Essays on sweat, salt, heat, and the slow craft of running long. No clickbait, no SEO bait — just the science I dig up and the protocols I'm testing on myself.
Three weeks on the new protocol: mix only on the long runs and the big vert days. No headaches, better runs. But my thirst dropped off a cliff, and now the calculator hands me a dose I never finish.
Last month I split runs into short-and-water, long-and-mix. This month I ran everything on plain water to see what happened. The medium and long runs brought the bad overnight headaches back. The short ones didn't change at all.
I spent a month running some days with electrolytes and some with plain water. Short runs felt identical either way. The difference showed up after 10K, and not until the hours afterward.
I promised data on how citric acid scales with carbs. Here it is: the calculator's acid dose holds at zero dextrose, but every 20 g of sugar needs another 20–30% acid to stay drinkable.
The first few batches worked, but they tasted like the ocean. A pinch of citric acid changed everything — and now it's part of the formula.
The single most useful data point for hot-weather running. You need a bathroom scale, a water bottle, and one hour of honest effort.
I'm Sean. I'm a heavy sweater training for my first 100K, and the LMNT bills got embarrassing. So I started reading.