What I eat during a Backyard Ultra
Three races of trial, error and flavour fatigue. The ABC system that finally got me to 20 hours, and what I'm taking into my next race.
I come from adventure racing. In that world you eat real food: sandwiches, rice balls, dinners, McDonals – whatever fits in a pocket or sits in a kayak hatch. When I started doing Backyard Ultras, I brought that same mindset with me. Year one looked like eggs and toast before the gun, then bananas, apples, real sandwiches in the tent, and freeze-dried meals for when things got weird in the back half of the night.
It wasn't terrible. But it wasn't dialled. And honestly the bigger problem wasn't the food. It was what I was drinking.
The flavour fatigue problem
Early on I used flavoured Tailwind mixed with coconut water. Tailwind is amazing: calories, electrolytes, hydration in one bottle. But the flavoured version has a specific problem over 18-20 hours. It gets too sweet. Not immediately. Fine for the first six hours. But gradually, quietly, somewhere around hour 10, you start dreading it. By hour 14 you'll do almost anything to avoid drinking it.
Not drinking is a serious problem in a race like this. You can't borrow against hydration. You can't catch up at aid stations that don't exist. If you're avoiding your bottle because it tastes wrong, you're in trouble.
I finished my first two races underfuelled and under-hydrated in the back half. I thought I had a handle on it. I didn't.
The ABC system
By year three I rebuilt my hydration strategy from scratch. The key insight was rotation: instead of drinking the same thing all day, I cycle through three different setups on three consecutive laps, then repeat for as long as I'm running.
Lap A is 100% unflavoured Tailwind at full strength, with a gel or baby-food pouch on the way round. Lap B is 80% Tailwind with 20% coconut water to take the edge off, plus a handful of snakes or gummies for quick sugar. Lap C is pure water and nothing else in the bottle, paired with a Pure Nutrition race energy pouch which is sodium-dense and puts back what the plain water dilutes. Then back to A, and repeat.
Switching from flavoured to unflavoured Tailwind was the single biggest change I made. I don't dread drinking it anymore. At 3am, bland is fine. Sweet is not.
Baby food pouches
The other thing I added, and I know it sounds strange, is baby food pouches. I started these in year two and they've never come out of the kit.
Natural ingredients, no weird additives. They come savoury or sweet, so you can match whatever your body is asking for at any given hour. They fit in a bumbag or vest pocket, have a resealable lid so you can take half on one lap and finish the rest on the next recovery, and because the food is already broken down, your gut barely has to work. At hour 16, your gut is not your friend. Anything you can do to reduce the load on it matters.
I eat one every 2 hours across a race probably. They're the anchor of my solid food plan now.
"It's an eating race. You'll be eating when you're not hungry and drinking when you don't want to. Both, constantly, for 20 hours."
People say it's an eating race. They're right. What they don't tell you is how much discipline it takes to keep eating when nothing sounds good. Around hour 12, the idea of chewing through a sandwich is genuinely difficult. Your mouth doesn't want it. Your stomach doesn't want it. But if you stop eating, you're done. Just not immediately. The consequences arrive four hours later, when you're already committed to the next loop.
The ABC system sidesteps a lot of this. You're never asking your body to do more than it needs to. Small, consistent inputs. Rotation so nothing becomes intolerable.
And honestly I was terrified of this system as I felt like "I needed proper food!" But it amazed me how well the body could perform using such a system. You're giving the body exactly what it needs and how it wants it.
Train your nutrition
Train your nutrition the way you train your legs. Do long runs eating the same things you plan to race with. Find out on a Saturday morning that flavoured Tailwind turns you off at hour six, not at 2am on race day.
I went into my first race thinking nutrition was something I'd figure out on the fly. Wrong. It's a skill you build, test, and refine across training blocks. The ABC system didn't come from theory. It came from running for 20 hours and paying attention to what worked and what didn't.
Next race I'm back to ABC. Same system, no changes. It got me to 20 hours. That's the proof. Three bottles labelled A, B and C. Rotate. Simple. At hour 15 plus, simple is everything.