What should you eat during a backyard ultra?

The winning pattern is a rotation, not a single food. Variety is what prevents flavour fatigue and keeps intake consistent over many hours, and most successful plans mix liquids, gels or chews, and real food. Think in three buckets. Umit

Liquid calories carry the early loops. A carbohydrate drink is gentler on the stomach during sleep-deprived, high-volume efforts when solid food becomes harder to tolerate. Sipping 100 to 150 calories of fuel per loop keeps a steady drip of energy in without sitting heavy. 

Soft, calorie-dense solids do the real work. This is where you get genuine calories without volume or chewing effort. A small handful of high-calorie snacks per loop, or a soft bar nibbled across the hour, adds up fast. If you want to understand which foods deliver the most energy per bite, our calorie-dense foods guide ranks more than forty of them.

Real food comes in as the hours stack up. Savoury options like ramen, mashed potato, broth, and crisps become far more appealing than sweet gels deep into a race. If gels are already turning your stomach, our energy gel alternatives guide covers what to use instead.

How do you beat flavour fatigue?

Flavour fatigue is the quiet race-ender. After several hours, sweet gels and drinks can become genuinely repulsive, and runners stop eating not because they are full but because they cannot face another mouthful. Experienced backyard runners shift toward savoury foods that need very little chewing, and they avoid overloading on fructose because it is harder to process.

The defences are variety and texture. Rotate sweet and savoury, hot and cold, liquid and solid, so nothing dominates. Pre-portion small amounts so each loop feels like a fresh small bite rather than a chore. One runner who used our bars in a self-supported event described cutting one in half before the start, then nibbling another quarter each hour, which kept hunger away without ever feeling like a meal. For the different ways to eat a dense bar across a long effort, see how to use Phoenix Bars.

What should you eat on the night loops?

The night is where races are lost. It is colder, you are sleep deprived, and appetite drops away. Cold gels and dry bars are hard to face at 3am, so the runners who survive the night plan warm food. A Phoenix Bar stirred into hot water or milk becomes a warm high-calorie porridge with no stove and no cooking, which is one of the most reliable ways to get hundreds of calories in when nothing else appeals. Warm, soft and dense beats cold, dry and bulky every time after dark.

When your appetite disappears completely

At some point appetite simply switches off, and the only thing that works is calorie density: the most energy in the smallest, softest, easiest-to-swallow form. This is the same principle that helps people who struggle to eat enough in everyday life, covered in our calorie-dense foods and soft high-calorie foods guides. When you can only manage a few bites, those bites need to be worth as much as possible.

Hydration and electrolytes

Fluid and sodium keep your gut working and your fuel absorbing. A common starting point is 20 to 24 ounces of fluid and 600 to 900 milligrams of sodium per hour, adjusted up in heat and down in cold. In cooler conditions, 300 to 600 milligrams of sodium an hour is often enough, guided by sweat rate and how salty you run. Avoid the opposite mistake of drinking too much plain water, which dilutes your sodium and can be dangerous over many hours. Let thirst and urine colour guide you rather than forcing fluid. 

How do you avoid stomach problems?

Train your gut like you train your legs. The single most repeated rule in ultra fueling is nothing new on race day. Every drink, bar, gel and real food in your plan should have been rehearsed in long training sessions at race effort, so your stomach already knows it. Build the habit of eating small amounts on a schedule rather than waiting until you feel you need it, because by the time you feel empty in a backyard ultra it is already too late to catch up.

A sample loop-by-loop rotation

In the early loops, keep it light and liquid led: a bottle of carbohydrate drink each loop and a few bites of something soft. Through the daytime middle loops, layer in a soft calorie-dense bar nibbled across the hour and start alternating sweet and savoury. As night falls, switch to warm food, hot porridge, broth or soup, and protect your core temperature while you eat. Deep into the second day and beyond, lean on whatever savoury, low-chew, calorie-dense food you can still face, in the smallest portions that hit your hourly target, and keep the fluid and sodium steady. The plan is not to eat perfectly. It is to never stop eating.

Where Phoenix Bars fit

I have not stood in the corral at hour 40 myself. But I built Phoenix Bars after 150 conversations with people who have, and one sentence came up again and again: it was not the legs that stopped them, it was that they could not keep eating.

That is the entire design brief. Each bar packs up to 557 calories into a soft 120 gram flapjack at roughly 4.6 calories per gram, so a few bites are worth a whole handful of ordinary snacks. They are soft enough to eat with no real chewing, you can eat one whole, break it up and nibble a quarter each loop, or stir it into hot water for a warm porridge on the night laps. They are vegan, gluten-free, do not melt in heat or freeze in the cold, and keep for two years, so they survive a drop bag in any conditions.

If you want to test them properly before a race, the six-bar Short-Term Bundle is the low-commitment way to trial them across a few long training sessions, which is exactly where your fueling should be proven anyway. Try Phoenix Bars for your backyard ultra.

Related guides

For longer point-to-point efforts, see multi-day ultra running nutrition. For shorter, faster days on the trails, see trail running nutrition. For self-supported running with a pack, see fastpacking nutrition. And for the full picture across every endurance discipline, start with our ultra-endurance and expedition nutrition guide.

Frequently asked questions

How many calories should you eat per loop in a backyard ultra? Around 250 calories per hour is a sound target for most runners, kept mostly as carbohydrate, with protein and a little fat added once you pass 24 hours.

What is the best food for a backyard ultra? A rotation rather than one food: a carbohydrate drink early, soft calorie-dense bars and snacks through the day, and savoury, low-chew real food and warm porridge through the night to beat flavour fatigue.

What should you eat on the night laps? Warm, soft, calorie-dense food. Hot porridge, broth or soup is far easier to face at night than cold gels or dry bars, and helps keep you warm.

How do you stop feeling sick during a backyard ultra? Train your gut in advance, introduce nothing new on race day, avoid overloading on fructose, keep sodium and fluid steady, and eat small amounts on a schedule rather than large amounts occasionally.

How much should you drink per loop? Roughly 20 to 24 ounces of fluid per hour as a starting point, with 300 to 900 milligrams of sodium depending on heat and sweat rate. Avoid drinking large volumes of plain water alone.

Written by James Frost, founder of Flaming Phoenix. I pack every order myself from Surrey and reply to every email, usually the same day. Last reviewed May 2026.