This week, Charlie takes a dive deep into the essential topic of sweat, sodium and hydration with Andy Blow, founder and CEO of Precision Fuel and Hydration.

Understanding Hydration

Charlie explains how dehydration impacts performance, leading to symptoms like increased heart rate, GI issues, and muscle cramps. Learn about the average fluid needs for men and women, and how to adjust for sweat losses during training and races.

The Science of Sweat

Are you a salty sweater? Discover why sodium is the most crucial electrolyte for runners, with average losses around 900 milligrammes per litre of sweat. Charlie discusses the importance of adding salt to your diet, particularly in pre and post-run foods and drinks. 

Precision Fuel and Hydration’s Andy Blow

Andy shares the journey of Precision Fuel and Hydration, from its inception to becoming a key player in the endurance sports nutrition space, and Charlie puts your questions to Andy about some of your favourite products. 

Connect with Charlie online @therunnerbeans / www.therunnerbeans.com 

Grab a copy of Charlie’s book ‘Cook Eat Run’ 

The Cook Eat Run Podcast is sponsored by XMiles - the One Stop Nutrition Shop - use discount code COOKEATRUNJUNE10 for 10% off site wide at Xmiles.co.uk

This podcast is produced by Buckers at Decibelle Creative decibellecreative.com / @decibelle_creative

>> Charlie: Hello and welcome back to the Cook Eat Run podcast with X

Miles. It is no coincidence that we've scheduled

this week's episode of the podcast for the UK's

heatwave, because today's topic is hydration and looking

at sodium in particular. And we're also

chatting with Andy Blow, one of the founders and

CEO of precision fuel and hydration, later

on in the episode, so make sure to stick around.

Now, we know that running nutrition is very personalised.

However, whilst we can make recommendations for the range of

carbohydrate intake, hydration is even more

specific. Both your sweat rate, the amount of

sweat per hour that you lose, and, your sweat

composition, like how many electrolytes you use per hour,

come into play. Not only this, but we need to think about the

weather, training duration, intensity.

So chances are that every runner, has

experienced dehydration, which has impacted your performance, whether

that's having GI issues, whether that's just finding a run

really difficult, whether that's feeling awful after a run.

Dehydration impacts performance because we have reduced blood

volume, increased heart rate, decreased skin and GI

blood flow, increased core temperature and increased

rate of muscle glycogen usage. Symptoms of

dehydration while running include decreased

performance, finding it really hard to hold the paces that

you should have been running, or usually running.

Fatigue GI issue so, feeling

like you're needing to go to the loo, feeling

sick, getting cramps, or getting that kind of stomach

sloshing around, it increases perceived

exertion and you can also get muscle cramps.

Generally speaking, women need 2.2

litres of fluid per day, two to two and a

half, while men need about three litres of fluid

per day to maintain daily hydration. So for

us, runners and endurance athletes, we need to replace any

sweat losses on top of this fluid intake.

Sweat rate is how much sweat we lose per hour while

training. This varies dramatically from person to

person, as sweat rate is genetic. So if you've got

a sweaty family, chances are you're going to be

sweaty. Average sweat rates for endurance

athletes are usually about

half to 2.5 litres an hour,

although they can range up to four litres an

hour. An individual athlete's sweat rate also

varies greatly throughout training, basically related

to temperature, humidity, heat

acclimation. So have you just landed on your first day of holiday and you're

trying to go out for a training run? Or is it the end of the summer and you've been

running in hot temperatures all year? Which is why a lot of runners,

during things like the London Marathon, the Boston Marathon.

Those spring races where you have a freak hot day

struggle more than they would have if that race had been, say,

in September. And they've been training all summer.

So knowing how much sweat you lose based on kind of cold

temperatures, hot temperatures, windy day, those kind of things

during your training, allows you to make a plan for what

race day conditions are likely to be like to make sure that you

can manage your hydration to improve performance

and recovery. Our sweat contains

water, sodium, chloride, potassium and

calcium. Sodium is the electrolyte loss in the

greatest amount via sweat, which is why we

talk about it so much. I think there was a big

sway a few years ago when coconut water had a real peak where we

talked so much about potassium. But actually it's the

sodium m that we lose in such great volume that has such a negative

impact on training performance.

If we get the balance wrong, the average

athlete loses around 900 milligrammes of sodium

per litre of sweat, although some people can

lose up to 2000 milligrammes per

litre. Sodium and chloride are the electrolytes

we lose in greatest volume, which I've just said. We do also

lose potassium, calcium and magnesium, but in much

smaller, smaller volumes. And actually, those don't really

impact our performance in the same way that losing sodium

does, which is why we really focus on it. Salty

sweaters often have a bigger impact or negative impact

on performance from dehydration, and can experience

higher rates of GI issues than those with a lower

salt sweat rate. You can tell if you're a salty

sweater quite easily. You know when you've got that

crusty feeling on your face, or you can see the

white salt marks on your clothes. Other

symptoms can also include headaches, dizziness,

lightheadedness, salty cravings, and that sweat stinging in your

eyes after your run. we've been told by our respective

health authorities that we're eating too much salt in our diets.

And whilst we, as a collective of humans

are, many runners actually need to be

adding salt into our diets, especially

in the pre and post run foods and drinks that we're

consuming. For salty sweaters, many of

the everyday electrolyte drinks don't even contain enough

sodium, so it's worth trying. The higher sodium drinks

like precision fuel and hydration 1500, the

sterka, 1000 milligrammes tabs, or the pure

sport ultra electrolytes with 1000 milligrammes.

Don't forget, podcast listeners can save 10%

with the code cookeatrunjune

ten. I'll have another code for you

next month. So make sure that you subscribe and listen to

get that so that you can save on our favourite products.

Personally, I love the precision fuel and hydration products and have

used their gels during my last three marathons. So I was really

keen to chat with Andy Blow, founder and CEO of Precision

Fuel and Hydration, about the brand and their products.

Thank you, Andy, for joining me today. precision

fuel and hydration, I feel like, has

boomed over the last year, maybe just because I'm seeing

it more and more aware of it. I see it more online

or at races, but how long has the company

and the products have they been around for?

>> Andy Blow: Yeah, it's, good to hear that, because in terms

of, you're seeing it more and more, because that's what a lot of people

are telling us at the moment. And I think a lot of people think

we're quite a new company, but we've actually been around

for over a decade now. We just celebrated

our 13th birthday in April

of 2024. We founded

the company in 2011 and really have

grown. We grew very, very slowly for a number of years,

and it's only been in the last sort of two or three years

where the kind of level of growth that we've seen, I think,

has put us on the map in terms of one of the

bigger players in the endurance sports nutrition

Space.

>> Charlie: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I feel like I only tried your

products maybe 2022,

so I've been using them for just under two

years, but certainly I'm seeing more

rappers at races and seeing more people on

social media talking about it. What do you

think has caused that kind of

recent sort of spike in the slow burner

growth and then the peak in the last few years?

>> Andy Blow: I think it's the same as how, hopefully, if you've got

them, your savings grow in the bank. It's compound

interest, really, in that we've been growing at a

pretty steady rate for a long, long time. But when you're

growing off a small base and if you're, say, doubling

every year, then even doubling is not a

big number when you're small. But as you get bigger, if you can continue

that rate of growth, and we've managed to maintain a pretty steady level of

growth for a number of years now, then all of a sudden when

you start doubling and doubling again or whatever, then

at a certain point, then, yeah, you suddenly go from,

like, being on the fringes to really

in the, in the limelight.

And it does feel like in the last year or two, I

was at a race this weekend just gone to Ironman Hamburg

and Germany hasn't traditionally been a

super strong market for us, but we've had some

reasonable sales there. I walked through the transition area at

Iron Man Hamburg and I was

speechless about how many pf and h bottles I saw,

how many pf and h gels I saw taped to the top tubes of

bikes and stuff. And I thought, wow, this is, this is really

cool. And it was actually quite a moment to sort of see.

>> Charlie: Yeah. Do you feel like there has

been a rise recently in more people taking an interest

in their fuelling or being actually aware that they need

to be fueling? Because I feel certainly people are

finally understanding that one

gel, every hour or some M. Haribo sweets

on the way isn't going to cut it.

>> Andy Blow: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think we, we have been

involved in that, hopefully involved in some of that

education because education is a big part of what we do as a business.

But also we have definitely been the beneficiaries

of a situation that's kind of grown up around us,

where 20 years ago, when I was competing seriously

in endurance events, there was not a

lot of great knowledge out there or

dissemination of information to athletes about how much fueling

you needed to do. I distinctly remember doing one

of my first Ironman races and listening to one of the

pro athletes describe how, because they had a bit of

a dodgy, stomach, sometimes they ate, really. They

tried to skate through on as little fuel and

hydration as possible. And that single

nugget of actually really bad information really

stuck with me and shaped a little bit

of my philosophy for how I was trying to fuel

myself. And it couldn't have been further

from being correct, but there just wasn't

a lot of information. The last five years in

particular, obviously, we've had all these stories about

elite athletes taking more and more

carbohydrates in running. I think

the, Nike break in two project with Elliot

Kipchoge was very

instrumental in the fact that they looked at every

angle of how to make this guy faster over the

marathon. And one of the things they pushed really,

really hard was fueling, because they recognised that actually

enabling him to fuel more would enable him to run faster

for longer. And so I think it's definitely

more in the conscience now. whether

it's really filtered down to

inadvertent commas, the masses, I'm not so sure. I think

if you're a serious athlete now, you probably at least understand

the benefits of fuelling. But I was talking to

a researcher from Liverpool John Moores the other day, just in

casual conversation, and she was mentioning that they'd done

a survey of athletes, surveying

their attitudes towards their understanding of

fueling in races and what they actually did,

and found that although a lot of athletes kind of now know they

need to fuel a bit more, whether they actually managed to

achieve that in races is a different matter. And so maybe we're in the

phase next of where we've got to help people take the

theory and put it into practise.

>> Charlie: Well, that's what we're trying to do with this podcast. So, yeah,

we're on the same page in terms of wanting to kind of

educate people and show them sort of

how to do that in terms of training

with the gels, with carbohydrates,

with sodium, that kind of thing, and making sure

that they're getting everything right in training so that on race day they

aren't trying something new. But also they're not getting

to the point where they can't take any more

gels because they haven't trained their gut in the same way they haven't,

that they train their legs kind of thing.

>> Andy Blow: absolutely, yeah. I used to save my gels for

race day because they felt, it felt

like that would then allow me to unlock a little bit

extra and it was about, saving money and I would train with

cereal bars and bananas, if anything at all, and

then expect to be able to eat jowls on race day.

And if you're going to try and eat three or even four

joes an hour, if you're a very fast athlete

with strong aspirations, then you

have to be practising that at least some of the time in

training if you're going to expect to be able to execute it on race day.

>> Charlie: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the expense is definitely there, but then there

are products like I've been using the, cup hydrate drink

from you guys on the, on my treadmill runs, because it's just

easy and it's, it's a lot cheaper cost per,

sort of run than using gels on my sort of

seven, eight mile treadmill run. And

let's take it back, if that's all right. Just kind of how the

brand started, how you, it started out being called

precision hydration, I think you mentioned, and, it's

grown obviously from there. But how did the brand come

about? How did the company get started?

>> Andy Blow: Yeah, I was a

triathlete back in the late nineties, early two

thousands. I was set

initially on wanting to go to the Olympic games, because, triathlon made

its way into the Olympics in the year 2000. And I

was, relatively young then. I was in my early,

just coming into my twenties then, so that was

always going to be a bit of a stretch. But I felt maybe

2004 Olympics was a target for me and I went to the

University of Bath to study sports science and to train for

triathlon. being brutally honest, it

became apparent fairly quickly that although I was

a pretty reasonable triathlete, I was only ever going to be in.

I made the Great Britain squad a few times and I did a couple of, I did a

world championships for duathlon and for long course triathlon.

But I was never really in that top

elite cohort that we're going to go to the Olympic games. So I was on

the periphery of that and as a

result I stepped up to Ironman racing

as, another route to pursue. And

it was doing Ironman races that I learned.

Actually, looking back, I wasn't getting my fueling right

particularly either, but I really made a mess of my

hydration and I ended up in a medical tent in several

races with having to be on a drip or having to be

treated for a condition called hyponatremia, which is

where you get lower blood sodium levels

in the early two thousands. It was a friend of mine, who's a

doctor, who suggested I get a sweat test done at a hospital

because he felt the symptoms that I was having with

underperformance in hot ironman races were to do with

a catastrophic loss of fluid and electrolytes, because I have a

very high sweat rate. And sure enough, when I had

a sweat test done, he educated me around the fact that the

amount of sodium I was losing in my sweat was

more than double what the average person would lose.

And that really changed my

personal approach to what I did. I started to take way more salt and

sodium in races, a little bit less fluid, and

the difference was like night and day, like, I could then start to compete

in the heat a lot, a lot better.

It was very powerful for me as an athlete,

finding something that

unlocked that level of performance

improvement by such a simple

mechanism. Because as you know, as an athlete yourself,

there are very few things, shortcuts that actually make you

faster, you know, in running the.

I've tried them quite a few times. I own a couple of pairs now, but the

super shoes that have come out, definitely, they're one of those things,

they make a noticeable, measurable difference. I reckon

I'm several seconds a kilometre faster with

those things on but that's really rare. Most things

promise a lot of performance improvement and don't deliver

it. This fact, for me, getting my sodium balance

and fluid balance right in a long event, was a

total game changer. And when I started

to sort of phase, out of racing and

competing full time, I was coaching some athletes. I was running a sports

science lab, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could

do that sweat test on athletes to help them as

well? So I bought a sweat testing machine,

ended up attracting the interest of the company that made

those machines, because they were made for a completely different

medical diagnostic purpose in the diagnosis of

cystic fibrosis. And it was in conversations

with their business development people that the idea of

maybe sweat testing for athletes is a

commercial service, was born. And

that was the seed that became precision hydration. So

we started off sweat testing, then we introduced the range of

electrolyte drinks in different strengths, because that just didn't exist in

the market. And it was very kind of

organic. And that was around 2011, when we formally

turned that into a company. But even then, between

2011 and 2014 or 15, I

wasn't running that business full time.

I was having to pay myself through the other business that I

was running with coaching and that kind of thing. And so

it was quite organic. And although,

although I've always been relatively ambitious to

do something in business, I

had no formal training in, you know,

entrepreneurship or how to run a business. So

it was a lot of, it was a lot of trial and error early on, and

a lot of just honestly just. I'd found a way to solve a

problem for myself, and I was trying to then help other people to

do the same thing.

>> Charlie: So you mentioned the sweat testing that you kind of went to the hospital for

yours that you. I know that, the sweat testing is

something that you guys still offer that's obviously

not necessarily the easiest thing for

everybody to come and book one in or travel to go and get

one. What would you suggest that every day

the masses do to figure out whether they

are a salty sweater, a heavy sweater, how they can kind

of figure out their own sweat rate ish

to kind of create their own hydration plan?

>> Andy Blow: Yeah. Sweat

profiling involves looking at two different

things, really. One of them is how much you sweat. So your sweat

rate in terms of litres per hour of actual fluid loss.

And then the other thing is, how much sodium do you lose in your

sweat? Is that second factor. The

first one, how much sweat you lose, any of us can test.

And I'd already done. I used to do quite a bit of that with my own

training. And we've got a blog on our website which

we could send you.

>> Charlie: Yeah, I can share the link easily.

>> Andy Blow: it basically shows you how to measure your

sweat rate. So you weigh yourself before you

do a training session. You do the training session,

ideally, you do a training session where you don't eat or drink anything because it

keeps the maths really simple. If you do, you have to correct for

that in the spreadsheet and then you weigh yourself

again afterwards, after you've tied down and got all

the sweat off your body. And, one

litre of water weighs approximately. It

weighs exactly one kilo. And so

although you burn a bit of glycogen, there's

other kind of respiratory fluid losses,

really. It's pretty accurate to look at

your body weight loss and that gives you an

indication of your fluid losses over a short

period of time. So, and then there's various tables out there where you

can compare. You know, if you sweat half a litre an hour,

that makes you a relatively low

sweater in moderate conditions.

Me, I lose nearly two litres an hour if I'm working really

hard. So I have a very high sweat rate. And we've worked with athletes that

lose three or four litres an hour. So there's a, there's a real

range. So measuring your sweat rate, this is something

you can do pretty easily yourself.

That can be really useful, even on its own. But if you can combine

that with understanding what your sweat sodium concentration

is, and that involves someone like us

taking a sweat sample and then analysing

it, then you've got a really powerful bit of information

because, you know, your net fluid and sodium losses

and that can be used to sort of calibrate whether you need to

replace a little bit, a moderate amount or a

lot. And for me, obviously, I found

out I was someone who needed to replace loads of fluid

and sodium when racing. But my strategy would have

effectively sort of drowned someone who has a lower

sweat rate and a lower salt output. And so

it allows a bit of individualization. The way

that we summarise it, really, for people as well, is that

you'll get exact numbers from your sweat rate tests and your sweat

sodium tests, but you don't actually need

exact numbers. What you need to know is, it's like knowing your

t shirt size. You need to know if you're a small, which is like a

low sweat loss,

human, compared to, an extra large, which is me,

and I lose loads of sweat and, fluid and

salt and then we've got plenty of

literature on our website and we've actually got some online calculators

you can use really easily to

put you in the right ballpark for how much you ought

to be replacing for different events.

>> Charlie: Yeah, we'll link to all of those. I've been lucky enough to

do one of the. You've got your precision

fuel and hydration sweat tests and have a kind of

sweat salt hydration plan

sent over to me. And, yeah, I was kind

of medium to high sweat

salt output, so

I use the 1500,

the electrolyte tab. So you guys have a 500, a

1000 and a 1500 that

I was recommended to use the 500 kind of every day, and

then the 1500 when I was doing workouts, long

runs, especially in the summer, those kind of

things. And why

isn't there sodium in your gels? That is a question I

was asked by a lot of people and

have asked myself when I'm trying to balance carrying the m

gels and the salt tabs and, you know,

drinking fluid that's salty in the first couple, you know, that's got

a sodium in for the first couple of miles of my race. So,

yeah. What's the kind of the reasoning behind that?

And is that something we might see at any point?

>> Andy Blow: Yeah, so very good question. Because,

a lot of other gels on the market do contain

electrolytes because obviously there's a level of

convenience for an athlete in being able to get salts

and carbohydrates all in one solution.

The reason we've decoupled those things, though, is when

you're, as you'll know, when you're competing in any

endurance event, you have three basic requirements from

a nutritional point of view. We call them the three levers. You've got

carbohydrates and you need to know roughly how many

grammes of carbs you need per hour. And the thing that drives the

amount of carbs you need per hour, really is how fast

you're going or how much power you're producing

and the overall duration of the event.

So really, the longer the event and the harder

you're going, the more that number of grammes per hour

goes up. And the standard recommendations

are around 30 grammes per hour for

shorter, lower intensity activities through 60, and up

to 90 grammes per hour for people that are working really

hard over, say, a half Ironman or an Ironman

triathlon.

And that's fairly static. So on any given

day, if you run the Boston Marathon in potentially

cool conditions, or if you run the Tokyo marathon in potentially

hot and humid conditions, your amount of

carbohydrates per hour is going to be about the same. So

let's say, Charlie, you're going to be two gels an hour. You know, is

it?

>> Charlie: Yeah, I am.

>> Andy Blow: There you go. you're always going to be

that. Now, if you're though

running in, Boston, and it's

an unseasonably cold year, and you're not going to be sweating very

much, then your requirements for fluid

are going to be relatively low, and your requirements

for sodium might be microscopic to non

existent. So on that day, you're going to choose to

continue to eat gels at the correct rate for

you, but you're going to drink very little. You might just pick up some water from the

aid stations when you feel like you need a drink on the way around.

Contrast that with, say, doing Tokyo

or.

>> Charlie: Or this year's Boston, which was really.

>> Andy Blow: Warm, hot and humid.

Then your fluid requirement could double or triple

from what it was on a cold day. And your sodium

will move, to a certain extent, will move in

step with that. And the problem there is, if you're getting most

of your sodium, if we put 250 milligrammes of sodium in your

gel, if you're still taking two an hour, you're

getting 500 milligrammes of sodium, whether you need it or not.

if you're someone who is using some of the really fast

elite athletes we work with, might take four gels an hour, which is

120 grammes of carbs. And if we had

250 or 300 milligrammes of sodium in

each gel, by default, they would already be getting

close to a gramme or more of sodium per hour, which is getting

towards the upper limit of what we'd recommend anyone, whether you need it or

not. So, although

there is a slight compromise on convenience of not getting them

all in, one thing, by having an electrolyte drink

plus a gel or an electrolyte capsule, water and a

gel, it means you can pull those three levers independently,

and you can make sure that you get your numbers

totally correct, whatever the conditions. And

so, we do get asked a lot of the time whether we do that.

At the moment, there's no plans to put that in there because you. It's

confusing. We do have one hybrid product, which is a

drink mix that has sodium and carbs, and

that's very, very popular with athletes doing shorter events.

And you can also use it as a component of an

overall fueling strategy. But we like to

make very simple products which contain

the one thing usually either carbs or

sodium. Again, with the drinks, some of them contain a bit of

both, but then make the labelling really

clear, give you the tools to understand

how many of those things you'll need each per

hour. And then you've got the toolkit and the knowledge to kind of put that

all together on race day.

So, yeah, it's, Yeah,

it's a tricky one, but that's. That's the

philosophy behind it.

>> Charlie: I mean, it makes sense, I guess, from my point of view. I'm like,

I use the combination of the caffeine

gels strategically kind of

timed with the non caffeinated gels. I also

use the combination of the carbon

sodium drink that I have in a handheld that I use for the first

hour. I finished it within 4 miles

at Boston this year, but,

yeah, so I would be excited

if you had a gel with sodium that I could then

strategically use. I know it makes it more

difficult for people in terms of what are they buying. If it's

a hot day, they have to have a completely different change of strategy

in terms of their gels. But personally and

from feedback from Instagram, we would love you to

create a product that had some sodium that we could

then use, you know, one, an hour

of. Or, you know, I've got my shorts,

I've got my caffeine pocket and my non caffeine pocket, and I know when to

kind of pull from each. so

that's my.

>> Andy Blow: Yeah, it is great. It is great feedback. And we

love chatting to athletes about what they like to see.

Because honestly, in an ideal world, I completely agree with

you that having a skew, like we have a caffeinated and non

caffeinated gel, having a gel

with and without sodium could

make total sense as,

honestly, one of the barriers is, as

a smaller business and a growing business,

we have to be careful. We have a relatively

constrained range of products, which I think

is one of our strengths, rather than a weakness, in the sense that it

allows us to be very focused on making sure those

products are exactly right for the end user, that

they're available, most of the

time, if not all of the time, because we can keep them in stock.

When you bring operational complexity in with loads and loads of

skews, it scares the life out of me trying to, look at some of

our competitors and wonder how they keep 17 different flavours

of gel going in the market. But then when

you go to their websites, quite often what you see is that half the

popular flavours are out of stock. The unpopular ones are sitting,

around or getting sold off cheap because they're going past their best before.

So we just have a level of caution around

introducing things. Plus, I suppose

there's the kind of making sure that

the end user really understands it because you

would, absolutely understand when to use that

sodium based gel and when to use a plain

one with, with people who are earlier

in their endurance journey, they might not have that

knowledge and might just pick them up

randomly and then we'd be doing them a disservice if we

didn't manage to educate them on how to use them properly.

So it's complicated. But I think as we

evolve as a company and I think as the market evolves

then that more and more niche

products like that, are probably going to come to the.

>> Charlie: Well, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that we're going to see that at some point from you

guys. in terms of another question from Instagram, in

terms of the electrolyte tabs, why

are they labelled like five,

especially the 1500? So that's actually per

litre rather than per 500 mils, which is what you

would typically dissolve one tablet in. So it's actually

what, 750 milligrammes of sodium in that?

Is that just because it's easier to do kind of per litre because we're doing

all of our sweat rates per hour

per litre, that kind of thing?

>> Andy Blow: Exactly. That is,

it's what makes most sense for understanding

the strength of the product. It's a bit

like, So we're talking about the 1500

refers to the relative sodium concentration. And

when we test your sweat, when we talk about sweat sodium, we

talk about the relative concentration, not the total

amount because the total amount is linked to the total amount

of fluid. I'm trying to think of

whether there's an analogy I could use. But I

suppose maybe the, It's why you

maybe have, with alcoholic drinks, you talk about

the alcohol percentage rather than

the total amount of alcohol because you know you

would. Clearly we all know

that, beer comes generally in

pints and whiskey comes in

single measures. And knowing the

percentage of that, the potency of that

is more important than knowing the absolute amount because we're never

going to compare a pint of whiskey, hopefully with a pint of beer.

well, not since we left university anyway. But

the thing about the relative sodium concentration, it

makes it, understandable to compare across products

and compare to what you're individually losing

because your hydration strategy involves drinking a

greater amount of fluid when it's hotter, in a lesser

amount of fluid when it's cooler, but of a concentration

that works for you. We always felt

that was the best way to communicate it

and to be totally fair to people that write them, because we get

asked that question a lot from our customers.

there are arguments for labelling it in a different way,

but that's the way we've chosen to do it, because it fits with the philosophy of

educating people on what's important. And the relative

concentration in this instance is more

important than the absolute amount, if that makes sense.

>> Charlie: Yeah, and I mean, I think you're very, you know, it's clearly labelled

that that's how much sodium is in, in the product,

but so many electrolyte tabs, you actually have to look

really, you know, they're really small fine print on

the side to see how much sodium. So

I think that, yeah, just creating an awareness

and educating people about what they're looking for

when they're choosing an electrolyte drink or product

is helpful. And again, hopefully we're doing that through these

podcasts and blogs that we're sharing.

>> Andy Blow: Absolutely. Because I think with the gels,

we had a real issue when we were looking at

some of our competitors products, when we were in the development

phase of our own. Even figuring out how many grammes of

carbohydrate different people had in different gels and

then finding with any given brand, you

might have a gel which comes in two different flavours, and

those two different flavours have two different carbohydrate

contents and they're often random numbers.

So we just thought it was like a bit crazy that

the reason you buy a gel packet is to get carbohydrate.

That is it basically to not have the number

of the grammes of carbs stamped on the front

in big letters seem crazy. And actually, we

started that trend. I think we've seen a few other companies

get on the bus with that,

which is probably better for consumers overall.

It sort of highlights to you this is the important thing in this

product and this is how much you're getting.

>> Charlie: Definitely. I mean, my pet peeve is when you get the kind of

the blocks and it tells you how

many is in the packet, but actually not how

many you need to take to get

the amount you need per hour. And sometimes some of them,

I'm like to my friends, you're going to have to take a whole pack per half

hour to get the amount. And that is a lot. You're basically

chewing nonstop like every mile. So

I really like the gel. The, kind of blocks

that you guys have. That's very clear. You need both of these for your

30 grammes. Essentially, it's the same as one

gel is the two blocks. So, yeah, I definitely

appreciate that packaging and the

communication. In

terms of your products, do you have a favourite,

your favourite product that you've made

or something that's. That you're most excited

about?

>> Andy Blow: I probably have different favourites for different

reasons. Like the PH 1500, the strongest electrolyte

drink we do is the one that, when I started racing

again after having started the company, and that is the product for

me, that is the. For the heavy, salty sweaters, that is an absolute

game changer. So in the summer, I'm never,

you know, that is always close to me when I'm travelling

or racing or competing. So that's kind of a personal

favourite. I think in more recent times,

the mint and lemon chews that we have that you just described in the

blocks, you know, the 15 gramme blocks. I

find myself, if I'm training a bit more casually and I'm not pushing

really hard, then I much prefer that to taking a

gel if I'm just out on a long run. So because of the little bit

of difference in flavour and something to chew on.

So they're really popular. and then the product

that, I've enjoyed seeing come

to market the most was probably the

carb only drink mix. So we bought out a

carbohydrate electrolyte drink mix, which was really popular.

And we started working with the Lotto Destiny cycling team,

who used a lot of it, but they wanted to have

one with no sodium in it as well as the one with sodium

in it, so that they could fine tune the rider's strategies

a bit more. We actually co developed that

product with them. We tested it. We tested

it at the Tour de France, amongst other races, which is

really cool to see it being used in there and

then launched it off the back of that. And so

we've had, having worked with

really, really world class professional athletes to develop a product

that they're happy with. And those guys will tell

you, if they don't like something because they have to drink,

they will drink five or six bottles of that

minimum a day for three weeks.

so you kind of have to get it right. So it's a pressure job,

but we get a lot of good feedback from.

>> Charlie: The team, I think, that comes into it with the flavour

fatigue. Before we started recording, I was saying how

actually the precision food and hydration gels are

the only ones that I can take the full eight. No.

Gagging. No, I don't want to take this gel. They

go down easily. There's kind of. I thought it was pear, but

you inform me it's actually flavourless or it's unflavored.

How did that come about, choosing the kind

of flavour or the non flavour for those

products?

>> Andy Blow: We always started out, when we did the electrolyte tablets,

even back in 2011, we decided that if we could,

we'd have something which tasted of nothing. And with a drink

that's nigh on impossible, because as soon as you add something into

the water, you're going to affect the taste. And so we went for

the very, very mildest flavour we could, which is kind of a

mixed citrus flavour, but we kept dialling

the flavour back and dialling the flavour back until we got it to

this, like, base level. That was just very refreshing and that was

it. And then when we did the gels, the thought process

was, well, maybe we should try and replicate that with sort

of a citrusy type flavour or something. So we

made Mel, who helped, who's part of our.

She's part of our athletes and support team day to day, but she's heavily involved

in product development and she made some,

gels, some base gels for us to try

while we're starting to define flavour. We added

different flavours to them, started trying them, and then someone took a

spoonful of, like, just the base gel product with no

flavour added and said, this is just tastes better

than any of these actually flavoured ones. And we

all had a bit and we thought. And

it was quite a hard decision to make at first because it's like, who launches a

product with no flavour? But then

we were like, well, we all prefer this one, so let's

do it. And I think it's a huge benefit of that has

been that a whole bunch of people who have told us

categorically that they don't do gels have now

converted on to actually being able to use our gels.

So, you know, that's mission accomplished

on that.

>> Charlie: Yeah, I've used them for my last three or four

marathons. and, yeah, definitely

find them the best in terms of. They sit well in my

stomach. There's no flavour fatigue, the texture is

easy, it's not too thin, it's not too thick. Yeah, I'm,

not just singing your praises because. Because I'm talking to you, but I

genuinely did a huge taste test, and they were,

came out by far top for me in terms

of carb levels, flavour,

texture, ease of opening the packets. A lot of people messaged me

saying, please thank them for making it so easy

to open the packet and not lose the top. And you're not

faffing around trying to put that back in your pocket. So,

yeah, hats off for great products.

>> Andy Blow: Yeah, well, we have an internal rule in the,

in the office that we won't launch a product that we

won't preferentially use ourselves. So

for a little while, I'll give you an example of that. We

had running belts. We designed

and made some running belts, to carry gels and things like

that, and they were okay. But. But after a while,

people were like, no one. We're not really using

it. I went back to using the running belt that I was using before

and stuff, and I thought, so we killed that

product because we just thought,

we don't want to be selling something that isn't the best in class.

And we kind of learned at that point that

actually, our lane is obviously, at the moment, is very

firmly in the nutrition products and straying

too far into, you know, we thought,

how hard can it be to design a running belt? But clearly there's

companies that really know what they're doing, doing that, and

we're doing a better job than us. So we've tended

to, more recently, kind of stay in our lane,

and hopefully, you know, everyone in the office

and myself included, if we're going to go out and do any kind of event,

it's like we've got a best in class product that we would

use to help us do our best in that.

>> Charlie: And I think I'm on backorder or waiting for the

hydroflask things to come back in stock. Is that going

to be any time? Are we looking forward to them for the

summer?

>> Andy Blow: I've got some on my desk, so,

we're just doing the internal QC on the

batch that's coming, and they should be back in stock.

>> Charlie: Amazing. I'll link to those and hope that they're back in stock by the time this

goes live. My last question is just, is there

anything coming soon that we can look out for? Are we going to be seeing

any refuel products from precision

fuel and hydration soon?

>> Andy Blow: There are, there's a few. There's a few innovations in the

pipeline. So the chew product that currently

comes in two little blocks, you know, 30 grammes.

We are working with Lotto destiny again, the cycling

team on a bigger, tube, essentially a bit more like a bar.

So something that will offer 60, most likely

60 grammes of carbohydrate all in one block.

So if you think of something about the size, you're very roughly

about the size of a mars bar or something like that, but

basically pure carbohydrate and in a couple of

different flavours, that's in live testing with lotto

and with a lot of our elite athletes and people

at the moment in the office. So it won't be out until

next year if we do launch it commercially. But that's a

front runner at the moment for a new product. And then the other

thing is we're really working on, we're continuing to work on a lot

of our digital products. So the online fuel and hydration

planner continues to evolve. We're

just in the final processes of improving our sweat test

reporting. So when you had a sweat test done, you have got a report,

and we've now got a new iteration of

the software with an improved algorithm to look at that.

So what we'll be able to do for people like

yourself, if you've done a sweat test before, you won't need to do the physical test again.

But if you want to run your numbers through that, the new

calculator, it actually builds in some

fueling recommendations as well, for events and things. So it's a bit

more of a. Because when we originally did the, the

hydration testing, algorithm,

we were only doing it focused on hydration, but

now we can offer a bit more expertise on the fueling

side. We've massively upgraded that.

So again, we're testing that in

house at the moment prior to actually releasing

it to everyone who's offering sweat testing.

>> Charlie: Well, Andy, thank you so much. I will link to my

favourite precision fuel and hydration products in the show notes and,

to the website where people can either book a sweat test

or there's a test online where you can just kind of click

through and say what your sport is, whether you're a heavy sweater, whether

you get salt patches, that kind of thing, so that you can work

out the best products for you. So

thank you very much.

>> Andy Blow: No, thanks. Thanks for all your kind words on our, stuff.

I'm, glad it's helping you get around all these narratives.

>> Charlie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Cook Eat Run

podcast with X Miles. Don't forget to use the code

cookeatrun June 10 to save 10% across the

x miles site. And we'll have a new code

for you next month to save on our favourite products. so make sure to

listen next time. I'm chatting with Nicola Ludlam

rain, better known as Nick's nutrition, all about ultra

processed foods. It's a really hot topic at the moment,

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