Finally, in our last two Ironman events we’ve settled on something that really works for us. Perhaps with time we’ll have to adjust again, but right now we’re golden. Keeping in mind, however, that we’re finishing the event in 8.5-9.5 hours. We’d be interested to hear what others are doing, perhaps those of you looking at the 12-17hr range. That would be a long time to use liquid nutrition so perhaps you find a bit of solid food is what you need. Let us know in the comments!

Regardless of what you ‘eat’ during your race day, there are still some important points to keep in mind.
-Keep track of the calories you put down. 500 calories per hour would be a lot, even for a very large athlete. The lighter you are, the less you’ll need.
-Make sure you’re not taking in too many calories relative to the amount of plain water you consume. Sports drinks have calories too, so be careful what you use to ‘wash down’ your gels.
-Depending on your effort level for the day, you don’t need to take in any fat or protein. This may be different for the 12hr + athlete. In order for you body to process fat and protein into usable calories while exercising you have to be going quite easy. Stick to Carbohydrates (sugars) while putting out a bit of effort.

Anyway, here’s what we do, and it works very well for us.

Morning breakfast:
Bowl of cereal – rice/corn based cereal with banana
150 Calories worth of Ultragen
Coffee
…wish I could have ate more, but I was NOT hungry. Nervous energy and early mornings!!

T1
Had about 100 calories of Ultragen while running to my bike.  Ultragen has a small amount of fat and protein in it.  Used it while HR was low and was starting to ease into the day.

On the bike:
-Aimed for 400 calories per hour
-1350 calories of EFS liquid shot (carried 1600 with me) in a water bottle that stayed with me the entire day.  Liquid Shot is basically a gel, but with no gelling agent.  This makes it thinner, easier to swallow, and easier to digest.
-650 calories of EFS Drink (started with 2 bottles of 200 cal, picked up 2 more at special needs, had to lose one for water when I started feeling like caloric intake was too high).
-Lots of water, can’t even estimate how many bottles I went through.
-2 salt caps, but it was a cool day and didn’t need it given the electrolyte content of the EFS drink and EFS liquid shot. Had 10 pills with me, which I would take on a hot day.
-No solids, no fats, no proteins. Had I needed something solid I would have grabbed a banana from an aid station.
-Grabbed a couple sips of Gatorade for a change of flavor, but never kept a bottle with me on the bike.

On the run:
-600 calories of EFS liquid shot. I carried one 400 calorie flask, sipping at every aid station. Then picked up a new flask at the half way special needs station. Did not empty either flask.
-Lots of coke, at least 15 cups, not all of which made it in my mouth.
-2 big swigs of EFS drink from a frozen bottle with ‘Pre Race’ mixed in at special needs.  Pre-Race is similar to Red Bull.
-Water: at least double the amount of coke. Maybe went a bit overboard here, peed three times on the run, clear each time. Would have been great if it were a hot day!
-4 Salt stick caps, carried 13 with me

So there you go. All liquid calories, all day.  Never felt hungry and stayed strong throughout.  We’re working on a better morning breakfast!! Products like Coconut Oil, Agave Nectar, Dark Chocolate are going to find their way in next time.

An example: if your goal is to hold 200 watts you would be far better off riding upwards of 220-240 watts on the uphills and keeping the power output down around 150 watts for the downhills.  A 5% increase in output will net you far closer to a 5% increase in speed on a climb than it will on a decent.  Say you’re going 60 km/hr on a decent, it would be much harder to go 63 km/hr (5%), than it would be to go from 15 km/hr to 15.75 km/hr (5%) on a climb.  At higher speeds you’ve got more forces working against you – friction and wind resistance especially, so the speed gains from higher power output are less.

It is worth your while to concentrate on being as aerodynamic as you can while descending, but as long as you don’t go too hard, pushing more watts than your planned average while climbing will gain you more time overall.

Full article on: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/06/altitude-arriving-and-adapting.html

There is not too much research on this question.  That may be surprising, but remember that for most professional athletes, across all sports, the issue of when to arrive at altitude is one that they rarely even contemplate.  In Europe, sport is rarely played at even these moderate altitudes.  In the USA, it happens so infrequently as to be an inefficient way to investigate physiology.  And for individual endurance athletes, like cyclists and runners, altitude training is part of the package, with a majority now spending time at some altitude before racing, even at sea-level.

However, a couple of approaches have emerged, most of them from Super Rugby (a competition involving professional teams from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa), and from the Tri-Nations, an international competition between SA, Australia and New Zealand.  In these tournaments, the Australian and New Zealand teams will travel to South Africa and spend either two or three weeks here, during which time they would play one or two matches at altitude (1,500m or higher).

Read on at: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2010/06/altitude-arriving-and-adapting.html

This is a pretty easy thing to keep in mind, but it’s very hard to do.  Sometimes you may find yourself with lots of energy and pizazz (or just over-caffeinated) on your easy days, making it very easy to overdo it and compromising the workouts later in the week.  If Monday is your day off, then make sure you take the day off and don’t use it to make up for missed workouts from the previous week.  If Thursday or Friday is typically an easy ride day, well, keep it that way so that you can hammer out a few extra watts for the weekend intervals.  Be diligent about training easy when you’re supposed to, and the you’ll reap the rewards from your harder efforts.

Here are some suggestions for things to write about:
- put down realistic goal times for each discipline e.x.: I will swim 1:05, I have trained well in the pool, my form is improving all the time, remember that last time trial, this is totally within my reach
- write key words for each discipline that help you remember essential form cues or things that make you smile to get thru hard times. e.x. for swimming: “long an strong”, “catch”, “fishy”, riding: “pull up”, “patience”, “I rule”; running: “light”, “quick”, “chest up”, “Kenyans move over” etc… whatever works for you and makes you remember important things.
- don’t write passively, use powerful positive language: I will succeed, I will focus on my form and this will enable me to maintain my speed, my body is infinitely more powerful than I know I just need to be in the moment and free myself to excel, if I feel bad I may just need more electrolytes – do a body scan, I will get through hard times…
- write a newspaper headline about yourself “upcoming age-group athlete sets new bike course record”, “Mother of two conquers her demons”, “Irongeezer takes the day”…

Make some notes that fill you with confidence and keep you feeling grounded and mentally prepared. Re-read them every day during race-week, and prepare yourself to go out there and rock out!

If you have any un-explained GI issues, or even just find that you have to take bathroom breaks rather frequently during or right after long runs, it can be useful to try going gluten free. Try two weeks without gluten (you’ll be surprised how frequently it crops up), and then re-introduce pastas and breads (basically anything at all to do with wheat) in the third week. Make some notes in a food log about how you feel and see if there are any changes in your digestion when you consume gluten again. If it doesn’t bother you, then great, but if it does, you can take steps to eliminate a dietary stress to your system. Training and racing is hard on your body – the food you eat shouldn’t be!

Other food items to consider knocking off the shopping list for race week:
Dairy: Consider swapping for Almond milk if you need that bowl of cereal or glass of milk – a bit higher in sugar content, but it’s a great vegetarian source of calcium, protein, carbohydrates.
Peanut Butter: I think we’d all be surprised by the number of people in the world that have a very mild allergy to peanuts.  You may not feel it, or even think you have it, but we like to scratch it off the list for a week or so before our ‘A’ race just in case there’s some underlying energy affect.  Almond butter, sunflower seed butter, or cashew butter are great alternates.
High fiber items: We’ve never really bothered to alter this much on race week, but do be aware of taking in more than you’re used to.  Avocados are very high in fiber, blackberries, raspberries and prunes as well.  And of course the high fiber cereals and muffins you may like to snack on.

A happy stomach is a happy athlete. 

All this stuff is great, and don’t get us wrong, we use them (maybe not the lactate thing).  But, on more than one workout during a week we will forget all the numbers and just go workout.  We look at the clock when we leave, and look at it when we come back.  Sometimes not even that.

This gets you in tune with your body and allows you to really enjoy the training and realize the purpose of it -simply to make you feel good and improve yourself physically.  Do you really need to know that your avg HR was only 140 for that 5 mile stretch?  Yes, on some occasions you do, but once in awhile it does not matter.  We would even be willing to say that MOST of the time it does not matter.

Try it some time.  Go out and ride your bike like you’re a kid with a sucker in their mouth.  Go run up to the top of that hill you see in the distance – how far is it?? What if I go anaerobic?? Who freaking cares!! Just do it, you’ll get fitter no doubt.

Thank you all for sharing your favorite swim workouts.  Have a look through if you ever need some new ideas in the water.
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Want a the chance to win a FREE container of  Ultragen by First Endurance?  You can enter the draw with two simple steps:

#1: Make sure you’re a member of the Ironmantriathlontips email list.

#2: Leave your favorite swim workout in the comments section of this post (use your real email so we can contact the winner).

From there we’ll do a random draw on March 31st 2010.

Important Criteria!!!!: The swim workout does have to be a legitimate swim workout – “400 meters IM” does not count.  Break it up into your Warm ups, Main sets, and Cool downs.  If you’d like to leave multiple swim workouts, please do so in separate comments so your name will be entered into the draw more than once.

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We are going to restrict the draw to residents of North-America for ease of shipping.  The winner is also responsible for the shipping cost and any duties that may arise from shipping across a border.  Product will be shipped from the Ironmantriathlontips ‘headquarters’ – currently in California.

About Ultragen:

Research has shown there’s a critical thirty-minute glycogen window (called the “window of opportunity”) immediately following exercise when insulin sensitivity is at its highest and exhausted muscles essentially open the door to nutrients. If nutrients are not absorbed quickly enough, however, this opportunity for maximum restoration is lost. But it’s not just when nutrients are absorbed, it’s also about which nutrients are available. The body requires more than just sugar and protein to fully recover, so recovery is limited without a precise balance of nutrients. Ultragen delivers 60g of glucose, because clinical studies show that high glycemic carbohydrates taken after exercise create a catalyst, which increases the uptake of essential nutrients into exhausted muscle. In addition, Ultragen offers a synergistic blend of vitamins, minerals, co-factors, glutamine and BCAA’s specifically designed to modulate the damaging effects of cortisol brought on by intense endurance training. The Ultragen formula is designed to be fully absorbed within the essential thirty minute glocygen window, when the body is primed to absorb nutrients.

Ultragen contains special proteins (Whey Protein Isolate and Hydrolyzed Whey Protein) that meet the unique requirements of endurance athletes. Fast acting Whey Protein Isolate delivers high levels of anti-catabolic branch chain amino acids. Hydrolyzed Protein is enzymatically predigested in small, easy to digest, di- and tri-peptide chains that are quickly absorbed for muscular recovery. This is important because small molecule proteins are superior to the larger, hard to digest Whey Protein Concentrates that are used in most recovery products. The special proteins in Ultragen are absorbed faster and easier assuring you maximize recovery during the critical thirty-minute glycogen “window of opportunity”. The result: quicker recovery, improved endurance and the ability to race at a higher level.

Ultragen is designed to be absorbed quickly. For maximum recovery, mix Ultragen with water and consume immediately after exercise. Mixing Ultragen with anything besides water and/or consuming other foods during the first thirty minutes after exercise will slow down absorption. Thirty minutes after using Ultragen you should drink and/or eat something else.

• Helps teach you what works well nutritionally on a long day
• Helps your body adapt to the changes from one sport to the next
• Gets your training day over with sooner
• Is easy to co-ordinate a day like that with your training partners, if they do the same
• Helps your race day organizational skills (there’s a lot of equipment and food to deal with)
• Keeps you from skipping the last workout in favor of that comfy couch!!

With race day coming up, try one or two of these ‘non-stop’ days.  You’ll learn something.