How Jacquie Mannhard Fuels for a 100-Mile Race: Leadville Recovery, Carb Strategy, and Mental Toughness

If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to race a 100 miler well, Jacquie Mannhard has a lot to teach you. Fresh off a second-place finish at Leadville, she broke down what changed in her nutrition, how she adjusts when her stomach turns, and why patience after the finish line matters just as much as pacing on race day.Whether you’re training for your first ultra or just want to understand how elite endurance athletes manage fueling, hydration, and recovery, this conversation is packed with practical takeaways you can use.

What Leadville Demands From Your Body

Leadville is never just “another race.” It starts at 10,000 feet, climbs higher from there, and asks your body to keep working in thin air for hours and hours. Jacquie explained that even though she lives in Boulder and is used to altitude, Leadville is still a completely different experience.At that elevation, simple tasks can feel harder. She joked that even eating potato chips at 10,000 feet can leave you winded. That’s part of what makes Leadville such a unique test—you’re not only managing distance and terrain, you’re managing oxygen debt, heat, and a level of fatigue that reaches every system in your body.That also means recovery is no small thing. After big races, Jacquie doesn’t just feel tired in her legs. She gets profound whole-body fatigue and even brain fog. In this year’s Leadville recovery window, she spent a full week resting, fueling, sleeping, and doing gentle bodywork before slowly reintroducing swimming, biking, and eventually running.That kind of patience is hard for athletes who feel fit one day and wrecked the next, but it’s exactly the point. The body needs time to come back online after a huge endurance effort.

Why Jacquie Changed Her Fueling Strategy

One of the biggest takeaways from this interview is that Jacquie’s fueling system has changed completely since her last Leadville win in 2023. She learned, the hard way, that more carbs are not always better if they’re not being diluted and digested properly.In past races, she used a high-carb drink mix that she liked for years, but she eventually realized she was making her bottles too concentrated and not drinking enough water to process all those carbs. The result was brutal: stomach distress, puking, and races that were derailed by fueling problems instead of fitness.So this year, she switched to Scratch hydration and lowered the concentration of her bottles. That change made a huge difference.Her target for a 100-mile race is roughly

70 to 80 grams of carbs per hour

, which she describes as lower than what many athletes are trying these days. But for her, it’s the sweet spot between underfueling and overloading her gut.That’s an important lesson for everyday runners: your fueling target should be based on what your body can actually absorb, not just what a general chart says. Jacquie’s experience is a good reminder that the best nutrition plan is one you can sustain for the full race.She also emphasized the role of water in making carbs usable. Without enough fluid, even a great carb plan can turn into a stomach problem. Her strategy was simple but effective—one bottle of Scratch per hour, plus water, and consistent carb intake from gels and aid station food.

How She Fuels During the Race

Jacquie’s race-day fueling is built around routine, flexibility, and constant adjustment. She usually starts fueling around 30 to 45 minutes into the race, and from there she keeps the pressure on.Her core race fueling included:

• Enervit mango gels—her preferred gel for most of the race because it’s more palatable than many other options
• Neversecond gels—another option she used successfully during the event
• Scratch hydration drink mix—lower concentration, used consistently
• Water—always available to help process the carbs
• Solid foods early in the race—mashed potatoes and bananas
• Salty foods later—especially when sweet fuels became harder to tolerate

What stands out is how dynamic her plan is. When solids stopped sitting well, she dropped them. When gels started coming back up around mile 90, she dropped those too and leaned into liquid nutrition. When even that became difficult, she kept taking small sips of Scratch and water just to stay moving toward the finish.That kind of flexibility is critical in ultras. A rigid plan can fall apart fast when your stomach turns. Jacquie’s approach is to keep the plan simple enough to execute, but adaptable enough to change in real time.She also noted that she often mixes in salty foods—mashed potatoes, pickle juice, and sometimes salt tabs—not just for sodium, but because they help reset her palate after hours of sweet fuel. If you’ve ever gotten “sweet fatigue” in a long race, you know how valuable that can be.

The Mental Shift That Carries You Through the Final Miles

One of the most powerful moments in the conversation came when Jacquie described what happens late in a 100 miler. She said that in those final miles, you “descend to the bottom of yourself.” Ego fades. Language fades. Time and space feel weird. And what’s left is something primal and deeply resilient.That may sound intense, but it captures an important truth about long-distance racing: the body and mind are not separate. The more you practice discomfort, the more familiar it becomes.Jacquie doesn’t work with a sports psychologist, but she has spent years building the mental skill of staying present when things hurt. She credits a lot of that to repeated exposure—not just in 100 milers, but in marathon and everyday training sessions where she’s learned to go to the well and survive.She also leans on Buddhist teachings, especially the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, as part of her mental framework. For her, that perspective helps with impermanence, suffering, and the idea that hard moments pass.That doesn’t mean the pain goes away. She describes the final miles as a low, not a high. It’s painful. It’s raw. But it’s also where she finds a version of herself that feels unbreakable.For everyday runners, the lesson is clear: mental toughness is not something you either have or don’t have. It’s something you practice, often in small doses, before you ever need it in a big race.

What an Ultra Recovery Week Really Looks Like

Crossing the finish line is not the end of the work. In fact, one of Jacquie’s biggest lessons came after her first Leadville finish, when she didn’t eat enough in the hours after the race and ended up losing a significant amount of weight while her body stayed in a catabolic state.Now, she treats post-race recovery as a serious fueling job.The first thing she wants after a finish?

Queso dip

. Hot, salty, fatty, and comforting. That kind of instinctive craving makes sense after hours of gels and drink mix. Even if she doesn’t have the appetite she “should” have, she knows she needs to eat.Her post-race recovery priorities are:

1. Get calories in quickly
   Even if appetite is low, she starts fueling right away.
2. Keep eating for several days
   She knows her metabolism stays elevated for days after a 100 miler.
3. Use easy, appealing foods
   Hot broth, Cheetos, sandwiches, eggs, and sausage all make the list.
4. Return to movement slowly
   Gentle mobility, stretching, foam rolling, massage gun work, and swimming all help her come back online.

She also uses sauna in the winter and believes it helps with blood volume and injury resilience. In summer, though, she says the heat of Colorado training often provides plenty of stimulus on its own.The bigger point here is that recovery is not passive. It’s an active, intentional phase of performance.

What Everyday Runners Can Learn From Jacquie’s Approach

You don’t need to race Leadville to benefit from Jacquie’s approach. In fact, some of her best advice is especially useful for runners preparing for their first marathon or ultra.Her top recommendation is to treat your long run like a dress rehearsal. That means testing everything—shoes, socks, shorts, hydration, gels, and meal timing—repeatedly before race day. According to Jacquie, it takes many data points, and many failures, to figure out what works.That same mindset applies to the week before the race. She does very little training, sleeps as much as possible, and eats big. White rice, sandwiches, pasta, toast, juice, and Gatorade all help her build up energy stores. The night before, she keeps things simple with pasta and doesn’t panic if sleep doesn’t come easily.She also keeps race morning predictable. Her go-to breakfast is a packaged oatmeal from Trader Joe’s, plus a bit of caffeine from Scratch instead of coffee. She avoids coffee mainly because she doesn’t want to spend the first hour of the race looking for a bathroom.That routine matters. A predictable breakfast lowers stress and makes race morning feel familiar, which is exactly what you want when your nerves are high.For runners trying to improve their own fueling, Jacquie’s advice is straightforward: practice often, keep track of what works, and don’t force a nutrition strategy that your gut hates.

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