How To Optimise Your Ironman Fuelling!

[@gtn]

How many carbs have you managed to consume on race day? 🍝 Let us know in the comments below! 💬

[@matthiaswuest7271]

20g caf gel before the start, 40g gel in T1, 100 g carbs per hour during the bike, another caf gel in T2, 75 g per hour on the run. Worked a treat for me in Nice although I did lose 2 minutes at the special needs station getting my extra fuel 😅

[@marie-louisekarlander2366]

Hi , I am 57 years old and woman , 74 kg , 174 cm , my pr is 12:30 on IM. I take before the race , full IM (after breakfast) 60 g carbs, sport drink, one small bottle of electrolytes, half shot of coffein 125 mg . On the bike I take 75g carbs/h , if it is a warm race, 4 salt tablets , 4 tablets of caffeine. Everything in sport drinks, 4 big bottles, and I grab water on the road. I don’t take jel on the bike, got 4 on the bike if I loose one bottle . 45 km/bottle, drinking around 0,5 -1 dl every 15-20 minutes. In TA2 , the second half shot of caffeine 125 mg , more electrolytes. Run start after 3 km taking gel , one every 3-3,5 km. 60 g carbs/h only gel. The first three gels without caffeine, after that every second with caffeine. 12 gels totally. 7 without and 5 with caffeine. The gels got 21mg caffeine I train very often with nutrition so are used to this. I tried race up the carbs on the bike but it didn’t work yet. After race I take one recovery drink 😝, and also on the breakfast day after one recovery drink. Specially if I will soon race again , and must back in training again. My best regards to all of you Marie-Louise

[@Aeronwor]

If I were to take that much caffine with that amount of gels, I too would have motivation to get to the finish line as quickly as possible.

[@matthiaswuest7271]

Really great video and awesome to hear from Emily at PH. As a stats guy and a long distance athlete I am itching to get my hands on that data set!

[@financialtemplatesbyseanCFP]

Useful video, thank you.

[@chrisstrider]

I can definitely do the practicing with caffeine 😊

[@skirtonbear1]

I was doing great until the long runs crept up to 10 miles. Then, I think caffeine did a toll on my digestion because carbs alone didn’t seem to cause it. Now I have to rethink my half marathon strategy.

[@sebastienbrochard9812]

When packing to travel to my first IM, i was shocked at the amount of carb i was planning to take ... I have trained the way I would race ... but come time to put all on paper, the total for the 13h00 race came up to ... ... 1000g ... 🫣😵😵‍💫 ... yep ... 1kg of carb! Crazy day out! In the end, i hit about 900-950g ... and did 12h25 ... ☺️

[@jobanski]

Great video!

[@jack23thedude]

Hi GTN, I've recently completed my third IM and in All of them I've experienced gut problems around half marathon/30 km... The first (10h42, 3h50 marathon time in Klagenfurt) was actually my best even though i wasn't really counting my carbs intake per hour. In the last one in Cervia (10h45, 4h05 marathon time...) i really struggled in the running part with the nausea and i was more specific about targeting 90/95 carbs per hour on the bike (trained ok in the long workouts during preparation) and about 60ish on the run. So, may it be a salt problem (I've also taken salt caps during bike and run? Or is It normal exhaustion due to poor training maybe on the run? #GTNCoachesCorner

[@MMichiganSalveRegina]

#GTNCoachesCorner One thing I've been wondering relating to "carb/gut training" is whether it is helpful to just eat a lot of carbs throughout your day. Like if I'm used to eating 60+ grams of carbs for lunch (when my body is not using them), is 60g during an event going to seem like no big deal? Obviously there is the strain of exercising on your gut, but I'm talking purely about how many carbs your body can absorb during an IM.

[@precisionfandh]

There is some evidence to suggest that gastric emptying can be accelerated by eating more carb in your day to day diet, but given that a lot of athletes have a relatively high carb diet anyway, the benefits of eating more in your daily diet may be small. That said, if you’re already on a low carb diet then increasing your carb intake generally could pay dividends for your race. What is clear is that specificity is key. Gastric emptying (the process of foods leaving the leaving) is slowed by heat and exercise stress as blood gets diverted away from the stomach. This is what you're really looking to work on with gut training - increasing the ability to tolerate higher carb intakes whilst under stress.

[@MMichiganSalveRegina]

@@precisionfandh cool to get a personalized response! What I'm understanding is that an easier way to train my gut than exercising really hard is that I just need to progressively eat a lot of carbs while I'm in the sauna? 😉

[@precisionfandh]

@@MMichiganSalveRegina 😂That's my kind of training too ;-)

[@jamiefuhrman403]

Is the 3-6 mg/kg caffeine overall? What race distance? Spaced out evenly?

[@precisionfandh]

~3-6mg/kg is an overall recommendation for long-course triathlon racing, and it includes the final 60 minutes pre-race. We walk through a couple of example protocols in the blog "How much caffeine should you use DURING training and races?" in the Knowledge Hub on our site but fundamentally we suggest a ~100mg dose ~15-30mins before the race and then topping this up throughout with either smaller more frequent ~50mg doses, or larger less frequent ~100mg doses. In 70.3 racing this typically looks evenly spaced out (i.e 1-2 ~100mg caff gels on the bike and another on the run), whereas in full distance racing we sometimes see athletes saving the caffeine for later into the race when their pre-race caffeine begins to wear off - but not too late as it takes caffeine ~45mins to peak in the bloodstream.

[@jamiefuhrman403]

@@precisionfandh thank you so much for the detailed and helpful respone!

[@PanosVideo]

whats your opinion about race walking?

[@carlbyronrodgers]

😊Interesting and informative.Emergency packet Jellybabies.

[@ironore8677]

If you were to pack one bottle with fuel and one with hydration what would be the most carbs in one bottle have you heard of people making ?

[@precisionfandh]

It depends on the source of the carb (gel vs carb powder), with gel we've found a 300g dose in a 500ml bottle is very effective (check out the PF Flow Gel if you've not seen it yet). Whereas with powder our Carb Only Drink Mix is only intended to be mixed to 60g per 500ml, beyond that flavour and how well the powder mixes become less than optimal

[@DigininjaRobin]

Is nutrition the fourth activity or is that transitions?

[@kerrynball2734]

100mg of caffine ~= 3 cans of coke. Sounds like a lot.

[@tristianm13]

Is Gtn promoting diabetes in age group athletes! The study of 70 athletes is with an average time of 9.30 for an Ironman which is not far of elite athlete with high metabolic efficiency! Surely Gtn should be promoting a balanced metabolic flexible approach where slower athlete are efficient at burning fat and do not have to consume so much of these gastly gels to avoid gastrointestinal problems and rot their teeth🤔🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

[@DeanPattrick]

Do you know what we did in the 90s 😂😂😂😂

[@trimad6128]

Sorry but that T-shirt colour is not great