- Morning, trainiacs.
So since meeting up with Coach Matt Dixon
and the Purple Patch Pro Triathlon team
down in Scottsdale.
I have been doing a little bit of work with them,
so I've been devouring that
as I'm about to talk about nutrition.
A lot of Matt Dixon's podcasts, writing,
blog posts, all of that stuff,
and in reading his book, the Purple Patch Triathlete,
there are nuances about race day nutrition
that are similar but different to what I recommended
in my race day nutrition series about a month ago.
We gotta talk about that.
(upbeat instrumental music)
So Matt Dixon, head coach of Purple Patch Fitness,
he wrote the Fast Track Triathlete,
which I think is the most highly rated
or highly recommended triathlon training book.
Ew, I'm trying to multitask,
the most highly rated and highly recommended
triathlon training book on Amazon.
You type in triathlon on Amazon and that book pops up.
They have sold thousands of copies
in the wee little world of triathlon.
That's a lot.
And I'm almost done the book right now,
and I just passed the race day nutrition section,
which agrees in large part with what I recommended
a month ago.
At the end of this video, I'll link to all of that
series of videos so if you want to go back and watch
and get the entire race day nutrition calculators
and programs and downloads and all that stuff all for free,
you can do that, but Matt Dixon has a couple of nuances
about timing that you might not necessarily agree exactly
with what I say,
and the amount of nutrition that you take on
that you need to apparently, as he puts it,
adjust it because of some of the race day differences
with training, it's very interesting.
Let's do a bike workout first, shall we, okay?
Then we'll talk about it.
I just looked at the workout Coach Pat gave me
and it's brutal.
It's a good thing I've got the temperature
just dialed right in.
I've got it at 17 degrees Celsius, about 61 Fahrenheit,
nice and cool so I can heat it up.
Let's do it.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Electrolytes, gels, and chews.
Okay, so let's talk about some differences
between what I recommended
at triathlontaren.com/triathlonnutritionguide,
best URL in the history of triathlon,
differences between that and Matt Dixon's approach.
As far as electrolyte drinks go,
I recommended doing a five minute rotation
where every single five minutes you take a sip
of a light electrolyte drink.
Matt Dixon does agree that it should be
a light electrolyte drink.
Ideally he specifically mentions SOS, Scratch, Osmo, Noon.
But what he says is do it on every 10 minutes.
Okay, not a big difference.
Let's talk about gels, chews, and bars.
Number one, I recommend
at triathlontaren.com/triathlonnutritionguide
that you take your gels and chews and bars,
all of your nutrition, on a 30 minute cycle
and just keep going like that
throughout the course of a race.
Endurance Tap, maple syrup, shout out to Canada, yo,
whereas Matt makes a couple of different suggestions.
Number one is he recommends a 20 minute fueling schedule
where in each fueling interval,
you're taking on less nutrition,
and then where we also differ
is I recommend that when you're training,
you go and you figure out a nutrition schedule
and you basically stick to that schedule in a race.
Matt says, and I think that this is a really good point,
that when you're in a race,
you are pushing harder and you are often racing
in climates that are hotter than where you are,
so there's more blood at the surface of your skin
trying to cool you off than there is when you're training,
so it's taking blood away from your stomach,
and because of the adrenaline that goes into the race,
your digestive ability is quite a bit lower.
So instead of eating in the race exactly how you train,
he recommends erring on the side of maybe a little bit less,
like five to 10% less than how you ate when you trained.
I think very astute of you, Matt.
And then the next difference is that where I say
you just stick to a schedule of every half hour
you take 90 to 110 calories and you just go with that
from 10 minutes into the bike
all the way until the end of the race,
he recommends front loading the bike a little bit higher
than what you're going to end up taking on the run.
I think this makes perfect sense
because on the bike you're not pushing as much,
your heart rate is probably about 10% lower,
you're not sloshing your stomach around nearly as much,
whereas on the run, your digestive abilities
are quite a bit more challenged
and to expect that you're going to be able
to process the same amount of nutrition on the run
as you do on the bike is going to be a little bit tough.
So what's a girl to do, you might ask.
Well, number one,
go to triathlontaren.com/triathlonnutritionguide,
and that's going to give you a template
of how many calories you need, when you need to take them,
templates for a fueling schedule,
the recommended products that I like.
So do you do it every five minutes, every 10 minutes,
every 20 minutes, every 30 minutes?
Well the bottom line is this and this is what Matt Dixon
and I definitely agree on,
is that going into a race you have to be practicing
your nutrition at least in some regard,
and whether you change that or not for a race
depends on if you've tried it,
so while you can change it a little bit for a race,
you can change from 20 minutes to 30 minutes,
you can drink every five minutes or 10 minutes,
you really just have to try it leading into the race
and see what works for you.
And then if in training you start going
and eating every 20 minutes
and you find that you're burping a lot,
probably not good to eat every 20 minutes.
If you're going every 30 minutes
and you're finding that you're feeling
like a glut of stuff in your stomach,
that's probably too much.
Essentially, you just gotta go and train,
you gotta go and try things,
but those are some guidelines that you can use.
Like I say, triathlontaren.com/triathlonnutritionguide,
best URL in the business,
or go and buy a Purple Patch book.
I highly recommend it.
They have a fantastic person helping them
with their marketing right now.
So there you go, trainiacs.
Race nutritions ahoy.
Now I have to do a 25 minute run,
and you better believe I'm going to be taking
my nutrition every five minutes.
(grunts)
So there.