I enable endurance athletes to overcome lack of energy and gut upset so that they can fuel their bodies with confidence and race to their full potential. Subscribe to my weekly 'Fuelling with Purpose' newsletter to receive endurance nutrition insights directly in your inbox.
Fuelling With Purpose — 13 January 2026
💡 Fuel For ThoughtIf training is just about suffering, you're missing the pointIn recent weeks, I’ve come across a couple of posts that genuinely worried me. One was a CNN headline about a reporter completing a six-day hike on just 250 calories per day. Another was a runner openly endorsing underfuelling as a way to toughen up for marathon training. I get why these stories gain traction. As endurance athletes, we’re wired to respect grit. Pushing through discomfort is part of the sport’s appeal and a critical factor in finding new limits. But there’s an important line that often gets blurred: stress that drives adaptation is not the same as stress that erodes health and performance. Physiologically, yes, change requires pressure. Training works because it creates a stimulus that the body adapts to when it’s given the resources to recover. That’s the key part many of these narratives leave out. Without adequate energy, your body doesn’t adapt, it simply survives. Hormones downregulate. Bone turnover slows. Immune function dips. Recovery stalls. Performance falls. Withholding fuel doesn’t make training more effective, it narrows the ceiling of what you can handle. When energy intake matches the work you’re asking your body to do, you’re creating the conditions to push further, more consistently, and with less collateral damage along the way. The goal of training isn’t to prove how tough you are, it’s to create adaptation. And adaptation only happens when stress is matched with sufficient fuel, rest, and care. Pushing your limits isn’t about seeing how little you can get by on. It’s about giving your body the support it needs to handle work you once thought was out of reach. 🚀 Endurance Highlights1️⃣ A helpful tool to train safely in hot conditionsWhile training in the heat can promote certain training adaptations, it’s also important to approach it safely and intentionally. This recent work from Sports Medicine Australia highlights that heat stress is a major and often underestimated risk in community and recreational sport, especially during training and events held in hot, dry or hot, humid conditions. Heat illness doesn’t just affect performance; it can lead to nausea, dizziness, collapse, and in severe cases, serious medical emergencies. To better manage this risk, Sports Medicine Australia has updated its Extreme Heat Policy and Guidelines and developed a free, easy-to-use online heat risk tool. The tool uses real-time and forecast weather data, along with sport-specific factors such as activity intensity, clothing, and expected duration, to estimate heat stress risk across over 30 sports and provides recommendations from hydration and clothing changes, to rest breaks, active cooling strategies, or when it’s safest to modify or suspend activity altogether. 2️⃣ The science behind a record-eligible sub-2-hour marathonBeyond superior fitness, running a marathon in under two hours requires the perfect alignment of many factors. This review brings together what we now know about the physiological, technological, cognitive, and environmental determinants needed to achieve a record-eligible sub-2-hour marathon. The paper highlights how recent breakthroughs have come from optimising multiple systems simultaneously. Advances in shoe technology have improved running economy, while controlled pacing strategies, drafting, and ideal environmental conditions reduce energetic cost. Nutrition and hydration strategies play a critical role in maintaining carbohydrate availability and delaying fatigue, and psychological factors, such as decision-making, focus, and pain tolerance, are increasingly recognised as performance limiters at this level. The sub-2-hour marathon is framed as the outcome of carefully engineered integration, where small gains across physiology, technology, environment, and mindset combine to unlock extraordinary performance. Together, this framework reinforces an important lesson for all endurance athletes: performance breakthroughs rarely come from a single variable. Sustainable progress is built by aligning training, fuelling, recovery, equipment, and race execution, each supporting the others to allow athletes to express their full potential on race day. 🕵🏻♀️ Retail Finds*This week's product review: Kodiak Power Cakes - Pancake & Waffle MixFeatures & benefits
Things to keep in mind
Final take These pancakes can be a good option for a quick and balanced breakfast or even a potential addition to race nutrition if you want a high-carb, high-protein option. 👩🏻🍳 Kitchen CreationsI'm committing to sending the most valuable endurance nutrition newsletter. I want to make sure that every piece of content you receive includes information that is helpful to you and your journey toward achieving your personal best. Happy fuelling! Gaby | Endurance Nutrition Specialist 🏃🏻♂️ Want to work together?When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
|
Gaby Villa
I enable endurance athletes to overcome lack of energy and gut upset so that they can fuel their bodies with confidence and race to their full potential. Subscribe to my weekly 'Fuelling with Purpose' newsletter to receive endurance nutrition insights directly in your inbox.
💡 Fuel For Thought This mindset shift can transform your fuelling It’s the start of the year, and for many of us, that means thinking of making changes to better ourselves. Diet is one of the popular areas. After more than 13 years working in sports nutrition, I’ve noticed a clear pattern: about 90% of people who want to change their diet start by banning foods. Examples include chocolate, soft drinks, salty snacks or even sugar altogether. While it’s true that some foods support health and...
💡 Fuel For Thought Goals don't change you. Systems do. In my family, New Year’s Eve has always been almost as big as Christmas. There’s great food, long conversations, and a moment where we pause to be grateful for the year behind us and hopeful for the one ahead. For a long time, that pause came with a familiar ritual: New Year’s resolutions. I used to make long lists of everything I wanted to accomplish by December 31st: Faster race times, better habits, start a new hobby, etc. And, like...
💡 Fuel For Thought The race I didn't plan, but needed A week ago, I raced my third marathon on the same course I completed my first one 11 years ago in Monterrey, Mexico. I recently shared a brief recap on how the race unravelled. You can read it here. When I registered for this marathon, my main objective was to set a new PB (3:37). Even though my training was going amazingly well, a month before the race, I injured my hamstring, which drastically affected my preparation. The goal became...