- Fueling for an Ironman is a challenging task
and one that you need to get right
if you want that personal best,
as you obviously don't want to run out of energy
midway through or waste too much time
with several bathroom stops.
- Yeah the physiological demands of an Ironman
are high and up there with being one of the most
energy consuming things you could do in a single day.
You could burn in excess of 8,000 calories.
And to put that into some perspective
that is almost twice the amount of an average
Tour De France rider in a single stage.
So you're going to need to be prepared.
- Yeah you do.
So how do you go about fueling for one?
Well, I think it's a good place
to start with chewing over the demands of an Ironman.
- Wa-Hey!
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- The days leading up to a race are really important
and nutrition is something that athletes
quite often overlook until the final day before a race
or even the night before a race.
But in fact, you should be thinking about your diet
the week leading into a race
or even the month leading into a race.
You want to be aiming for a nice consistent
and healthy diet and staying hydrated well through out.
So to help you out here,
actually just carrying a bottle around with you regularly
and sipping from that could be of great use to you.
And then in the final four, maybe even to ten days
leading into the race you want to start increasing
your carbohydrate intake.
This doesn't mean piling back bowls and bowls of pasta,
but just maybe replacing the odd snack here and there
with something with a little bit more carbohydrate in there.
And whilst doing that you're going into your taper
and reducing the amount of volume
and intensity you're doing.
This is all going to help in increasing
the amount of glycogen stored within your body
and your muscles.
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- Fast swimmers will take around an hour
but you could be up to two and a half hours
on the swim portion and due to the nature of swimming
you're not going to be able to take on any nutrition during.
So in that case it's essential that you make sure you fuel
really well beforehand and you also have a strategy
to refuel as soon as you finish the swim.
So talking of the pre-fueling it's essential to have
a carbohydrate rich breakfast at least 90 minutes before
your race and due to race nerves its going to be hard to take
on that adequate fueling.
So make sure you've at least practiced this in training and
it's food that you know you can easily digest.
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- Well the bike ride is where a good fueling
strategy can really make your race, but equally get it
wrong and it could be really hard to recover from this.
Now again, we got a common theme going on here.
Stay on top of your hydration and your carbohydrate intake,
but obviously this also comes down to experience
and personal preference.
Now it's been shown that the best sources of carbohydrate
for endurance activity or exercise are in the form of
energy drinks, energy gels, and solid energy bars.
Now in terms of ingestion rate of these carbohydrates
it's thought that between
60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour are optimum.
Now, that equates to one 500 mil bottle of energy drink
with about 60 to 80 grams of carbs in there.
Normally about two to three of these sort of energy gels
and often about three energy bars.
Obviously all dependent on the brand.
Now what I would say is do have a look
at the types of carbohydrates in these energy sources.
Ideally we're after a mix of glucose and fructose
and a lot of brands do do this in a two to one ratio.
But all of this does mean its important you go away
and you trial out all of these different types of nutrition
to find out what's best for you,
what you're comfortable with, what works, what doesn't work.
Do this on long rides and some high intensity rides so you
can arrive on race day feeling confident.
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- It's crunch time in an Iron Man
and if you have got your fueling wrong
then you're going to be fighting a losing battle now.
If however you're still on track,
it's important to keep that concentration
and make sure you carry on fueling.
As you've still got several hours of racing left to go,
so you want to aim to take on still
60 to 90 grams of carbohydrates if you can.
Yes, it's still easy to physically eat when you're running
just like it is on the bike, but becomes slightly harder
to digest it as your stomach's going to be jumping up and down,
so it makes it much harder for it to digest.
With that in mind it does become essential
that you practice this in training,
as you find out the foods and the fluids
that you can actually easily digest
and its very tempting to go and do most of your training
maybe feeling you don't need that fuel
'cause you're not doing it after a long bike ride,
but you still need to make sure that you practice,
so that come race day your stomach's used to it
and you know what will work for you.
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- Now some studies have shown that consuming
around six milligrams of caffeine
per kilogram of body weight,
around 45 minutes to 60 minutes prior to a triathlon
can have a performance enhancing effect.
But I'm not so sure how much caffeine is going to help us
on a long-distance event, such as an Ironman.
It's not like we really need to be pumped
and ready before such a long event.
But where it could be useful is later on in the race when
you start to feel fatigued
and maybe your mood isn't quite as high
as it was at the start.
And maybe that's where caffeine could give you that lift
that's going to be really helpful, but again this is where
you want to try out in training and see if it works for you.
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- So what are the key points then?
You've probably got the hint by now I reckon
it's practice, practice, practice.
Yes, there is no point in rocking up on race day and hoping
that just any old nutrition plan is going to work for you.
It is very personalized so you need to experiment
in training, find out what works, and practice it a lot.
- Yep and it comes down to, carbohydrates.
Yep fueling during or even prior to a race comes down
to carbohydrates both before the race and making sure
that we're storing those carbohydrates during the race
and also making sure that our bodies can cope with that.
Now obviously let's not forget proteins and fats,
they are very important in the lead up to the race
in our day-to-day training
but they are slower to breakdown than carbohydrates.
So this is why we often look towards carbohydrates during
a race because we want to get that energy quickly,
there and then.
- Yeah well let us know how you get on in your next
Ironman and how your fueling plan plans out in the
comments section below and give us a like
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