"Calories and carbohydrates are easy to track. Caffeine is a bit more complicated." - Tom Evans
Caffeine is one of the most widely used performance aids in endurance sport, but knowing when and how to use it matters as much as the dose itself.
For ultra runner Tom Evans, caffeine isn’t something he relies on casually. It’s a tool deployed deliberately: during hard training sessions, in race simulations, and sometimes in the middle of a race when the plan needs to change.
Here's some more expert insight from Tom from his podcast, The Ultra Sound...
Tom, tell us about your caffeine use when it comes to running.
Well, while calories and carbohydrates are really easy to track, caffeine on the other hand can be a little bit more difficult.
I'm not carrying a can of Red Bull around with me in between the races, so it's something that I'm only going to be consuming at the aid stations.
With all the best intentions, I'm not going to be stood still for a minute sipping it nicely, putting it into a glass with some ice and cooling myself down! I'm opening it up, crunching the can, long-arming and doing it as quickly as I can.
For example, when I was racing at Transgrancanaria, I was climbing up to the highest point in the race and I felt absolutely horrendous. My nutrition plan at that aid station did not include having a can of Red Bull - it just wasn't the plan.
But I knew that in order to get myself back on track I needed to ingest carbohydrate and caffeine quickly, and using the gels hadn't been working, so I changed things up a little bit.
I guess it's a small risk but it's an educated risk because I've done it before, I've done it in training and, like I say, racing is just an extension of training.
So are you training in the week with caffeine so you know that your body is going to allow it when you reach a difficult point in a race?
Yes, and I think for me in the hard sessions I'll use caffeine. I actually drink coffee every morning, it's one of my very few hobbies outside of running. I still need to get better on that, the art of coffee has improved massively and I've done a couple of courses - and you've got to have hobbies!
So bringing it back to the nutrition, for the hard sessions I'll use caffeine and for the long runs I'll also use caffeine, especially if I'm doing a race replication.
But there will be other times where I won't use caffeine and I'll only use it if I absolutely feel like I need to, because as soon as you start taking caffeine in a race you need to keep taking it throughout that race.
If you take a seven-hour race, for example, I'll use caffeine beforehand and I'll have a can of Red Bull 60 minutes before the race starts, and then about 80 milligrams per hour.
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