This article was produced in association with MNSTRY
There’s a stillness in the air when you step into the wilderness, a quietness that envelops you completely, where the only sound is the rhythm of your breath and the crunch of the earth beneath your feet. It’s the kind of place Christian Meier has always been drawn to – the untamed mountains, the vast forests, the endless stretches of land that offer not only solitude but, for Meier, challenge.
Growing up on a farm in rural Canada, he now lives in Girona, Spain, where Meier has plenty of stunning landscapes to explore from the Pyrenees to the 580km-long coast of Catalonia, providing a break from his other endeavours that keep him busy. “Daily life can be very bustling and high energy,” Meier said. “When you are out in nature, there’s only one natural speed.”
He has co-founded several businesses, including Chance Running, Overland Running Provisions, La Fabrica and Espresso Mafia, while also being a Salomon Running athlete and competitive ultra-runner. But this hardworking nature has been instilled in him since a very young age when he was growing up in rural Canada. Both his parents were German immigrants who went to Canada in the seventies – they were farmers and had a restaurant and butchers with a farm-to-table concept. There was little time for him and his family to enjoy sports beyond what Meier did at school, work was the focus.
“My family didn’t really do sports,” he said. “We just focused on work. We worked a lot. I think, however, this is where I developed good endurance at a young age and good strength from working on the farm.”
What they did enjoy, though, was the vast land, half of which was forested. “I used to just love being in the forest, even as young people, we would spend time in the forest, cutting firewood or just walking around. I remember days going with my father and just walking to the forest to look at your land and see how you can maintain it, which trees would need to be cut down because they were starting to get dry, and you would spend a lot of time appreciating the quietness and the simplicity of nature and what it provides us as people,” he added.
Meier speaks of the energy he gets from being out in nature, being drawn, in particular, to the mountains. He appreciates them for their wildness and ability to make you feel so small, bringing perspective to your life that you can only feel when standing amongst the rugged peaks of towering mountains. As a former pro cyclist, who raced from 2005 to 2016, competing in the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a España, Meier has plenty of experience being in the high mountains and was inspired to become a professional from first reading a mountain bike magazine to then seeing the helicopter shots of the dramatic climbs when watching the Tour. “I thought that was so unique in that nature challenges you, but you are also surrounded by this beauty, this peacefulness,” Meier said.
However, after retiring from the pro peloton, Meier found a love for trail running as it allowed him to get that bit closer to nature. “Cycling is a beautiful sport, it takes you to a lot of cool places, but one thing that really drew me to running from riding was that with running, the access on foot allowed you to go that bit further, allowed you to go deeper, beyond the road, beyond the gravel, beyond the path. You could reach the peaks of the summits and take one step further into the wilderness. That’s where trail running felt very organic and the next step into exploring the outdoors,” he added.
Meier has gone on to achieve some impressive feats as an endurance runner, including winning the prestigious Sur les Traces des Ducs de Savoie (TDS) race. The event is 148 kilometres long and has an elevation gain of over 9,300 metres, with a maximum time of 44 hours and 10 minutes to complete the course. Meier completed it in 19 hours and 36 minutes in 2023.
After the high of such an enormous feat, the Canadian admitted to suffering a deep low but said: “You realise that you can’t have one without the other, and I have learnt that it’s about developing that mindset and trying to manage that.” While it took him some time to mentally get back into the swing of things following TDS, Meier set some big goals for 2024, including UTMB. He really dialled in his training as well as his nutrition, an element of his performance throughout both his cycling and running career he found more challenging – not just because of the period he was a pro cyclist but also because of stomach issues.
“When I was a cyclist, we were still at 60 grams of carbs an hour for a race, and we were only taking gels in the last hour. Most of the time you were eating real food, little sandwiches or different things like that. You look back and think if I had had the access to the same information and nutrition that we have now, what would it have looked like? Everything about that era was essentially governed by nutrition. We didn’t race as fast, we didn’t attack as far out, we didn’t know that nutrition was limiting the effort you can provide in a race,” he reflected.
However, for his UTMB race, it was a different story. Meier was consuming an astounding 120g of carbs an hour for nearly 20 hours, adding that in training, he can sometimes take on up to 150g of carbs. “I always struggled a lot with gels and drink mixes. As a rider, I would only drink water. I wouldn’t drink any sort of carb drink back then because I would always get stomach problems,” he said. “Even when I started running, I was eating mostly solid food, gummies and different things, but only drinking water. It wasn’t until I discovered MNSTRY and started testing the projects that it was the first time I was able to build up to that 120g barrier, even higher. It’s been a real game changer in terms of not just performance but day-to-day training and recovery – all those things you need to perform. I feel now is only possible because of the nutrition.”
MNSTRY is a high-performance fuelling brand with a focus on making all its products as natural as possible, avoiding the use of additives or artificial sweeteners. The German brand’s product developer, Robert Gorgos, former Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe nutritionist, wanted to help create products that could fuel athletes of all levels across all sports, containing only ingredients that were natural and therefore not harming an athlete’s natural gut microbiome diversity – something Gorgos highlighted as a vital part of one’s performance, but also mood, sleep and digestion.
Instead of nutrition products that taste very sour or extremely sweet, Gorgos stated that MNSTRY’s products taste like what’s in them – “Mango tastes like mango and coconut tastes like coconut,” he said. “It might take some getting used to at first, but it’s about bringing the natural flavours of the ingredients into the products without overwhelming additives.”
Meier reaffirmed this, adding: “It’s high-performing products that are as natural as they can be, without being, essentially, a bar made of dates and nuts. I think a lot of those flavouring agents tend to be what can have a factor in an upset stomach, especially when you are pushing to high quantities. It’s one thing taking a 30g gel every hour, let alone taking three or four of them an hour.”
MNSTRY’s mango gels are a firm favourite for Meier, recalling a time when he took three mango gels in 20 minutes when he was nearing a bonk during a race and still notes that his stomach was fine. He also mentioned POWER CARB, noting that he once couldn't even stomach a carb drink mix and now relies heavily on these to get him through such tough races.
“It’s about controlling as many variables as possible. In running, we always have to deal with so much, especially ultras because it is such a long distance, so many things can happen,” he said. “The number of people that don’t finish an ultra is because of nutrition problems. If you can have confidence in that, it is one less thing you have to worry about in a race.”
During UTMB in 2024, Meier had a small fall, which led to some big consequences: a fractured patella. He has only just got back to racing, but even his first race back in 2025 didn’t go to plan. Pro cycling might have taught him the art of performing at an elite level, but trail running has taught him patience. “Cycling is a sport where you have a lot of chances. If you have a bit of an off day, you can sit in the bunch and get through, it’s not really that big of a deal. Tomorrow, you race again,” Meier said. “But with sports such as running, and even triathlon and Ironmans, you probably only race a few times a year, and if those don’t go well, you can easily have a year where you don’t have any good races or you have setbacks with injuries.
“I am not sure failure is the right word, but you, potentially things not going as you envisioned, and how you deal with those emotions and keeping yourself in that place to get out there and go again knowing you still have a few months potentially to go again.”
But Meier has started to accept the highs and lows of the sport. Like the seasons in nature, “a tree first loses its leaves in the winter before growing new ones in the spring”, he explained, adding that he knows one day in the summer, he’ll reach those summits again.
To find out more about how Christian Meier fuels his running, visit the MNSTRY website.
