Spring Energy Stole Two Years of Racing
There’s some controversy happening in the endurance sports world right now. Spring Energy fraudulantly labeled their gels as having a much higher carbohydrate and caloric content than they actually did. The worst offender was their Awesome Sauce gel, which boasted 45 grams of carbs when labs are showing it has 17 grams.
I started running trail ultras again in 2019. I finished every race I started, building up from 50K to 100M. At the 100M, I ate more frequently and more calories than ever before. I remember telling people that the thought of dropping out never entered my mind, not even at 3am when I was falling asleep on my feet.
After that race, we decided that more carbs and calories were better. As a result, in 2022 I switched to using Spring Energy, specifically Awesome Sauce, as my primary fuel. On long training runs and in races, I would eat one hourly, and rotate other fuels on the half hours. Here are my results from 2019 until now in all of the trail ultras I’ve started:
| Date | Race | Result | Spring? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/30/2019 | Badger Mountain 55K | Finish | NO | |
| 8/3/2019 | Volcanic 50K | Finish | NO | |
| 8/31/2019 | Tuscazoar 50M | Finish (Win!) | NO | |
| 10/5/2019 | Cuyamaca 100K | Finish | NO | |
| Summer 2020 | 40M on 40th Birthday | Finish | NO | |
| 3/27/2021 | Badger Mountain 55K | Finish | NO | |
| 7/31/2021 | White River 50M | Finish | NO | |
| 10/2/2021 | Secret Beach 100K | Finish | NO | |
| 11/6/2021 | Rio Del Lago 100M | Finish | NO | |
| 4/23/2022 | Canyons 100K | DNF | YES | Dropped at 50K with no energy. |
| 6/11/2022 | Cool Moon 50M | DNF | YES | Caught my toe on a rock, fell, and vomitted. Possible indirectly caused by under-fueling. Dropped at 50K. |
| 7/30/2022 | Burning River 100M | DNF | YES | Had a solid first 50M. I wanted to drop at mile 67 but my crew got me back on the course. Struggled to mile 87, including sleeping for a bit, but dropped as I’d slowed to the point I wasn’t going to beat a cutoff. Cutoffs have never been an issue for me. |
| 2/18/2023 | FOURmidible 50K | Finish | YES | |
| 6/10/2023 | Cool Moon 100M | DNF | YES | Dropped at 50M after hours of stomach pains. It was probably just empty. |
To me, it’s pretty clear what happened here. I went from a reliable finisher to not being able to find a finish line beyond 50K when I switched to Spring. I thought I was hitting these high carbs and calories, because I trusted nutrition labels to be at least close to accurate. In all of my inner reflection about why I couldn’t finish a race, questioning the labels never occurred to me.
Of course, I take some of the blame here. This is one of those, “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is,” situations. My training wasn’t great in 2022, so that was the obvious thing to focus on and fix. I got a coach for 2023 to try to fix it, but I still couldn’t finish.
2024 and Beyond
It’s time to get back to my pre-Spring finishing ways. But I’m in a much better position now than I was in 2022.
Now I have a coach. We’re doing cycling to get “free fitness” on days I’m not running. We’re doing strength & mobility to focus on my injury-prone areas. We’re doing hill repeats and speed workouts as opposed to only slow stuff. I’m more athletic than I was in 2022.
And I’m going to use those lab tests that people are getting on other nutrition products to make sure I’m actually fueling properly. My ceiling is so much higher than where I ended 2022.
I’m off for a run…