syndicate log, issue no. 015: sweat tested, self-funded, appropriately salty

how precision fuel & hydration got built

andy blow built a sports nutrition company because the standard advice kept putting him in trouble.

blow had the credentials. he had studied sport and exercise science, made his living as a sports scientist, worked with benetton's formula 1 program, and raced triathlon seriously. it kept going wrong anyway. cramps in races, and worse, a couple of scary brushes with hyponatremia while racing in the heat. the drink-lots advice every athlete was handed in the 90s was the thing doing it to him, and his own field had not covered fluid and electrolyte balance in any real depth at the time. looking back, he says he was habitually diluting himself the whole time.

the fix arrived late in his racing career, when a doctor friend gave him a sweat test. the machine was not built for athletes at all. it was designed to diagnose cystic fibrosis. blow licensed it exclusively for sport after he saw what it did, which was this: test ten athletes and you get ten very different results. that variance is the entire company. same tab, same bottle, same generic advice, completely different outcome depending on who is drinking it.

building it was unglamorous for years. a friends-and-family raise in 2011 paid for the first production run, and precision stayed a side hustle small enough that the entire stock sat in the corner of an office while jonny tye re-labelled it by hand for different countries. tye was a world championship silver medallist kayaker who wandered into an early expo to help out and turned out to be a very good salesman, then kept asking for more shows. when an investor deal fell through, blow remortgaged his house and tye borrowed, and the two of them bought the early backers out. nobody has owned it since except the people building it. tye became chief executive in january.

which is the part that got us. fifteen years on, precision ships to more than ninety countries with over fifty people on staff, most of them endurance athletes themselves. what has not changed is where their athletes come from. andy met rachel entrekin at western states while she was volunteering at the foresthill aid station, and had her explain the food and drink options on camera before he knew who she was. precision became her first paying sponsor. and if you want to see a fueling win, rachel's is hard to beat. she took the cocodona 250 again this spring, and two hundred and fifty miles is a long time to get your nutrition right.

the sweat test

reading about a sweat test and getting one are different things, so we decided to put it to the literal test. one of us gets tested later this week and the full write-up follows shortly after. until then we're taking guesses on what the sodium losses come back as, based on nothing more scientific than how much salt ends up on a hat in august. that is precisely the guesswork the test is meant to replace. we'll show the number either way.

common interests

there is a carb arms race on right now, and it is worth hearing the position of a guy who sells carbohydrate. blow thinks more is directionally correct, especially in running, where underfueling has been the historic norm. he also thinks the idea has been oversold and expects a correction eventually. the industry has an obvious incentive to keep the number climbing, because a bigger number means more gels. what the very top end is doing is not always a great indicator of what everyone else should do, and some smaller, slower-moving athletes cope perfectly well on one or two an hour. his line is appropriate sodium, not high sodium, and the same logic runs through the carbs. there is a goldilocks amount and it is yours, not the internet's. precision's fuel & hydration planner is free and will get you close.

battle of the run clubs

eleven days into season 1 and somebody put up a two hundred mile week.

that was meshingomesia track club, out of marion, indiana, and it is a big reason they now own the mileage board at 793 miles for the month. bank of boston is second on 564 and the jeff walker fan club is right behind on 556, both out of indianapolis, so the chase is real even if the gap isn't small. we were not expecting a two hundred mile week in august. well done.

vert is a different sport entirely. the wetter bandits have 67,841 feet out of seattle, which is more than double anyone else in the field, and billy pannetier is leading every runner in the competition on climbing. wet bandits, dadtok and the jeff walker fan club are all bunched between 20,000 and 25,000 feet behind them. twenty days left, twenty-five clubs on the board, and both awards still there to be taken. giveaways are going all month and the only requirement is that you're following @syndicaterunning on instagram. if your squad is still short a body, grab someone. they'll be fine.

that's it for this week. go find out your number.

if this one landed, forward it to the friend who has ended a race in the medical tent and still hasn't changed anything about how they fuel.

midwest grit meets pacific northwest rain.

come run with us.

graham + mark

syndicate running