(sighs)
- Morning Trainiacs,
Lionel Sanders
did
not
win this weekend,
very much did not win, and we're gonna talk about that.
(energetic music)
Coming into full Ironman Mont-Tremblant,
Lionel Sanders was the odds-on favorite.
It was basically, I think, kind of understood
that Lionel was going to win this.
However, not only did he not win,
but he finished 13 and a half minutes
back from the eventual winner Cody Beals,
who was making his full Ironman debut.
Now, that's not to say
that Cody Beals didn't have a good race.
He actually set a new bike
and full course record going 8:10:36.
He had an amazing day.
Congratulations to Cody Beals,
but Lionel has been showing
the amazing power run and swim numbers
that he's been putting out on his YouTube channel,
and they are like all time best numbers that he's ever done.
Then he goes to Ironman Mont-Tremblant,
basically walks a ton of the marathon,
had to
go about 100 Watts
down from where he normally is in the bike.
It was about as close to a disaster as you can get,
relatively speaking, because Lionel did still finish second.
And while I don't believe Kona was a failure,
I think Lionel
had a ton of motivation
from Kona to be the best athlete that he could possibly be
and start looking at areas that he could
potentially end up improving on,
but then he went to half Ironman Oceanside,
where Jon Frod laid the smack down on him,
and at that point, I think Lionel was committed
to making as many changes as he could.
He's always working on the swim,
but he's really started committing
to the Tower 26 swim program.
The bike, he's got a new bike position.
On the run, he's talked about being a lot more efficient,
focusing on having his chest forward
and his head nice and upright,
and then, a couple of the bigger things are:
he's teased on Instagram how he's been spending time
at the Gatorade Endurance Lab working with them
on dialing in his race day nutrition.
But the biggest change, the biggest change,
is I don't think he's outright come and said it,
but he switched to a vegan or vegetarian diet and lost,
I've heard rumors, as much as going
from high 160's down to low 150's.
Let's analyze point for point
where I think Lionel went wrong,
with the big caveat that I love ya, and Lionel,
I don't think any less of you as an athlete.
I think these are lessons that are going
to make you a better athlete.
Number one, the swim.
He came out only five minutes down
and it was basically the worst conditions possible
for a non
backgrounded swimmer.
It was fresh water.
It was a non-wetsuit swim.
These are conditions that lead
to people's body position sinking,
and for Lionel to be only 5 minutes down
in this kind of condition, I think,
actually shows that he had a great swim.
The bike, this is where things tended to fall apart,
and he says that in the first chunk of the bike,
he held his power of target, 300 Watts,
but in the last hour of the bike leg,
he dropped all the way down to 220 Watts,
which he can basically do single-leg pedaling at home.
Now, I think that with a new fit and a new position,
you can have a little bit of a deterioration of comfort
and power until you adjust to it,
but we're talking one to three or 4%,
not
20
to 30%.
I think that that shows that there's something else
that's more critical leading into the race
that has contributed to that.
We're gonna get to that.
The run, pure disaster.
He was ready to give up entirely on the run
and basically admitted that in the back half of the run,
in order to not do damage to his body
in preparation for Kona,
that he was gonna have to basically
mail in the back half of the marathon,
and while he probably coulda gutted it out,
and been closer to somewhere
in that 7 to ten minutes behind Cody Beals range,
he didn't wanna suffer so much
to the detriment of his Kona race.
I think that's smart.
But let's go back,
and I think, that what ended up causing this
that he talks about is what he did in the weeks
and particularly, the two days
leading up to Ironman Mont-Tremblant.
What Lionel says is that switching
to that more vegetarian, vegan diet has allowed him
to lose about 10 pounds in the course of 12 weeks.
That's actually fairly healthy weight loss.
Anywhere around a pound a week is very sustainable.
It's very gradual and very healthy.
I think where
it goes
wrong
is a couple of instances, in my experience.
Number One, Lionel said that two days
out from the race, he weighed himself.
He stepped on the scale and he saw 160 pounds,
and he went, "Oh, that's too heavy."
I guess what was happening is he was starting to load up,
replenish his glycogen stores
by eating a little bit more carbs,
little bit more fluids,
and he all of a sudden saw a heavier number on the scale
when he was more used to 155, and he freaked out,
and he said that he started
reducing his caloric intake, specifically with carbs.
Meanwhile, you've got athlete's like Sam Long,
who's crushing a pint of ice cream,
and you look at pro after pro after pro on social media
that in the last two days before a big race,
they're saying so long diet, it's time to carb load.
And in my experience, the last two days,
your weight really doesn't matter.
You didn't lose it all in the matter of two days,
so you're not gonna gain it all in the matter of two days.
You might retain a little bit of water.
Your muscles might be a little bit fuller
because they're retaining more glycogen.
You might have a little bit of extra food
in your digestive tract,
but it's not like you've literally made yourself heavier,
and as Lionel says, he thinks he developed
a little bit of an eating disorder
being so obsessed with being lean and light,
that he let himself come into that race flat.
Also, he didn't talk about this at all,
but as I've mentioned, I eat a lot of vegan meals.
I'm not a vegan.
I would say 90 to 95% of my meals are plant-based.
I find that as I start training more,
if I only eat plant-based, I get very, very tired.
There are just a lot of nutrients
that animal products,
things like organic eggs, grass-fed beef, stuff like that,
that you literally can't get from plants,
or if you can get them, it's hard to source,
and it's not very bio-available,
so you've gotta eat so much of it,
that it's actually hard to get
as many nutrients as you possibly can.
Because Lionel has only been doing this for about 12 weeks,
I think there's gonna be a little bit of a learning curve
that he's gotta go through to figure out
how to make it healthy, sustainable,
and result in good performance.
That's a bigger balancing act than just being light.
- Yeah, nothing big change needs to happen,
other than I think I just need (laughs)
to eat more, to be honest with ya.
I'm gettin' too lean and I'm doing it the wrong way too.
- And then just touching on the Gatorade Endurance work
that he's been doing, and what was available on the course,
he said that Gatorade Endurance
wasn't available on the course, just typical Gatorade was.
Would that have made a massive difference?
I don't think it would make the difference
that resulted in this performance.
I think it's something bigger than that,
and that's more of his overall nutrition.
Now, do I think that he is a lesser athlete for any of this?
No, I think if you look at his training logs,
if you look at the videos that he's done,
if you look at the video that he did after the race,
he talks about this being a lesson
that he needed to learn coming into Kona.
And if you look at the weeks and weeks of training
that he's done leading into this
in more controlled conditions,
I don't think that this race is indicative
of the level of fitness
that he's going to be bringing in to Kona,
and he's still one of my favorites to win that event.
He just had a tough day and had some hard lessons to learn.
With all that said,
sorry you had to go through that, Lionel.
And if you aren't yet subscribed,
and you'd like more content about Lionel Sanders,
we have an entire playlist for you over here,
and make sure that you're subscribed
because we're going to be at Kona covering a lot of that,
and we'll see how Lionel does.
And if you are subscribed,
you are like an organic, delicious
omelet.
It's just like, ah man, that's good.
No, no, no, no, a poached egg sandwich.
Oh, yeah, that's really good,
with a little bit of avocado on top (claps)
Tell me about it. Ho.