels an hour, which is
Speaker:120 grammes of carbs. And if we had
Speaker:250 or 300 milligrammes of sodium in
Speaker:each gel, by default, they would already be getting
Speaker:close to a gramme or more of sodium per hour, which is getting
Speaker:towards the upper limit of what we'd recommend anyone, whether you need it or
Speaker:not. So, although
Speaker:there is a slight compromise on convenience of not getting them
Speaker:all in, one thing, by having an electrolyte drink
Speaker:plus a gel or an electrolyte capsule, water and a
Speaker:gel, it means you can pull those three levers independently,
Speaker:and you can make sure that you get your numbers
Speaker:totally correct, whatever the conditions. And
Speaker:so, we do get asked a lot of the time whether we do that.
Speaker:At the moment, there's no plans to put that in there because you. It's
Speaker:confusing. We do have one hybrid product, which is a
Speaker:drink mix that has sodium and carbs, and
Speaker:that's very, very popular with athletes doing shorter events.
Speaker:And you can also use it as a component of an
Speaker:overall fueling strategy. But we like to
Speaker:make very simple products which contain
Speaker:the one thing usually either carbs or
Speaker:sodium. Again, with the drinks, some of them contain a bit of
Speaker:both, but then make the labelling really
Speaker:clear, give you the tools to understand
Speaker:how many of those things you'll need each per
Speaker:hour. And then you've got the toolkit and the knowledge to kind of put that
Speaker:all together on race day.
Speaker:So, yeah, it's, Yeah,
Speaker:it's a tricky one, but that's. That's the
Speaker:philosophy behind it.
Speaker:>> Charlie: I mean, it makes sense, I guess, from my point of view. I'm like,
Speaker:I use the combination of the caffeine
Speaker:gels strategically kind of
Speaker:timed with the non caffeinated gels. I also
Speaker:use the combination of the carbon
Speaker:sodium drink that I have in a handheld that I use for the first
Speaker:hour. I finished it within 4 miles
Speaker:at Boston this year, but,
Speaker:yeah, so I would be excited
Speaker:if you had a gel with sodium that I could then
Speaker:strategically use. I know it makes it more
Speaker:difficult for people in terms of what are they buying. If it's
Speaker:a hot day, they have to have a completely different change of strategy
Speaker:in terms of their gels. But personally and
Speaker:from feedback from Instagram, we would love you to
Speaker:create a product that had some sodium that we could
Speaker:then use, you know, one, an hour
Speaker:of. Or, you know, I've got my shorts,
Speaker:I've got my caffeine pocket and my non caffeine pocket, and I know when to
Speaker:kind of pull from each. so
Speaker:that's my.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Yeah, it is great. It is great feedback. And we
Speaker:love chatting to athletes about what they like to see.
Speaker:Because honestly, in an ideal world, I completely agree with
Speaker:you that having a skew, like we have a caffeinated and non
Speaker:caffeinated gel, having a gel
Speaker:with and without sodium could
Speaker:make total sense as,
Speaker:honestly, one of the barriers is, as
Speaker:a smaller business and a growing business,
Speaker:we have to be careful. We have a relatively
Speaker:constrained range of products, which I think
Speaker:is one of our strengths, rather than a weakness, in the sense that it
Speaker:allows us to be very focused on making sure those
Speaker:products are exactly right for the end user, that
Speaker:they're available, most of the
Speaker:time, if not all of the time, because we can keep them in stock.
Speaker:When you bring operational complexity in with loads and loads of
Speaker:skews, it scares the life out of me trying to, look at some of
Speaker:our competitors and wonder how they keep 17 different flavours
Speaker:of gel going in the market. But then when
Speaker:you go to their websites, quite often what you see is that half the
Speaker:popular flavours are out of stock. The unpopular ones are sitting,
Speaker:around or getting sold off cheap because they're going past their best before.
Speaker:So we just have a level of caution around
Speaker:introducing things. Plus, I suppose
Speaker:there's the kind of making sure that
Speaker:the end user really understands it because you
Speaker:would, absolutely understand when to use that
Speaker:sodium based gel and when to use a plain
Speaker:one with, with people who are earlier
Speaker:in their endurance journey, they might not have that
Speaker:knowledge and might just pick them up
Speaker:randomly and then we'd be doing them a disservice if we
Speaker:didn't manage to educate them on how to use them properly.
Speaker:So it's complicated. But I think as we
Speaker:evolve as a company and I think as the market evolves
Speaker:then that more and more niche
Speaker:products like that, are probably going to come to the.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Well, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that we're going to see that at some point from you
Speaker:guys. in terms of another question from Instagram, in
Speaker:terms of the electrolyte tabs, why
Speaker:are they labelled like five,
Speaker:especially the 1500? So that's actually per
Speaker:litre rather than per 500 mils, which is what you
Speaker:would typically dissolve one tablet in. So it's actually
Speaker:what, 750 milligrammes of sodium in that?
Speaker:Is that just because it's easier to do kind of per litre because we're doing
Speaker:all of our sweat rates per hour
Speaker:per litre, that kind of thing?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Exactly. That is,
Speaker:it's what makes most sense for understanding
Speaker:the strength of the product. It's a bit
Speaker:like, So we're talking about the 1500
Speaker:refers to the relative sodium concentration. And
Speaker:when we test your sweat, when we talk about sweat sodium, we
Speaker:talk about the relative concentration, not the total
Speaker:amount because the total amount is linked to the total amount
Speaker:of fluid. I'm trying to think of
Speaker:whether there's an analogy I could use. But I
Speaker:suppose maybe the, It's why you
Speaker:maybe have, with alcoholic drinks, you talk about
Speaker:the alcohol percentage rather than
Speaker:the total amount of alcohol because you know you
Speaker:would. Clearly we all know
Speaker:that, beer comes generally in
Speaker:pints and whiskey comes in
Speaker:single measures. And knowing the
Speaker:percentage of that, the potency of that
Speaker:is more important than knowing the absolute amount because we're never
Speaker:going to compare a pint of whiskey, hopefully with a pint of beer.
Speaker:well, not since we left university anyway. But
Speaker:the thing about the relative sodium concentration, it
Speaker:makes it, understandable to compare across products
Speaker:and compare to what you're individually losing
Speaker:because your hydration strategy involves drinking a
Speaker:greater amount of fluid when it's hotter, in a lesser
Speaker:amount of fluid when it's cooler, but of a concentration
Speaker:that works for you. We always felt
Speaker:that was the best way to communicate it
Speaker:and to be totally fair to people that write them, because we get
Speaker:asked that question a lot from our customers.
Speaker:there are arguments for labelling it in a different way,
Speaker:but that's the way we've chosen to do it, because it fits with the philosophy of
Speaker:educating people on what's important. And the relative
Speaker:concentration in this instance is more
Speaker:important than the absolute amount, if that makes sense.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah, and I mean, I think you're very, you know, it's clearly labelled
Speaker:that that's how much sodium is in, in the product,
Speaker:but so many electrolyte tabs, you actually have to look
Speaker:really, you know, they're really small fine print on
Speaker:the side to see how much sodium. So
Speaker:I think that, yeah, just creating an awareness
Speaker:and educating people about what they're looking for
Speaker:when they're choosing an electrolyte drink or product
Speaker:is helpful. And again, hopefully we're doing that through these
Speaker:podcasts and blogs that we're sharing.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Absolutely. Because I think with the gels,
Speaker:we had a real issue when we were looking at
Speaker:some of our competitors products, when we were in the development
Speaker:phase of our own. Even figuring out how many grammes of
Speaker:carbohydrate different people had in different gels and
Speaker:then finding with any given brand, you
Speaker:might have a gel which comes in two different flavours, and
Speaker:those two different flavours have two different carbohydrate
Speaker:contents and they're often random numbers.
Speaker:So we just thought it was like a bit crazy that
Speaker:the reason you buy a gel packet is to get carbohydrate.
Speaker:That is it basically to not have the number
Speaker:of the grammes of carbs stamped on the front
Speaker:in big letters seem crazy. And actually, we
Speaker:started that trend. I think we've seen a few other companies
Speaker:get on the bus with that,
Speaker:which is probably better for consumers overall.
Speaker:It sort of highlights to you this is the important thing in this
Speaker:product and this is how much you're getting.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Definitely. I mean, my pet peeve is when you get the kind of
Speaker:the blocks and it tells you how
Speaker:many is in the packet, but actually not how
Speaker:many you need to take to get
Speaker:the amount you need per hour. And sometimes some of them,
Speaker:I'm like to my friends, you're going to have to take a whole pack per half
Speaker:hour to get the amount. And that is a lot. You're basically
Speaker:chewing nonstop like every mile. So
Speaker:I really like the gel. The, kind of blocks
Speaker:that you guys have. That's very clear. You need both of these for your
Speaker:30 grammes. Essentially, it's the same as one
Speaker:gel is the two blocks. So, yeah, I definitely
Speaker:appreciate that packaging and the
Speaker:communication. In
Speaker:terms of your products, do you have a favourite,
Speaker:your favourite product that you've made
Speaker:or something that's. That you're most excited
Speaker:about?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: I probably have different favourites for different
Speaker:reasons. Like the PH 1500, the strongest electrolyte
Speaker:drink we do is the one that, when I started racing
Speaker:again after having started the company, and that is the product for
Speaker:me, that is the. For the heavy, salty sweaters, that is an absolute
Speaker:game changer. So in the summer, I'm never,
Speaker:you know, that is always close to me when I'm travelling
Speaker:or racing or competing. So that's kind of a personal
Speaker:favourite. I think in more recent times,
Speaker:the mint and lemon chews that we have that you just described in the
Speaker:blocks, you know, the 15 gramme blocks. I
Speaker:find myself, if I'm training a bit more casually and I'm not pushing
Speaker:really hard, then I much prefer that to taking a
Speaker:gel if I'm just out on a long run. So because of the little bit
Speaker:of difference in flavour and something to chew on.
Speaker:So they're really popular. and then the product
Speaker:that, I've enjoyed seeing come
Speaker:to market the most was probably the
Speaker:carb only drink mix. So we bought out a
Speaker:carbohydrate electrolyte drink mix, which was really popular.
Speaker:And we started working with the Lotto Destiny cycling team,
Speaker:who used a lot of it, but they wanted to have
Speaker:one with no sodium in it as well as the one with sodium
Speaker:in it, so that they could fine tune the rider's strategies
Speaker:a bit more. We actually co developed that
Speaker:product with them. We tested it. We tested
Speaker:it at the Tour de France, amongst other races, which is
Speaker:really cool to see it being used in there and
Speaker:then launched it off the back of that. And so
Speaker:we've had, having worked with
Speaker:really, really world class professional athletes to develop a product
Speaker:that they're happy with. And those guys will tell
Speaker:you, if they don't like something because they have to drink,
Speaker:they will drink five or six bottles of that
Speaker:minimum a day for three weeks.
Speaker:so you kind of have to get it right. So it's a pressure job,
Speaker:but we get a lot of good feedback from.
Speaker:>> Charlie: The team, I think, that comes into it with the flavour
Speaker:fatigue. Before we started recording, I was saying how
Speaker:actually the precision food and hydration gels are
Speaker:the only ones that I can take the full eight. No.
Speaker:Gagging. No, I don't want to take this gel. They
Speaker:go down easily. There's kind of. I thought it was pear, but
Speaker:you inform me it's actually flavourless or it's unflavored.
Speaker:How did that come about, choosing the kind
Speaker:of flavour or the non flavour for those
Speaker:products?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: We always started out, when we did the electrolyte tablets,
Speaker:even back in 2011, we decided that if we could,
Speaker:we'd have something which tasted of nothing. And with a drink
Speaker:that's nigh on impossible, because as soon as you add something into
Speaker:the water, you're going to affect the taste. And so we went for
Speaker:the very, very mildest flavour we could, which is kind of a
Speaker:mixed citrus flavour, but we kept dialling
Speaker:the flavour back and dialling the flavour back until we got it to
Speaker:this, like, base level. That was just very refreshing and that was
Speaker:it. And then when we did the gels, the thought process
Speaker:was, well, maybe we should try and replicate that with sort
Speaker:of a citrusy type flavour or something. So we
Speaker:made Mel, who helped, who's part of our.
Speaker:She's part of our athletes and support team day to day, but she's heavily involved
Speaker:in product development and she made some,
Speaker:gels, some base gels for us to try
Speaker:while we're starting to define flavour. We added
Speaker:different flavours to them, started trying them, and then someone took a
Speaker:spoonful of, like, just the base gel product with no
Speaker:flavour added and said, this is just tastes better
Speaker:than any of these actually flavoured ones. And we
Speaker:all had a bit and we thought. And
Speaker:it was quite a hard decision to make at first because it's like, who launches a
Speaker:product with no flavour? But then
Speaker:we were like, well, we all prefer this one, so let's
Speaker:do it. And I think it's a huge benefit of that has
Speaker:been that a whole bunch of people who have told us
Speaker:categorically that they don't do gels have now
Speaker:converted on to actually being able to use our gels.
Speaker:So, you know, that's mission accomplished
Speaker:on that.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Yeah, I've used them for my last three or four
Speaker:marathons. and, yeah, definitely
Speaker:find them the best in terms of. They sit well in my
Speaker:stomach. There's no flavour fatigue, the texture is
Speaker:easy, it's not too thin, it's not too thick. Yeah, I'm,
Speaker:not just singing your praises because. Because I'm talking to you, but I
Speaker:genuinely did a huge taste test, and they were,
Speaker:came out by far top for me in terms
Speaker:of carb levels, flavour,
Speaker:texture, ease of opening the packets. A lot of people messaged me
Speaker:saying, please thank them for making it so easy
Speaker:to open the packet and not lose the top. And you're not
Speaker:faffing around trying to put that back in your pocket. So,
Speaker:yeah, hats off for great products.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: Yeah, well, we have an internal rule in the,
Speaker:in the office that we won't launch a product that we
Speaker:won't preferentially use ourselves. So
Speaker:for a little while, I'll give you an example of that. We
Speaker:had running belts. We designed
Speaker:and made some running belts, to carry gels and things like
Speaker:that, and they were okay. But. But after a while,
Speaker:people were like, no one. We're not really using
Speaker:it. I went back to using the running belt that I was using before
Speaker:and stuff, and I thought, so we killed that
Speaker:product because we just thought,
Speaker:we don't want to be selling something that isn't the best in class.
Speaker:And we kind of learned at that point that
Speaker:actually, our lane is obviously, at the moment, is very
Speaker:firmly in the nutrition products and straying
Speaker:too far into, you know, we thought,
Speaker:how hard can it be to design a running belt? But clearly there's
Speaker:companies that really know what they're doing, doing that, and
Speaker:we're doing a better job than us. So we've tended
Speaker:to, more recently, kind of stay in our lane,
Speaker:and hopefully, you know, everyone in the office
Speaker:and myself included, if we're going to go out and do any kind of event,
Speaker:it's like we've got a best in class product that we would
Speaker:use to help us do our best in that.
Speaker:>> Charlie: And I think I'm on backorder or waiting for the
Speaker:hydroflask things to come back in stock. Is that going
Speaker:to be any time? Are we looking forward to them for the
Speaker:summer?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: I've got some on my desk, so,
Speaker:we're just doing the internal QC on the
Speaker:batch that's coming, and they should be back in stock.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Amazing. I'll link to those and hope that they're back in stock by the time this
Speaker:goes live. My last question is just, is there
Speaker:anything coming soon that we can look out for? Are we going to be seeing
Speaker:any refuel products from precision
Speaker:fuel and hydration soon?
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: There are, there's a few. There's a few innovations in the
Speaker:pipeline. So the chew product that currently
Speaker:comes in two little blocks, you know, 30 grammes.
Speaker:We are working with Lotto destiny again, the cycling
Speaker:team on a bigger, tube, essentially a bit more like a bar.
Speaker:So something that will offer 60, most likely
Speaker:60 grammes of carbohydrate all in one block.
Speaker:So if you think of something about the size, you're very roughly
Speaker:about the size of a mars bar or something like that, but
Speaker:basically pure carbohydrate and in a couple of
Speaker:different flavours, that's in live testing with lotto
Speaker:and with a lot of our elite athletes and people
Speaker:at the moment in the office. So it won't be out until
Speaker:next year if we do launch it commercially. But that's a
Speaker:front runner at the moment for a new product. And then the other
Speaker:thing is we're really working on, we're continuing to work on a lot
Speaker:of our digital products. So the online fuel and hydration
Speaker:planner continues to evolve. We're
Speaker:just in the final processes of improving our sweat test
Speaker:reporting. So when you had a sweat test done, you have got a report,
Speaker:and we've now got a new iteration of
Speaker:the software with an improved algorithm to look at that.
Speaker:So what we'll be able to do for people like
Speaker:yourself, if you've done a sweat test before, you won't need to do the physical test again.
Speaker:But if you want to run your numbers through that, the new
Speaker:calculator, it actually builds in some
Speaker:fueling recommendations as well, for events and things. So it's a bit
Speaker:more of a. Because when we originally did the, the
Speaker:hydration testing, algorithm,
Speaker:we were only doing it focused on hydration, but
Speaker:now we can offer a bit more expertise on the fueling
Speaker:side. We've massively upgraded that.
Speaker:So again, we're testing that in
Speaker:house at the moment prior to actually releasing
Speaker:it to everyone who's offering sweat testing.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Well, Andy, thank you so much. I will link to my
Speaker:favourite precision fuel and hydration products in the show notes and,
Speaker:to the website where people can either book a sweat test
Speaker:or there's a test online where you can just kind of click
Speaker:through and say what your sport is, whether you're a heavy sweater, whether
Speaker:you get salt patches, that kind of thing, so that you can work
Speaker:out the best products for you. So
Speaker:thank you very much.
Speaker:>> Andy Blow: No, thanks. Thanks for all your kind words on our, stuff.
Speaker:I'm, glad it's helping you get around all these narratives.
Speaker:>> Charlie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Cook Eat Run
Speaker:podcast with X Miles. Don't forget to use the code
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Speaker:listen next time. I'm chatting with Nicola Ludlam
Speaker:rain, better known as Nick's nutrition, all about ultra
Speaker:processed foods. It's a really hot topic at the moment,
Speaker:so make sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an
Speaker:episode. And please, please leave us a rating and review if
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