What's an Endurance Superfood?

We call 4 Hour Fuel the Endurance Superfood - what's up with that? There are five critical ingredients in every bag of 4HF, which combine to create the most effective fuel source for endurance activities:

1. Maltodextrin is the undisputed king of neutral-tasting carbohydrates. Super fast absorption, easy on your digestive system, and a great way to pack in calories! Unsurprisingly, many folks don't like it packing in calories into their normal foods - but in an endurance fuel, that's the whole point.

2. Pea protein is our choice for protein. It's a well-balanced protein with good absorption, generally well tolerated by most people, and doesn't change the flavor or texture very much. Including protein in 4HF helps your body to recover on-the-go. As you start pushing into longer efforts, your body needs to settle into a repair-and-perform rhythm. If you do not have free amino acids floating around in your body, it will break down muscles in order to repair other parts of the body. This is why many athletes report muscle loss towards the end of longer seasons (and report eliminating muscle wasting after switching to four hour fuel!). By mixing protein into every slurp of calories, you ensure your body has the resources to rebuild the cellular damage that is par for the course while doing exercise.

3. Branch Chain Amino Acids (or BCAAs) are some of the most-necessary amino acids that get used up during endurance activities. Pea protein is naturally high in BCAAs, but we add even more, because your muscles can use the extra boost!

4. Salt - while not enough salt to supplement hard efforts in the heat, having a baseline of salt in every sip of 4HF makes it easier for the body to digest, and offsets the water you mixed the powder into.

5. Flavor - Perhaps the most important part of four hour fuel is the flavoring. There are plenty of nutrition supplements that have a good balance of carbs and protein (they're sometimes called "mass gainers" in body building circles) - but 4HF is the first one designed with the needs of ultra-distance endurance racing in mind. It's designed to pack four hours of calories (well 800 calories, 200 cal/hr is a normal baseline amount) into a standard 16-20oz bike bottle and be yummy. If you mix our competitors this strong, they comes out overly sweet, syrupy, and all-around pretty gross. No way I'd drink them bottle after bottle, day after day! Four hour fuel, though, I still love it 7 days in!

How to use four hour fuel:

It's pretty simple to use 4HF - bring enough powder to cover your entire caloric needs for however long you might be out, or a bit extra. If it's longer than three or four hours, I like to bring different flavors, because it can get boring only having one flavor. This is why we're constantly experimenting with new flavors, and have lots of limited-edition flavors. If I'm going to be out for 6h or longer, I'll also pack some "emotional food" - i.e. whatever I might want to snack on, if I'm feeling low or bored. I know I am not depending on this for my calories, so it can be anything I know boosts me out there - marshmallows, gummies,dried fruit, beef jerky - whatever!

If you're at home, you can blend 200g of powder into 12oz of water, add it to your bike bottle, then top off with tap water. In the field, I put a little bit of water in the bottom of the bottle, add the powder, top off with water, shake shake shake, then top off again with water. I've gotten pretty practiced at this, so I often do it while walking, using water from my hydration bladder.

It's a little surprising, but four hour fuel can be almost all of your calories for a very long time... lately my races have been 90% four hour fuel, 10% emotional food in terms of caloric consumption! I find that there's enough to think about as an endurance athlete, that letting go of the complexity of nutrition for "just drink this bottle over the next few hours" has been transformational to my ability to perform. Nutrition may be one of the most important things to do while racing, it doesn't have to be complicated!