I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. There’s actual food out there, actual, real food that you can use to fuel yourself for long runs. Sack off your SiS and Gu rubbish, get on board with this other stuff.
There’s actually no ‘secret’ to it at all. We’ve been eating actual, real food for millenia. Gels* are what we’re told we need and sit on the boundary, at least in my head, somewhere between pseudo-scientific bullshit and Druidic old wives tales**.
Step in Longhaul Endurance.
They’re aimed at the ‘ultra’ end of the sporting scale, be it cycling, running, mega long canoeing stuff, ermmm, sledging….for ages, stuff like that y’know? Anyhow, I’ve been using their stuff for a few months in training and racing. I’m now super lucky to be sponsored by them. Expect some bias in this post if you must, but please believe me that I would not be endorsing something that I didn’t genuinely believe worked.
I’d like to think that I’ve got ‘previous’ when it comes to being a loud-mouth ranter, voicing my opinion from my soap-box on the web.
They currently come in two flavours. Meat and non-meat, basically. They’re also made in the UK.
The meat is Turmeric Chicken bolstered by some brown rice and butternut squash. You get around 180kcal in each organic, nut-free, dairy-free, GM-free and gluten-free (phew!!) pouch of real food. Nutritionally there’s 23.7g of carbohydrate in each serving, along with 8.5g of protein (to get BIG) and 13.3g of fat. So, pretty good for a recovery food apres training/racing too.
The non-meat is Sweet Potato and Sesame with quinoa, dates and a sprinkle of tahini. Again it’s gluten-free, GM-free, dairy-free, nut-free and organic, but also vegan……..for all you hipsters out there (those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones). And, as if it couldn’t get any better, you get a fairly substantial 204kcal in each pouch. As with the meat option you get a decent amount of carbohydrate in these puppies, about 32.6g to be exact, along with 4.3g of protein (not quite so good for the GAINS brah!) and 15.4g of fat.
I’ve not used the Turmeric Chicken flavour yet as I’m a grass eating veggie but I really can’t imagine it tasting any less awesome than the Sweet Potato and Sesame version. And taste good it does! I saw a video review that mentions a ‘spice’ after-taste. Didn’t get that myself. It just seems pretty well balanced to me!
The consistency has fluctuated between the ‘new’ (thicker and, to me, harder to eat ‘on the fly’) recipe and the ‘old’ (ever so slightly more ‘runny’ – we’re talking a good thick broth level here) recipe. If you have some already, the ‘new’ consistency is in the more stream-lined pouches with the smaller screw-cap; the ‘old’ consistency being the wider pouch with the white, ham-fisted screw-cap (which I’m a big fan of). Therein lies my one and only gripe, but I believe that it’s being addressed as we speak/type/read, and reverting to the slightly more runny consistency to aid palatability and digestion under stress.
Performance under stress is a big thing for me. The races I tend to do aren’t necessarily ‘ultra’ distance but racing in mountains, and the terrain that this obviously covers, means that you’re out for a lot longer than something of a similar distance on the ‘flat’. Trying to pigeon-hole this product as an ‘ultra’ food is therefore slightly misleading. The ‘ultra’ is the duration as well as the distance. Getting food down, keeping food down and getting what your body needs from that food is frickin’ VITAL when it comes to training and racing for long durations and keeping The Man with the Hammer at bay.
Longhaul Endurance pouches, for me, are a game changer. A genuine game-changer. I have never had any dodgy stomach issues whatsoever, the fuelling is slow-release and consistent, and it works. It’s not some psychological gimmickry at play. The sachets aren’t too big. I can comfortably carry five or six in a race vest (probably more, I’ve not tried) and the resealable lid means if you can’t face your twelfth helping of sweet spud and fancy stuff (and lets face it, when you’re 7 hours in, the last thing you want is any food whatsoever, regardless of how good it tasted for the first six hours!) you can stick the lid back on until you’re ready to go again. C’est perfecto (pretty sure that’s all one language).
So yeah, they’re great. Go check them out and give them a go. There’s many more flavours on their way very soon (before the summer is out, but that’s all I know so far). I’ll bet my bottom dollar old Ernest Shakkers would have appreciated a round of these bad-boys!
*I appreciate that some may see a convenient discrepancy, an éléphant dans la pièce, if you will, in the form of Mountain Fuel. SiS, Gu (et al) ‘gels’ are not the same as Mountain Fuel ‘jellys’, which are a jelly-based drink, for want of a better description.
**I’d like to caveat that sentence (said partially for hyperbolic effect) by saying that gels obviously do work, and work well, for a heck of a lot of people up to a certain point. That ‘point’ being approximately a marathon distance/3.5hrs race effort. They may indeed work after that distance/time, if so, all power to you, but I would argue that they’re far from being the best way to fuel yourself for longer stuff.
