David Roche Is Betting Big on Carbs, Grit, and Love

Updated April 3, 2025 03:25PM

—In April 2024, David Roche’s body was on a beeline toward death. Thrown off his bike by a turning car, Roche flew 100 feet into a fence. A concussion, a broken wrist, and stitches ensued, but so too did the lingering effects of a near-death experience, that strange and wildly scary reminder of fragility that feels all the more terrifying when one is blessed with a body that has never had to be reminded of such a thing.

For Roche, that accident was what led to his fuck it moment: a decision to live his life as a demonstration of love, grit, and joy. While recovering, Roche decided that he needed to go big. Fuck the haters. Climb the mountain. Do the thing. And he did. He won the historic Leadville Trail 100 just five months later. It was his first attempt at the distance. He set a course record.

When I first spoke to David Roche in February 2025, it only took him about 30 seconds to mention death. “Everything,” Roche told me over the phone, “starts with death and impermanence.” It was a jarring introduction for someone whose public persona feels so overwhelmingly positive. Love, kindness, awesomeness, even huzzah—these words punctuate Roche’s social media posts, his Strava runs, and, recently, the texts and emails he sent my way. “So excited,” he emailed me, with four exclamation marks, when I told him I was flying out to Boulder, Colorado, to spend some time with him. And yet, as he told me over the phone, he is always subject to entropy, the unalterable process by which each of us, and I do mean each of us, is heading on that beeline toward death.

Though Roche was quick, upon introduction, to remind me of death, the first time I met him in person, I found myself face-to-face with the explosion of life itself. He opened the door to his house just outside of Boulder, and his dog, Addie, a golden retriever, Australian shepherd, and pug mix, shot out of the gap and sprinted my way. Inside, as Addie twirled a series of endless figure-eights around my legs, I looked upon a living room of playful disorder. Roche’s youngest child, Ollie, just a few months old, sat placidly amidst a carpet littered with toy cars and blocks. His oldest, the two-year-old Leo—whose name stands for Love Each Other—spent the evening collecting and then hurling those same toy cars off precipices: couch cushions, tables, even his father’s back. All the while, David and his wife, Megan, an accomplished runner, podcast host, and dual-doctorate holder in medicine and epidemiology, toggled between talking with me and playing with and feeding both kids. “Play,” David told me, “is the ultimate act of love.”

Roche, 36 years old, is currently one of the most accomplished ultramarathoners of the moment, his win and course record at Leadville serving as the stepping stone for him to be ranked by Ultrarunning Magazine as the number two ultrarunner of 2024. This year, Roche’s life is centered around three people—Megan, Leo, and Ollie—and one very public goal: win the Western States 100 Mile, one of ultrarunning’s most coveted achievements.

Western States is held on the final weekend of June, and it begins on the floor of the Olympic Valley in California, climbing and descending through the Sierra Nevada as it makes its way to Auburn, California. There is often snow. There is always rugged desert heat. There is a river crossing. It is like that classic game, Oregon Trail, where players don’t know what will happen or in what specific way they will suffer, only that they will.

Jim Walmsley, the current course record holder, famously took a wrong turn in 2016 and then pulled out of the race in 2017 before winning in 2018 and setting the course record in 2019. In other words: the course is not forgiving, especially if you are reaching for greatness. And David Roche is reaching for greatness. He has, to put it playfully, called his shot, the way someone does when they are six years old and playing baseball in the backyard. “SHOOTERS SHOOT,” one of his Instagram captions reads.

Roche doesn’t just want to win Western States and set a course record; he also wants to do it in the way he wants to, with his own mix of self-experimentation and science. It’s a recipe that calls for some David Roche obsessions: carbs, bicarbs, hill sprints, cycling, heat suits, and more. Roche trains outside of Boulder in this MacGyver-style, high-octane, pedal-to-the-metal way, using a mix of running and cycling, along with variations of speed work, intervals, and high-intensity carb consumption. It’s a recipe borne from over a decade spent coaching his SWAP (Some Work, All Play) athletes alongside his wife. That endeavor, which began in 2014, has grown into an elite program, with both David and Megan coaching A-list athletes such as Claire Gallagher, Grayson Murphy, Allie Ostrander, and more.

Roche’s running and coaching are informed by studying, reading, and experimenting with the results of studies from various endurance-focused laboratories and sports. Roche calls the professional cycling peloton “the greatest uncontrolled experiment in human physiology,” but Roche himself might be the real owner of that title. One of his athletes, Ryan Sullivan, who placed not far behind Roche at Leadville and just recently finished fifth at the Chuckanut 50k, labeled Roche a genius. “The amount of information he can take in, interpret, and act upon is still remarkable to me, no matter how accustomed to it I get,” said Sullivan. “He’ll remember stuff like a taper method we tried like 11 races ago and why it may not apply to an upcoming one.”

For Roche, a normal week of training will contain a few easy long runs of 15 to 16 miles, sometimes ending with hill sprints or an inclined treadmill run. It will also contain one to two long bike rides, either outside or on Zwift, a virtual reality cycling world connected to an indoor bike setup, where each cyclist’s data, including cadence, heart rate, and power, controls an in-game virtual cyclist. There are various courses and worlds, and many indoor trainers can, through resistance changes, mimic the hills and mountains that exist in these worlds. Roche prefers going up and down Zwift’s famed Alpe de Zwift, modeled after the infamous Alpe d’Huez, with its 21 hairpin turns and its 3,670 feet of elevation gain.

And then there will be big days: 20 miles at sub-6 minute pace, mile repeats at 4:30 pace. All in all, Roche’s running mileage hovers between 55 and 80 miles per week, considerably less than many competitive ultrarunners, who, by Roche’s estimates, are running at least 100 miles a week, with some peaking closer to 120 or higher.

But Roche’s training isn’t just about running. Each of Roche’s workouts also contains another workout, a workout of the gut. When I met him one day for an easy run that followed 20 miles at a pace a shade under six minutes, I first watched him guzzle about 40 ounces of fluid in under two minutes. Roche was training his stomach to handle the rapid intake of fluids and carbohydrates in order to help lessen the kinds of setbacks that might happen mid-race if he were to attempt to fuel at the rate he aims to. In a race, Roche targets between 120 and 150 grams of carbs per hour. To put that into perspective, consider that each packet of Maurten’s bestselling GEL 100 contains 25 grams of carbs. Most recreational runners might consume one or two packets of this gel per hour. Roche would consume up to six. Per hour. For many hours.

This aspect of Roche’s training is one of the pillars of his success. Roche is adamant that we are living in a carb revolution:

For Roche. “[This approach to fueling] is the most emphatic performance revolution we will ever see in all of endurance sports,” he said. “Any record that has lasted more than three years is going down.” As I have been writing this piece, records have fallen left and right. Grant Fisher broke the indoor 5,000-meter record not long after breaking the 3,000-meter record. Seth Ruhling and Riley Brady broke course records at the prestigious Black Canyon 100K. The first day I spoke on the phone with Roche, the world record for the mile had just been broken for the second time in one week.

The science on carbs, though, is still out. A 2013 study on the relationship between carbs and endurance made the case that carbs are better at the outset of a workout, but that continued higher doses may hurt performance. For Outside, Alex Hutchinson summed up this data as follows: “The sweet spot where performance is optimized, in this data, is 78 grams of carbohydrate per hour, consistent with the idea that 60 to 90 grams is the right range.” Hutchinson followed that up with context about a 2018 study that showed some evidence that 90 grams of carbs per hour is the best option for endurance athletes.

If either of these studies is the case, then Roche is essentially doubling that sweet spot of performance when he is racing, pushing his carb intake to the far reaches, that place beyond scientific study. And he’s not just doing this for one hour. He’s doing it for 14. The best comparison for this is not found in running; it’s actually found in cycling, where Roche draws a great deal of his inspiration. As is becoming clear, the carbohydrate revolution that Roche is championing has become commonplace in the professional peloton. For Velo, Jim Cotton writes, “From the front to the back of the peloton, riders are now crushing 100 to 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour. That’s almost twice what they might have managed a decade ago. It’s the carb-equivalent of a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola every 20 minutes, or more than two cups of cooked white rice per hour.”

And so, if you, reading this, think you are fueling enough for your workouts, David Roche would tell you that you are probably not. Roche fuels with what I can only rightly call a kind of perverse insanity. When I watched him guzzle almost 48 ounces of high-carb drink mix immediately after a 20-mile run, I could feel my own stomach blowing up. I was standing there in his kitchen, watching a shirtless man with taped nipples chug powdered drink mix the way I once saw college friends drink from a keg of beer. There was a part of me that felt almost scared. I think I trembled a little bit. I also think I saw god. As I jogged a few miles with him afterward, I thought about all of that drink mix sloshing around in his gut, his stomach bouncing with each step. He told me it was the secret, that the gains will be massive for anyone who buys into what’s happening now with carbs and fueling, as brands like Maurten and Precision Fuel churn out gels loaded with 30, 60, and 90 grams of carbs.

And then, as if to prove it, he absolutely dusted me on a series of hill sprints. I had run four miles prior to those sprints. He had run 24.

There is an unspoken third aspect of training that takes root as you spend time with Roche, and that has something to do with the mind. For someone so obsessed with the granular details of carbohydrates and fueling, Roche runs with an easy, excitable freedom. I got the sense, while chasing after Roche, that I was with someone who had taken the training wheels off of his life. He was going to careen down the mountainside, body trembling, maybe afraid, but also shouting with joy.

“A lot of my development over time,” he told me, “has been deprogramming.” Deprogramming his own negative attitude about himself. Deprogramming his own conceptions about the body. Deprogramming his own idea about how to show up in the world. This humility has created an interesting, to say the least, person. Someone who exudes seemingly boundless joy even after guzzling nearly a gallon of liquid. Someone who throws down the gauntlet for one of the most prestigious ultramarathons in the world while also, at the same time, acknowledging that, if there’s snow on that first mountain climb at Western States, he might be a little bit fucked. How do you get that kind of person? I don’t know. Roche told me that his journey was never going to be a linear path. And he’s certainly not a linear man.

Roche’s athletic career began with a sport diametrically opposed to running: football. Indeed, at a 2018 induction ceremony to the Queen Anne’s County High School Sports Hall of Fame, Roche joked, “I kind of look like an equipment manager now.” A running back and defensive back on Maryland’s eastern shore, Roche journeyed to New York City to play at Columbia University. He left the sport behind after his freshman year and started to run.

In his since-archived blog about running, Roche wrote about New York City, where life felt constricting, even choking, the kind of life that makes someone ask the question why nearly every day. Trail running soon became the place to be most fully himself, and he escaped the constraints of the city for the sanctuary of trees. He placed second at the Wissahickon Trail Classic in 2009, and it was all about the trails from there. Of that race, Roche told me he remembers, for the first time, thinking it was fun. “Whereas every other harder run I’d ever done on roads, I probably wasn’t in shape enough to enjoy it. I’d just be like, ‘This is terrible,’ and then I’d get stomach pains after,” he said. “When I got on trails, something about my physiology embraced it and liked it.”

After New York, the hills and rocks and roots of North Carolina, where he went to study law after graduating from Columbia University, soon became his best friends. And it was there, in North Carolina, that he met Megan, his future wife and biggest supporter. He proposed to her with a Ring Pop.

“Sports are the coolest places to try out different multitudes,” Roche said.

In those early years, Roche became someone who could be simultaneously ambitious and joyful. He got good at running and pretty good at being himself. His blog posts from those early years of trail running reveal a side of David Roche not all too different from the David Roche of today. He is sharp and witty and playful, his race reports filled with meandering asides about anything from Achilles tendons to digestive tracts to environmental law. There’s a sense of burgeoning joy at the heart of someone who is reveling in the fact of being good, and maybe even really good, at something. And Roche was good. He won the United States Track & Field Association’s (USATF) 10K Trail Championships in 2012, held at the Continental Divide Trail Race, along with numerous other trail races and sub-ultras. In 2014, he was named USATF’s trail runner of the year. All the while, he was writing witticisms and meditations and race reports. He was winning and having fun.

This kind of multitudinous aspect of Roche’s personality is perhaps part of the reason why he has become a polarizing figure in the niche world of ultrarunning. There are Reddit threads and Letsrun forums populated with users who criticize his training methods, his claims, his coaching style, and more. There are also many devoted fans. But it does seem that many people take issue with his attitude—a relentlessly upbeat positivity that can, at times, be so relentless that one can’t help but question if it is authentic.

When viewed from a distance, Roche’s persona seems to be this entirely shining, positive, polished thing, but up close, Roche is quick to admit his propensity toward wrongness and failure. He told me how comfortable he has become with the idea of failure and how often he has had the thought that he’s not good enough. “Throughout my journey,” he said, “There’s been a constant narrative in my own head that, ‘You’re not the guy.’”

Now 36 years old, over a decade after those early trail races, Roche has decided that he can be not just the guy but also someone who models what it looks like to reach for the stars while knowing full well how far away those stars are. “I’m just trying to use my short time with this window to hopefully model for people that the meek humility I think a lot of people want to see in their athletes is just fear masquerading as virtue,” he told me. “And I’d much rather be the virtue of play and joy—and the self-acceptance that comes with that—because at the end of the day, the chance that I fail at these big goals that I’m saying out loud is probably 99.5 percent.”

Roche’s belief in himself and in others comes with constant reminders. As Roche talked to me, I noticed a wall-hanging above his dining room table that read “You Are Enough.” Scotch-taped to his bathroom mirror is a handwritten sign that reads, simply, “BELIEVE.” On a run along the Boulder Reservoir, I listened to him offer his trademark encouragement—“You’re awesome”—to a handful of runners, and even someone who seemed to be repairing a telephone pole.

These moments of encouragement are reinforced and elevated by Megan. “I am here to demonstrate what love mixed with being a tough motherfucker looks like,” said Roche. “And, in Megan, I see the toughest person in the world.” Their love is public and loud; it is visible and enormous. While talking with David post-run, I watched Megan walk in and immediately pepper David with questions about his workout. They talked as if I wasn’t in the room. It was like watching people speak with exclamation marks hovering above their heads. Her excitement for his run. His excitement for the workout she was about to do. Excitement is a kind of labor, and what we work on is also what we love. Their love exudes the intentionality of a training plan. It is a daily process.

Their children are part of that love, too. Roche’s second son, Ollie, is named after the poet Mary Oliver. “Tell me,” Mary Oliver writes, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It’s a question that is most likely tattooed on the inside of David Roche’s skull. And it’s a question, too, that holds life’s fragility at its heart, which Roche now knows a lot about.

There’s another, lesser-known Oliver poem, “The Journey,” which perhaps contains Roche’s answer to Oliver’s own question about life. In it, Oliver writes:

When David Roche woke up from that headlong collision into a fence, he became “determined to save / the only life” he could save. And saving meant reclaiming the power of his story, which also meant reclaiming the all-ness of his story, how it contains both joy and ambition, success and failure. That accident seemed to be the catalyst for the current journey of his life, this journey of striding more deeply into the world and his vision of his place in it.

In speaking and running with Roche, I couldn’t help but notice that he is someone who is fully starting to embrace who he is, to embrace that new voice he recognizes as his own, which is a voice of complicated, multitudinous paradox. He throws out loving encouragement at the same time as he fosters a deep, competitive sense of ambition. He happily and publicly declares a wild goal at the same time as he is the first to admit the farfetched nature of it. He is vulnerable at the same time as he is, in some ways, brazen and full of it. On his living room carpet, I watched him create, with his own body, a protective cocoon for his youngest child while allowing his oldest child to roll a monster truck off his back and into the air.

Some of us harbor a devil on our shoulder or a brutally negative inner voice that tells us we are not enough. But for Roche, that negativity has been transformed. “There’s always a wink in the background of everything that happens,” he told me. He was talking about Kurt Vonnegut, one of his favorite authors, someone who believed in kindness and darkness at once. “It is a tragedy,” Vonnegut wrote, “That human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate.” Vonnegut begged readers to choose kindness, to keep winking through the darkness.

This wink is the acknowledgment that there is a bit of mischief and mystery in every story, like a child in the backseat of a car, asking why or are we there yet or did you see that, over and over again. That child, the one calling shots in the backyard ballgame, dancing in their underwear, wondering out loud, is a child that lives in all of us until we stop listening to them, or stop hearing them.

Last year, David Roche started listening to that child again. And he hasn’t stopped. “Fuck it,” that child said, “go for it.” And so he did. Choosing life after near-death. Choosing ambition after what he told me was a kind of “false humility.” Choosing confidence after all his insecurity. In her canonical poem, “Wild Geese,” Mary Oliver writes, “You do not have to be good.” Roche would say something similar. That you don’t have to be good. But that it’s really fun to try. And that it’s alright, and maybe even a little entertaining, if you fail.

When he was talking to me about entropy and impermanence and death, Roche told me, “The only thing that can help other people out is to inject energy into the system. And so, you know, in the face of the darkness, you’re just trying to bring as much light as possible even though I’m feeling the darkness in the same way that I think most people are, at least if they think about it deeply enough. And so for me, love is just being, like, we get one shot at life.”

Darkness and light. Love and sorrow. These paradoxes live in the heart of each of us and they live, too, in the heart of David Roche. They live in the landscape of our world, in mountains and valleys, in the snow at the top of Western States’ highest climb, and in the rugged, desert-dirt heat at the race’s lowest point. David Roche is a topographical map of a person. Peaks and valleys. All at once. To encounter him, then, is to encounter someone who so fully embraces a mindset of both humility (“I don’t know”) and ambition (“but fuck it, I’ll try”) that one cannot help but be drawn in. He is the man in the arena, and whether we like it or not, we have access to it, to the Strava files, the uphill treadmill runs, the hill sprints, the intervals, and the encouragement along the way. I don’t know what will happen at Western States this June in Auburn, California. David Roche is the first person who will tell you he might win. He is also the first person to tell you he might not. Somehow, he is both of those people at once.

David Roche Is Betting Big on Carbs, Grit, and Love

Roche fuels with what I can only rightly call a kind of perverse insanity.

“I’d much rather be the virtue of play and joy—and the self-acceptance that comes with that—because at the end of the day, the chance that I fail at these big goals that I’m saying out loud is probably 99.5 percent.”