- Morning, Trainiacs.
It has been a while since I've updated you
on what I've been eating, with regards to the low carb
triathlon training protocol that I've been going through
leading into Challenge Roth.
So what I'm gonna do today is I'm going to show you
my training week, in relation to the nutrition
that I take that's different through each training day,
and give you the nutritional products
that I've been finding have been the most beneficial.
The good news?
Bread is still occasionally on the menu.
Yes.
(energetic music)
So Trainiacs, it has been a little while
since I've updated you on how I've been going
with the low carb triathlon training plan
that we've been doing.
Now, I've been saying all along
that it's not as simple as just, lower your carbs.
It's not as simple as just do Keto.
It's not as simple as, just eat a whole bunch of fat.
There are a lot of things that you need to manipulate
based off of what workouts you're doing when,
and what you're trying to accomplish.
It's also not so simple to know what you need to eat.
So what I'm gonna show you now
is what my training week looks like,
what nutrition I take when, and what nutritional products
I've found have been really helpful going through this.
Now, big disclaimer to all this is,
I still don't know if this works.
Frankly, I'm not sure how my body is reacting.
Like, the training doesn't feel like it's going amazingly,
and that's a good thing.
The fact that I've gone through this
and am documenting it and talking about it
and talking honestly about it, I think that's the point.
It wasn't so that I could find this silver bullet
of triathlon training.
If I did react well to it, great.
But, at least now, even if I don't react well to it,
and I have a hard lesson to learn at Challenge Roth,
that kinda scares me, I at least know a lot more
about the process, because there are a lot of people
out there that it will work for.
Let's get into it.
So, first you'll see that I am using TrainingPeaks now.
It's not that I think that TrainingPeaks
is the be all, end all.
It's just what the Plews uses,
and all of his workout databases
are in there, so yes, I am using TrainingPeaks right now.
Here's how the week looks right now.
Monday is a bit of a lighter day,
where we just do a 40 minute easy spin
and about a 60 minute easy swim.
Tuesday is kind of like a race simulation day.
It's a longer strength-focused bike ride
of about an hour and 45 minutes right now.
And for context, I am 38 days away from Challenge Roth.
So that strength-focused bike, hour and 45 minutes
with yesterday, when I did the bike,
a total of eight times eight minutes,
with low gear work at above race effort.
Close to FTP.
So I did eight minutes at about 70 cadence at 260 watts,
where my FTP is about 285.
After that, I did a run off the bike of 30 minutes, 6K.
Wednesday is a bit of a lighter day.
So it's an endurance run, hour and 15 minutes,
mostly at low heart rates.
But, depending on the week, I might include 30 minutes
at tempo effort.
Thursday is more like a (claps) speed day.
So we do longer, harder intervals.
Right now, I'm doing that as my group ride,
really road surges, really high intensities
with short rests, bursts of speed.
And then I do an eight kilometer run off the bike.
Friday, I do more of a key swim,
about an hour to an hour and a half long.
And then if I'm feeling okay, I will add in
a 40 minute low intensity run there.
Saturday and Sunday, this is the money day.
So Saturday, right now I've built up
to a four and half hour ride, and in that,
I have 30 minute sections where I started with
zero 30 minutes sections,
just rode for four hours aimlessly,
but now we're gonna be riding for four and a half hours
with four 30 minute chunks at race effort.
Off of that, I will do an eight kilometer run.
And then Sunday, I've built up
from an hour and a half long run
to a two hour and 20 minute run,
which is at low intensities, but on hills.
So while it's not super, super long,
it's really taxing on the strength of the body
because I'm going on hills and having to stabilize myself
a lot.
One thing that you'll notice is that we aren't huge
on massive, massive long runs over and over and over.
It's more like just doing a consistent amount of work
every single day, particularly on the run
to work on that run economy,
and then a couple of longer days.
So there's nothing in here that's like a nine hour day.
Totally manageable.
Now, let's get into what I'm taking where.
There are currently three days
where I start manipulating carbs a little bit.
We need to accomplish two different things
with the low carb adaptation.
One, we need to make sure that my body can burn fat as fuel,
and we do that with low intensity, longer workouts.
Number two, we need to make sure that my body can burn fat
as fuel at higher intensity.
We need to make my maximal fat oxidation
closer to my race intensity,
so we start manipulating the carbs on three days.
First day is this Tuesday.
So I'm not taking on any carbs,
but I am taking on a fair bit of fuel.
So I'm taking on about 400 to 450 calories
before this two and a half hour workout.
And during the workout, I'm also taking about 180 calories.
But in that, there are no carbs.
On Saturday, I'm doing the same thing,
about 400 to 450 calories before the ride,
and then about 100 calories every single hour
during the ride, and then right before the bike.
Same with the endurance run.
I'm making sure that I'm not starving my body,
and just going into everything fasted
and staying fasted, 'cause that's not a good way to train.
So instead, I'm starving my body of carbs.
All the rest of it is, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, I'm fueling myself with 30 to 40 grams
of carbs before the workout
so that I can perform really well.
And then throughout the day, regardless of what day it is,
I'm trying to average around 130 to 150 grams of carbs
every single day.
I just take it either throughout the day evenly,
or after the carb-depleted workouts
that I'm doing Tuesday, Saturday, Sunday.
So I'm not ever entering a point of danger,
where I'm completely depleting myself.
So, in that, I've found that there have been some challenges
in figuring out what nutrition to take.
And that gets to the last part of today's video,
and that is the types of nutritional products
that I've found that have been really helpful
going through this, and will help you
if you want to start using low carb triathlon training.
Now, if I need calories, so this is during a workout
that is hour and 45 minutes or longer.
This is the Tuesday, this is the Saturday,
this is the Sunday.
These are longer workouts where I wanna make sure
that I've got calories, but I don't want to have many carbs,
if any, and I definitely don't want any simple sugars.
Pretty hard to actually find
in a lot of sports nutrition products.
So the few products that I've come to use are,
number one, SFuels.
SFuels is a fat and protein-based drink supplement
that you shake up.
Tastes really good, kinda like Kool-Aid.
It's what the Plews uses, and it's what came out
at Kona very, very successfully.
I like that a lot.
Number two, nut butters.
So, just a package of nut butter, perfectly fine.
Try to find the ones that don't have dates and honey
and things like that in them.
Just the straight nut butter.
So, a lot of times in my case,
I'll take just the jar of nut butters that we have
in the cupboard, and I'll put it in a Ziploc bag,
and then bite off the end of the Ziploc bag
and squeeze it into my mouth after.
And the last thing that I'll use will be a Keto bar.
So I've used just the straight up Keto Bar,
that's called Keto Bar, and that is really fat-based,
not a lot of simple sugars.
What about when I don't really need any calories,
but I still need some electrolytes and I need some fluids?
Well, again, you don't really want anything
that has any carbs, any sugars in that point,
because it starts blunting your fat oxidation.
So a few things that I like to use are,
number one, UCAN actually makes a really good,
no calorie, no carb electrolyte mix.
Number two, I've started playing with this,
and seem to have some good workouts, but I haven't really
looked into the science of this extremely.
Just seems to work really well, is an exogenous ketone salt.
Why do I use that?
Well one, it has a really high amount of sodium
and a good sodium to potassium ratio,
so it's a good electrolyte drink.
Does have calories, but it's just from ketones,
so no sugars, no carbs.
And then I mix that with a little bit of branch chain
amino acids, which is thought to delay the mental fatigue,
and just kind of slowly droning on and losing energy,
because amino acids cross the blood-brain barrier.
And the thought is that it keeps you
a little bit more fresh.
This is according to Peter Attia,
who does, I think 30, 40, 50K marathon swims.
Between those few things, that basically takes care
of almost all of my fueling needs.
Now, am I changing anything?
I believe, as we start going forward
and getting closer and closer to the race,
that race simulation day on Tuesday,
we will start adding the carbs back in
from any normal source of endurance sports
nutrition product, because I wanna be able
to not just access fat as fuel,
I wanna be able to process sugar and carbs as fuel,
come race day.
So Trainiacs, that is what's going on.
I don't yet know if it's working.
We're really gonna have to just find out
come July 7th at Challenge Roth.
I'd be lying if I said I was super duper confident,
but this process is very interesting,
and there are a lot of people out there
who will certainly react well to it,
and you don't really know until you try,
because it's not a panacea where everyone will do well
on this.
If you wanna start looking into this,
because there are a lot of nuances,
go and get the free starter pack that we have made
with Dan Plews, the PhD who is helping me with this,
at triathlontaren.com/theplews.
Go check that out, and if you aren't already subscribed
and you wanna see if I have a very, very, very long day
at Challenge Roth, hit that subscribe button below.
Later, Trainiacs.