Corrine Malcolm

May 27th, 2022

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4 min read

Welcome back to the aid station! Just remember the order of operations here is bottles, community trail mix, then lube reapplication.  – Corrine

Is it better to chew your caffeine?

We know that caffeine used at the right time in the right environment can be performance enhancing, but there are so many different ways to ingest it. We can drink it, consume it in gels, or even pop pills … but what about caffeinated gum? Good news for us, we now have a better picture of what that looks like.

Main points: 

• When you consume caffeine in a gel or energy drink there is about a 20-30 minute delay until feeling a noticeable effect – this occurs because caffeine must be absorbed, pass the liver, and then enter our bloodstream before we “feel it.”
• Because caffeinated chewing gum is absorbed directly in our mouth (bypassing the liver) it hits our system faster. 

Final word: If you’ve shied away from caffeine due to fears of GI distress, you might want to give caffeinated gum a try – as the majority of caffeine is absorbed before it reaches your gut. A possible pick-me-up without tummy troubles. Like with anything, dosage and timing are still important here, so practice during training before race day.

Is everyone an outlier?

Are you interested in coaching philosophy, science, and good ol’ fashioned wisdom? Then you might want to make space for one more podcast in your rotation and check out On Coaching with coaches Steve Magness and John Marcus. Episode 170 is about avoiding the common trap of coaching to the average, and what it means to focus on the individual – even when that individual seems like an outlier.

Main points:

• As a coach, non-responders (athletes who don’t respond to your program even when it’s worked a million times before) are actually an asset. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the athlete, it means you need to try something new and get outside your comfort zone. We learn and evolve when we take this on.
• Everyone is an outlier. Hear me out – maybe this is just a different way of saying everyone is an individual, but I think there is value to the outlier moniker. As a coach, it helps me remember to think less about what works for most and instead look at my clients as an “experiment of one.” 

Final word: Even if you are not a coach, and even though Steve and John work predominantly with road and track athletes, I think all runners could benefit from listening to them work through these coaching and performance topics each week. On Coaching is now one of my regular listens.

The real woes of running at night. 

Do I idolize Alex Hutchinson? Maybe. Have I met him once in person? Yes. Did I make him laugh with a question? I’ll never tell ?! His recent Sweat Science column caught my eye, not just because I was nodding along, but because I thought “oh this would be interesting to test in an ultra!” The article titled Why Running at Night Feels Harder discusses research conducted by Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the Swedish military, and finally sheds light on why those nighttime miles are actually more difficult. 

Main points: 

• When you can’t see well, you naturally alter your stride, taking shorter and wider steps and lifting your feet higher. This is helpful for not tripping in the dark, but ultimately makes your running and walking less efficient and uses more energy.
• In the daylight, you rely on things moving more slowly through your visual field – a pattern recognition called optic flow. In the dark you only see things when they are fairly close to you because your visual field is smaller (constrained to your headlamp beam) which accelerates your optic flow. This makes you feel like you are moving faster than you are and makes the given pace feel harder.

Final word: Running in the dark not only feels harder, it is harder. For ultrarunners with races that contain many hours of darkness, consider your headlamp investment (or even a waist light) as a way to help extend your field of vision creating a slightly slower optic flow – hopefully making those nighttime miles feel a little easier.

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Corrine Malcolm