Welcome back or welcome to the Single Trek podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and this episode is part one of a two-part conversation. The second half is dropping next week with nutrition coach Vic Johnson, who goes by the Mountain Sports Dietition on social channels. You might recognize Vic's name. He has worked with a number of prominent athletes in our sport, including Rod Farvard,

in recent months and years to help them solve the fueling aspect of the ultra-running equation.

In part one of our conversation, Vic shares insights on the evolving role of nutrition and

endurance sports, the relative importance of high-carb fueling, the significance of gut training, and

common nutritional issues faced by high-level endurance athletes, among other topics.

Again, stay tuned for part two dropping next week where we discuss how to handle post-run

recovery via nutrition, the benefits of antioxidants, strategic use of caffeine and bicarb during races,

and how to act on the results of sweat composition and sweat rate tests.

Vic Johnson, it's great to finally have you on the single track podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm so excited to be here. I'm good. Thanks, Finn. Yeah, I was telling you offline,

this was one of

the most listener requested episodes, and we put out a call to action on our Instagram channel

asking people, you know, we're having Vic on the pod, what do you want to cover? And this was one of

the most engaged guests that we've had today. I think there was over 250 responses. So thank you to the

Instagram sphere. I've basically found five categories that we can cover, one of them being

high carb fueling, another being pre-run, post-run nutritional decisions, race day nutrition logistics.

We'll get into all of them. There's so much to cover here.

I think a fun place to start is the Desert Rats 100K earlier this year, which is the first time

you and I met in person and you came up on me midrace. You ended up just like cleaning me up,

man. You had an awesome race race but you tried to engage me in

conversation and I was just in the hurt locker and I was like you are hurting I love you man

like you're awesome and I can't wait to have this conversation in a more peaceful setting but

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