Fuelling your Peak Divide Journey
Two-stepping: Shuffler or Shifter?
Remember the iPod Shuffle? No screen. No notifications.
You'd pick your 32 songs, and wait. You didn't have access to everything.
You had enough.
Peak Divide is akin to the Shuffle with its invitation to step away from the things we've become so accustomed to. Just you, your shoes, your fuel, the route, the people around you, and whatever the day decides to throw at you.
A tad nostalgic. A tad simpler. A tad more disconnected.
And, when it comes to fuelling your Peak Divide adventure, we think there are two types of steppers:
The Shuffler, and the Shifter.
The Shuffler
Take it all in.
The Shuffler is there to enjoy the journey - for the adventure - the trails, the atmosphere, the people and convoy.
You’re stopping for the views. Checkpoint chatting. Having the coffee. Taking the photos. You might run for an hour, stop for ten minutes, and completely forget what time it is.
And that's the whole point.
You’re fuelling approach can be just as simple.
Drink. Eat. Repeat.
An OTE Hydro Tab in the bottle
A gel when you fancy something quick
A banana, a flapjack, a sandwich — whatever real food makes sense for you
There doesn't need to be a perfectly calculated nutrition strategy.
For shuffling a long running adventure like PD, 20–40g of carbohydrate per hour is a useful starting point, alongside regular fluids and electrolytes.
In practice, that's roughly 1x OTE Anytime Mini (20g), or 1x OTE Energy Gel, once an hour - nothing more complicated than that.
Simple fuel for a simple idea: keep yourself moving, keep yourself enjoying it.
“For shuffling a long running adventure like PD, 20–40g of carbohydrate per hour is a useful starting point … alongside regular fluids and electrolytes.”
The Shifter
The Shifter tends to moves faster. You’re pushing the climbs, carrying more speed, and spending less time stopped.
You’ve probably done this kind of thing before. You understand your body. You might know what works.
And you know that when you're running harder for longer, fuelling becomes part of the performance.
This is where things get more deliberate.
OTE gives you convenient carbohydrate when you need it — Energy Chews, Super Gels, Super Carbs.
Real food gives you something different — texture, variety, something savoury, something that actually feels like food after hours on the move.
So a Shifter's day might build around something like:
OTE → real food → OTE → real food → OTE
As experience and gut training develop, you might work towards 70–90g+ of carbohydrate per hour — and some well-trained guts push towards 100g — for harder, longer efforts. That's closer to a gel and a full Anytime Bar (60g), or a gel every 30 minutes, hour after hour.
Not because you’re trying to turn Peak Divide into a race. Because you’re choosing to journey further, quicker.
“If shifting, you might work towards 70–90g+ of carbohydrate per hour — and some well-trained guts push towards 100g — for harder, longer efforts.”
The Maths
What do all those grams look like? Numbers on a page mean nothing until you can see what's in your hand.
Eating
1 OTE Gel = 20g
1 OTE Mini Anytime Bar (the flapjack at CP1 and CP4) = 20g
1 OTE Anytime Bar = ~35–40g
A brekky bap at Edale = ~40–50g
A bowl of gnocchi at Gnocchi Gap = ~40–50g
Drinking
1 OTE Energy drink = ~40g carbs per serving
OTE Hydro Tabs = electrolytes, not carbs — great for topping up fluids and salts, but they don't count towards your hourly number
So in practice:
A Shuffler's 20–40g/hour might look like an Anytime Mini, or a gel, or a few good mouthfuls of an OTE Energy drink. Once an hour. Done.
A Shifter's 70–90g+ is closer to a gel and a full Anytime Bar (60g), or a gel washed down with an Energy drink (60g), topped up with real food when the chance comes — a brekky bap at Edale or a bowl of gnocchi at Gnocchi Gap will each cover 40–50g in one sitting, a proper dent in an hour's target on their own.
Same fuel. Same course. Different amounts, at a different pace.
Carb loading; Pasta make you go faster
Friday. AKA ‘the day before’
This day before belongs to the Shuffler mindset: eat well throughout the day, snacking on plenty of plain carbs to top up your glycogen stores. Think beige - bagels, white rice, rice pudding - and wash it down with plenty of hydration. As a rough guide, aim for 8-10g of carbohydrate per kg of bodyweight over the day. Spend the day taking your time, get off your feet, prepare your kit and get an early night. Tomorrow is a big adventure!
Two Steps. One Adventure.
That's the beauty of Peak Divide.
You might Shuffle one year and Shift the next. You might Shuffle the first half and Shift the second. Or you might spend the whole day somewhere in between.
Just like the old iPod Shuffle, there's something liberating about having less. Less information. Less noise. Less technology. Less pressure to optimise every second.
And when you've stripped everything else back, perhaps fuelling can be simple too.
Know what you like. Know what works. Take enough with you. Keep eating. Keep drinking. And get on with the adventure.
Because whether you're there to Shuffle or Shift, the aim is the same:
Goodness In = Greatness Out