PODCAST - Can You Trail Run 11 Miles Without Eating Breakfast_
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host, Johnny Havey, an ultra runner, endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone 100K ultra, I proved them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned, from breathing techniques to mindset shifts, to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals despite limitations, let's get started.
Today on the show, I'm gonna share with you an experience I had over the weekend and answer the question, can you trail run 11 miles or more without eating breakfast? Well, it all started Saturday night. I have been hitting it hard at the gym lately, really working on [00:01:00] my interval training for the row machine.
And I'm, as you may know, I'm training for HYROX this year, which is a hybrid functional fitness race combining running with functional fitness stations. Stuff like the row machine, sled push and pull, burpee broad jumps, et cetera. Well, like I said, I've been, along with running 25 miles a week, I've been doing a lot of gym workouts.
And on Saturday night, I found that my glutes and my lower back were in a lot of pain. So I texted my buddy Brandon and I said, "Hey, man, I don't think I'm gonna make our 13er ascent tomorrow morning." A 13er being a 13,000 -foot mountain. We have a bunch of them in Colorado, I think over 500 or 600. We also have over 50 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado.
But I've really, at this point, I've climbed, I've ran up as many as I feel comfortable and confident ascending. I haven't done one of these since last [00:02:00] year, and really running mountains is how I got into trail running in the first place. I used to hate running. I actually, growing up, hated hiking. For whatever reason, I don't know why.
Well, I do know why. When I was a kid, I didn't see the point of hiking because we never really got to the summit, because I usually complained for too long, and my parents would be like, "No, we're turning around." Well, I realized in my 20s that climbing things, climbing the tallest things around in Colorado, was very fulfilling to me.
Getting to the top, seeing the view, feeling how peaceful it is, 'cause nobody is up there, especially on these 13,000-foot mountains. Because everyone's on the popular fourteeners or the thirteeners, we may have seen 10 people the entire day over 11 miles. Well, anyway, text my friend Brandon, "I don't know if I'm gonna make it.
My glutes are really tight, and my lower back. I'll see how I'm feeling in the morning." Well, 6:00 in the morning, I got up, and I took a shakeout run with my dog, and I [00:03:00] felt pretty good. As I was getting everything ready, I was like, "Ah, you know, I don't like eating breakfast this early." I never have. So I decided to not eat breakfast.
Instead, I decided that I would bring one banana, one pear. I really like Skratch gummies, so I got four Skratch energy gummies, gummy packs. And I thought this was good. I mean, there's, like, 160 calories per. So we're talking 4 times 160, 32, 600. This was 640 cals. Now, it was all sugar, but it's still 640 cal.
Couldn't tell you how many cal is in a banana or a pear, but stay with me. I also brought two sugar-free, uh, Liquid IVs. And yeah, I had two liters of water and I had two of those in there, which there's not many calories in that. I think that's, like, 40 cal... I think there's 20 [00:04:00] cals in a sugar-free Liquid IV, so we'll say 40 cals.
Then I was like, "You know what? I know I don't feel like eating breakfast, but I probably should get some sort of calories in my system." So I took eight scoops of my Skratch Super high carb powder. And I swear by this stuff. This empowered me to win my 100K ultramarathon. This is about 500 cals, and I forget how many carbs is in it, but, uh, the cals are from carbs.
So I don't know, banana and pear, let's, this may be way off, and I know I could look it up, but I'm not going to. I'm not gonna be that guy who looks at AI right now. 100 cals here, we'll say 100 cals for the pear. Just estimated. So I had 713 for about 1400 cals with me And I thought this was fine. I'm like, [00:05:00] I'm not eating breakfast, but I got all of this.
I should be okay. Well, here's what happened. After, you know, two and a half hours, we summited, and we went, you know, five and a half, 5.6 miles and 4,300 vert. I was feeling pretty good. We were cranking. This is where I really thrive when hiking, is going uphill. And we took some breaks. We took our time. We ate the snacks we had brought.
I felt great until we started coming down. And when we started coming down, my muscles were cramping real bad. They weren't seizing up, but they were just in pain. And I found that my energy was dipping. I couldn't really run, so I jogged here and there. I walked. We were moving at a good pace. But typically, when I descend 13ers, 14ers, whatever, I run the whole way.
It ended up taking us about two [00:06:00] hours descend. So the whole trip was four and a half hours, which for 11 miles and 4,300 vertical feet, I mean, that's pretty good, but it's not what I'm used to doing. And what really happened is at about the two and a half hour, three hour mark, my friend asked me, "What'd you have for breakfast?"
I said, "I didn't have breakfast. I brought the banana. I had a pear." And then I started realizing that I didn't really have dinner either. Why? Well, because the day before, uh, I had a huge lunch, tons of sandwiches, guacamole, chips, all this stuff, and I was too full to really have a good dinner. So I had some yogurt and some fruit for dinner.
And I'm not saying eating fruit... I love eating fruit. Eating fruit is a good thing. But I didn't have a good source of not just calories, but salt for dinner or for [00:07:00] breakfast. And I only put a little bit of salt, about half a teaspoon of salt, in my pack for that day. So what he diagnosed is that my body was deficient of salt Carbs and calories.
And yeah, I had 1,400 calories, but they were all, it was all sugar. So my body was crashing from the sugar low. So really, salt was the biggest problem that I was having. So when you look at potentially trail running any amount, especially in the Alpine, where you're looking at spending... The whole day, we were between 9,000 and 13,500 feet.
We're up really high. Well, your body needs these things even more the higher up you are. So he gave me two salt capsules, and I kid you not, within five to 10 minutes, I was running again. And that lasted for about two [00:08:00] miles, and then I started feeling slower again. And yeah, I could have taken more salt capsules, but we were almost at the car at that point.
I guarantee that I do this trail run again, we do it in three and a half hours or less. Because we were moving real good on the way up, and we could have moved even better if I had managed my salt, my carbs, and my overall calories right. So when you're asking yourself, "Can I run? Can I do the thing without eating breakfast?"
It's less of a question of can you do it without breakfast, and more of a question of are you taking care of what your body needs for the event or whatever you're looking at doing. And I've ran into this before, where while I do a decent job of looking out for my caloric intake, I tend to underestimate how important salt intake is, how important carb intake is.
And this [00:09:00] is where I've struggled in some races, and it's where I've been saved in some races, where 37 miles into 100-kilometer ultra that I ended up winning, I was so salt deficient that my leg was tensing up, super painful, couldn't walk. And what I ended up doing was eating a bunch of salt packets, chugging some pickle juice, and doing that for the rest of the race.
This is extremely important, so be careful. It's less about eating breakfast and more about making sure that you have what you need 260. Now, you may be looking at this and saying, "Four and a half hours for 11 miles and 4,300 vertical? That's pretty good." And I know it's not bad. It's just not where I want to be with my training and doing these things.
I don't wanna have to feel like I did. Now, I didn't get sick or anything, but I didn't feel at my best, and that's why making sure that you have what your body [00:10:00] needs can really support you at being at your best. Now, thanks for spending this time with me today. As a gift to you, I have my Three Pillars of Healthy Living guide.
You can grab your free guide in the show notes or in the YouTube description, or go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy. It's gonna take you less than a couple minutes to read the guide, figure out how the three pillars, movement, tracking, and accountability fit into your life.
And then my hope for you is that you get as much success as I have integrating these pillars into my life, where I was able to lose 30-plus pounds in 90 days and become an elite ultra runner by integrating these principles, these three pillars into my life. I'll see you in the next episode
Thanks for tuning in to The Athlete With Asthma show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. [00:11:00] Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection, it's about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals. And if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible
