It is difficult to outwork a bad diet. If you are doing a 238 mile long race, you have very different dietary considerations than most people; and quite likely have a diet designed to maximize caloric intake.

A large chocolate shake from mcdonalds is 850 kcal. By your estimate, this is is 51 minutes of work to burn off. Possible, yes. Useful if you need the calories to run 240 miles, yes. Easier than not having the shake in the first place, no.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. She doesn't eat/drink those things all the time.

Michael Phelps ate an enormous amount of food too for his training too, and he trained very hard. I sincerely doubt him or Courtney devour that many calories when not in training or trying to run for five plus days straight.

Short term gorging yourself for fuel is sometimes necessary, but it's dishonest to propose that means a diet of nachos, candy and beer is somehow healthy. If everyone was doing the MOAB all the time that's a different story.

You're definitely not wrong, but consistent long term training does keep you at a higher metabolic rate.

I run pretty frequently (nothing like a ultra competition like that, though) and I can consistently eat ~3kcal a day and not gain a pound, even when maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of those days don't involve training.

To be fair, I'm still young, and probably have a genetic predisposition to burning a lot of calories, but I still think it's fair to say that consistent training results in a generally higher caloric intake even when not training.

The only thing I was pointing out is that people can, in fact, "outwork a bad diet". It's not easy, but it's not impossible either.

Where did you get that number? Unless you are doing some hardcore HIT, or doing olympic level running, you will never burn 1000 cal in a hour or running. Very few people can maintain 8+ mph for a whole hour.

"Like it or not, running makes for a really great cardio workout: Maintain a six-mile per hour pace, and you'll burn upwards of 557* calories in one hour! And even if running that fast for that long seems like a bit of a stretch, you can still burn an impressive 398 calories per hour by jogging."

I've done it myself, even when out of shape. The heavier you are the slower you need to go to burn that much. If you weigh 100 kilos and run a 10k in an hour, that's over 1,000 kcal. Lighter people burn less per km but we can run faster, too. HIT burns less but can give a nice metabolic boost.

Check runners world or a calculator of your choice.

https://www.runnersworld.com/tools/calories-burned-calculato...

One thing I notice from this Trail Runner article about her win is that "she wouldn't sleep much during the 57 hours she was on course," to the point of hallucination:

http://trailrunnermag.com/people/news/courtney-dauwalter-win...

I gather this was the first year for this event, so the other racers may have been more conservative in that regard.

She doesn't eat that during the race...