Have you got your nutrition dialed yet for your upcoming race? Or are you still working on it or worst yet, just going to wing it? Lets look at how to do it in simple form.
Nutrition is without doubt one of the most important things to get right on race day, especially for a half or full Ironman. It certainly is equally important for any kind of endurance event, from Running to Cycling. Most people will spend hours googling the best bike or upgrade they can make, or drop over $300 on some super carbon soled shoes to look to go faster. Yet, if you don’t get your nutrition right on the day of Ironman for example you will end up walking the marathon in those Carbon shoes ! I’m not in anyway saying there is now place or need to chase gains on the bike and equipment, there absolutely is, but imagine the possibilities of unleashing your fitness and potential if you nail your nutrition strategy as well!
Now there is some real easy ways to do this and I will share what we have learnt over the decades of basically self-experimentation and also studying the thousands of documents and data fields out there. Firstly, we will look at the Carb fueled athlete, this is most of us, there are some out there running the “Fat adapted “ athlete strategy and there is a place for that, but overall most of us will take on carbs to fuel our event and training.
Why do we need to eat Carbohydrates? Quite simply, we store enough Glycogen in the muscles to fuel us for around 90mins, after that we need to ad more fuel to the machine as a general rule. That’s not to say you don’t need fuel for any workouts or race under 90mins because you absolutely do, but lets for this example look at 70.3 or full Ironman in easy to understand terms.
The days of being able to do events like this successfully on water and the odd banana are not just over, in fact they never existed in the first place! Yes, some people had amazing results on that, but times have changed. As endurance athletes for some reason people talk about “Bonking” or “blowing up” as a badge of honour, why? For me, I’m spending over 12 months preparing for Ironman, thousands on gear and training, selfishly time away from loved ones and events. The last thing I want to do is “blow up” because I did not learn how to fuel. I expect it to hurt and I expect to suffer, but I can control a good part of that with training and nutrition.
We need Carbs to keep our engine running, and we need electrolytes and minerals to keep our system hydrated and functioning. We need to dive deeper into that to work out exactly how much we need to have per hour every hour. And on top of that we need to know what works for us in the Swim, on the Bike and on the Run, and we need to have practiced this a lot in training. Products have changed in the most part for the better in recent years, in the old days we would just take a horrible squeezy product that would mostly end up on your hand before it even got to your mouth. If you were on to it you might take a couple of those over a 4hr event with some water.
Now we are almost bombarded with good quality nutritional products that not only taste good they actually work. Thinks like Gels and Electrolyte drink mixes have been the staple for years, but lately products like Maurten have come along and changed the game, combining both Carbs and Electrolytes in your drink bottle, meaning we can just about fuel ourselves from our dink mixes, and then add a gel or salt tab to top up. Be careful when choosing the right one here though, as there are some that very good at their marketing as a “one does it all” product when it simply doesn’t. One example of this if I followed their strategy would leave me over 30 grams of Carbs less than what I need per hour, times that by a 9-10-11 hour Ironman and that is a recipe for disaster.
This is not a one size fits all question, there are some fantastic resources available. We have access to some and are more than happy to help steer you in the right direction so please reach out. Most agree now that we need and our stomachs can handle around 70-90 grams of Carbs per hour. This does vary on the event, and the level of intensity you are doing during that event. Someone like Braden Currie racing a 70.3 in less than 4 hours will be racing at Threshold and there needs to fuel differently than an age grouper, going Aerobically at and Ironman. On top of that we need as a main staple some sodium. Exactly how much sodium you need depends on a number of factors, like heat and sweat rate, level of intensity as well. I’m still yet to read something that convinces me we need a certain number of milligrams of sodium, most agree we need some, and some need more. Most people by now will be re-reading that number of 70-90 grams and I don’t blame you, it’s a lot. But once you have your number dialed in you will feel full of energy and simply get the best out of your self and the hard work you have done come race day. How do we get that amount of Carbs? This is the fun part, now this is where bananas and muesli bars simply don’t cut it. Lets look at someone wanting to complete a full ironman as a working example. And lets say this person is aiming for 9-10 hours, and needs around 90 grams of carbs per hour. The average banana for example has around 20-25 grams of carbs. So this athlete would need 3-4 per hour, first problem, where do we put them? Second problem, could you eat that many every hour for 4-6 hours? No way, so lets move past that, they are a great food but there’s a better way.
There’s currently 2 good options that we would recommend currently, lets have look at the first option.
This has been many peoples “go-to” method for endurance training and racing for years including my own. To break it down using some very good products, GU for the gels and SIS for the drink mix.Each GU has 23grams of Carbs per serving, and the SIS drink mix has 36grams of carbs per recommended serving.That recommended drink serving would be 2 scoops in a 750ml bottle, and to be honest most people would have stomach issues with that, so we will make that one scoop as its more realistic, that is 18 grams of carbs.So that athlete would need to consume one full 750ml bottle and 3 GU gels per hour. That would give the required amount of Carbs which is sourced from good blend of Fructose and Sucrose as well. And you would be well hydrated.Pro’s and Con’s of Option 1? This may well work fine for you, it is excellent in quality and you will be well topped up.The down side could be your stomach. You would need to try this out plenty of times in training to make sure you can handle this. Remembering this is per hour every hour excluding the swim (although you would take one pre-swim start) so this could be anywhere from 25-30 gels.That is a lot, most would not cope with that, which runs the risk then of Gastro issues like bloating, or having to use the loo a lot. Then we go into self preservation mode and stop taking more fuel on or just grabbing what we can get our hands on and we are then not in control of our race.Dont get me wrong, I absolutely love GU and will always use then for events, in particular shorter events like bike racing or running.
One of the first obvious advantages to using Maurten is they are the event gel for Ironman so you will be using what they have on the course. They also have Gatorade on the course for the drink mix, I’ll save that for another time.Lets look at that same athlete needing 90 grams of carbs per hour. They have a product called drink mix 160 and drink mix 320.Drink mix 320 mixes with 500ml of water in a bottle and provides 79 grams of carbohydrates! You can already see why this is a game changer. SO for a 4-6 hr bike leg this athlete would just need to have a bottle an hour and grab 1-2 gels on course to top up the levels. They would then be well fuelled, with very little to know Gastro stress.Heading into the run leg you could then continue on with the same, or now switch to the on Course Maurten Gels and water and keep the numbers up.
Almost all gels including both Maurten and GU have a Caffeine option, Maurten even has a Caff option in the 320 mix.Why Caffeine, Caffeine has long been viewed as performance enhancing, yet legal. That has some truth to it. What is does for certain though is mask exercise induced effort. SO for racing and hard sessions it can help.The thing to remember is Caffeine takes at least 15 mins to start kicking in and up to 50 mins to have a full effect. So if you wanting to get the effects of it make sure you take it at the right time. An easy way to do this is do alternate, one Caff one no Caff.In summary, this first thing you need to do is know your personal numbers, We can help with that. Then you need to go and practise, tweak, try and change until you get what works for you in every aspect.
We could go for hours here on each point and we will expand as we go but this is a great start. Also, the disclaimer here is I am not a doctor or your doctor. So just because I suggested something here like caffeine doesn’t mean its right for you.We are here to help if you need it, coaching and training is much more than just posting a workout, it should encompass everything.
