Do you use Caffeine in Cycling or Triathlon? Wondering what it actually does or how much/when to take it? Read on.Disclaimer here, I am not saying Caffeine is for everyone or you “should” take it etc, this is for the people who are taking it and want to know more. If you feel you need medical advice first please go and seek that.Firstly, what is it and why? Lets make it really simple, Caffeine is a stimulant, plain and simple. However, it is a legal one that has some advantages to the endurance world and performance.
One recent study out of the UK has said that Caffeine can increase our performance by up to 2.9%, if you think of that over the course of an Ironman for example, or something like “Round Taupo” that is significant. The other main effect for us in the Endurance world is it does a very good job of masking the effects of fatigue and strain/load we are under. So the benefits of it could be more than the 2.9%, even if only as a placebo effect. There are however a few things that we need to get right when it comes to taking Caffeine, the main 2 are how much to take and when to take it.
Lets first look at when to take it, basically we want to take on a caffeine “load” prior to the even, and ideally more than 60 mins before the start. Ideally 60-90 mins before as a guide. Caffeine has a “half life” of 2 hours, meaning the gains from it will start reducing and by the 2 hr mark it will be at 50% of its effectiveness.
For event day that would look something like a double Espresso or strong coffee. With the half life in mind you can see how the mistake most people make is taking a Caff gel in the last hour of the event to get them home, the carbs in the gel may have an effect but the caffeine wont come into play until well after you have finished. Could be helpful for the afterparty!
So no we have started some Caffeine load with the coffee a couple hours before we also need to think about a top up prior to race start. The best way to do this is in the form of a Gel with Caffeine in it. This means you will get a top up of all the right carbs you need, plus also getting the Caff top up we need to keep the numbers up.Something like a Maurten Gel will give you 100mg of Caffeine, as well as carbs and energy.Now we have started the event, how much do you need from there? As a rule, you should be looking towards 3-6mg of Caffeine per KG of body weight for the duration of the event. Now we need to be clear here, this is not suggesting we take that in one dose, not even close. And again, your numbers may be different, so you have to try this out. Some people may need the lower end, some the higher end.
For an 80kg person over a 12hr Ironman for example that is between 240 and 480mg over the course of the event.Now you have to work out when to take it and how. There are a number of ways. Products like Coke and Redbull have Caffeine in them and are normally on course. The danger of that is you are only guessing how much you get in your mouth. And also, you run the risk of a massive sugar spike if you take it too early.Luckily we now have products that have Caffeine in them in the forms of Gels and Drinks, so we can alternate our gels with Caff and Non-Caff and our drinks with Caff and non-caff.So you can start to build your nutrition plan around this, I’ll list a template we have just done for a my own nutrition plan for an upcoming hr5 Mountain Bike race in the next few days on our FB page.
Once you have your template the best thing to do is go and try it out in your key sessions, don’t leave it till race day to find out if it works or not. You will need to try different does, with the products you use and your lifestyle. For example, if you are a 3-4 double Espresso Flat whites a day kind of person then your needs will be way different that some one who vary rarely drinks coffee. If that person tried your dose they would likely end up with major gut issues (but the could be going very fast though…)We have kept the discount code going on our partner company for people to get their hands on nutrition to try out from Maurten, Head on over to www.coffeeandwatts.co.nz and use the code EPNZ to get 15% off.Reach out if you have questions or need any more help. We will answer what we can or put you in touch with the right people who can.
There are also a ton of good references out there on the web, we are just trying to translate that data for you to help!Good luck, train hard.
