David Roche ran 100 miles through the Colorado Rockies in just over 15 hours, and he did it while eating roughly a Snickers bar’s worth of carbs every ten minutes.
Story Snapshot
- David Roche set a Leadville 100 course record of 15:12:30 in 2025 while targeting about 150 grams of carbohydrate per hour.
- That rate is nearly double the long-standing sports science ceiling of roughly 90 grams per hour for endurance events.
- Roche relied on six to seven gels per hour plus sports drinks to hit his numbers during the race.
- Emerging research suggests trained athletes may tolerate and use higher carb loads than older guidelines assumed.
A Course Record Built on Gels and Sports Drinks
Roche crossed the Leadville 100 finish line in 15 hours, 12 minutes, and 30 seconds, breaking the course record he had already held. Runner’s World reported he aimed for close to 150 grams of carbohydrate and 600 calories per hour, fueled mainly through gels and sports drinks consumed at a punishing pace through thin mountain air.
That figure breaks down to roughly six or seven 22-gram gels every single hour, on top of carbohydrate-loaded sports drinks sipped between aid stations. Most recreational runners manage one or two gels an hour. Roche treated his stomach like a fuel tank built for a much bigger engine, and he trained it that way on purpose over months of racing and testing.
Months before Leadville, Roche had already gone public with the plan. In a social media post from November 2024, he described testing 120 to 140 grams of carbohydrate per hour, writing that after one race he “desperately wanted more data to validate the science experiment”. Men’s Health later reported he planned specific hourly targets of 120, 130, and 140 grams during his Leadville buildup, treating fueling as a variable to dial in like pace or shoes.
Why This Breaks From Decades of Sports Nutrition Advice
For years, the standard advice for endurance athletes topped out around 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour for events lasting more than three hours, built on mixing glucose and fructose so the gut could absorb both at once. Multiple nutrition guidelines, including those referenced by sports dietitians, treated that number as close to a hard ceiling for most athletes.
Newer research is starting to push that ceiling higher. Studies on trained athletes have found that carbohydrate intake near 120 grams per hour can increase how much carb the body actually burns during exercise compared to 90 grams, though it does not necessarily reduce how much stored fuel the body still taps into. That distinction matters because burning more ingested carbs doesn’t automatically mean every athlete performs better on a higher dose.
Roche’s result and his training partner’s own course record at Leadville add a vivid, high-profile data point to that shifting conversation. Outside described him as targeting 120 to 150 grams per hour across his race calendar, not just as a one-time experiment, suggesting a sustained shift in how he approaches fueling rather than a single lucky day.
What the Record Does and Doesn’t Prove
A single elite performance, even a record-setting one, cannot isolate carbohydrate intake as the cause. Roche’s Leadville run also involved specific training, pacing strategy, course familiarity, weather, and years of altitude conditioning. Sports science generally treats one race result as a data point worth studying, not as proof that a strategy works the same way for every runner.
Roche himself has framed his approach as an ongoing experiment rather than a finished formula, publicly wanting more data to confirm what he experienced in his own body. That instinct lines up with how good science actually works: test, observe, adjust, and resist declaring victory after one great day. It’s a refreshingly honest posture in a fitness world full of overnight miracle claims.
Recreational runners should take note of the gap between an elite athlete’s gut-trained tolerance and their own stomach on a Saturday long run. Gastrointestinal distress is the most common reason high-carb fueling fails, and Roche’s reported six-gel-an-hour pace almost certainly followed deliberate gut training most weekend athletes have never attempted. Trying to copy the number without the preparation behind it is a recipe for a rough day on the trail.
Still, the broader trend is hard to ignore. Sports nutrition guidance has crept upward for a decade, from 60 grams an hour to 90 to now, for some athletes, well past 120. Roche’s Leadville record won’t settle the science on its own, but it gives coaches, researchers, and curious runners a real-world case worth studying closely as the carbohydrate ceiling keeps moving.
Sources:
menshealth.com, sports.yahoo.com, trailia.run, irunfar.com
