Thanks for sharing and congrats on the surprise result. Do you incorporate any yoga or stretching for a specified amount of time? I feel now I am in my 40s I need to start taking stretching very serious or start yoga to stay flexible and less prone to injury.

---

http://www.sfuelsgolonger.com

No. The last time I did yoga, I was doing it over the winter for injury prevention. And I injured my shoulder during a yoga class, couldn't swim for 6 months. I do stretch out a little when I'm in the sauna doing my heat prep - mainly to prevent boredom though. However I do not condone this behavior of mine - I really should do more yoga. I just find that when faced with some free time I swim/bike/run instead.

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

Race week: no low carb like I usually do, mainly because I didn't taper, and I needed to support my training load right up to the end. So high carb and pretty healthy food. Big carb load Thursday and Friday, with a decent proportion of my newfound carb load food "Angel Food Cake". Day before race day, I had the traditional burger and fries but no beer this time (didn't feel like it).
Race day: Oatmeal (pre soaked night before). Bagel with almond butter and honey. 4 x Ensure shake (not all at once). No food after 4:30am up to race start at 6:40am.
T1: 1 x Glukos gel sachet (they are great, no need for water).
Bike: 2600 calories (4.5 hours). About 570 per hour (probably 550 once you account for spillage). Glukos energy drink, Powerbar cola blasts, 2 packets black forest organic gummy worms (in Boulder it is well known that organic gummy worms are much faster than regular ones), and then my big calorie mix of maltodextrin, fructose a50 nd ginger beer. All liquids in Torpedo and CX Chrono bottle on the downtube.
Run: 650 calories so 185 per hour. I'm not really able to take in much more than that while running. Glukos energy shots, Glukos energy tabs, Glukos energy gels, and a Starbucks Double Shot Mocha drink (in a can from special needs bag)


Great report Rob, thanks. How does that breakdown in CHO / hr and do you feel it more helpful to focus on calories rather than actual carb %? Thanks.

I only count actual carb, which in this case is easy because my nutrition is 100% carb. The one exception during the race was the single starbucks drink which has 33g carbs, 3g fat and 10g protein. The reason I don't take in fat and protein during the race is that both take up valuable GI space with very little benefit (body fat is in ample supply without needing to ingest, and protein is slow to digest and fills you up). The exception would be taking in MCT oil, which digests fast and is available as energy quickly. However that makes me nauseous so defeats it's purpose in my case.

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

What's this about not consuming fat. I thought you need to start building up on fat to burn through at Ultraman Hawaii. Or were you just overconsuming carbs on IM Texas race day so that you body can convert that to fat for UM Hawaii usage?

OK all kidding aside which MCT oil should I be looking at?

The Jan Ullrich program ensures I have plenty on board!

There are lots of expensive MCT supplements, but the cheapest is just coconut oil bought at a grocery store. I actually make a nice chocolate mix (that I do have in UM, before I start racing). Just mix coconut oil with cocoa powder, and add a sweetener (agave, honey, maple syrup if you want to be patriotic). Then I freeze it if I want to eat like chocolate, or for a hot race I just leave it in special needs, and it's a hot chocolate drink by the time I get there!

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

How do you think coconut oil, plus malto, plus salt plus maybe a touch of hot sauce and/or pickle juice would roll in special needs on the run. By then, you are sick of sweet, and you want salty/tangy and easily soluble fat. This could be good?

so you didn't do the things you usually do to deliver a good race performance and yet did just that anyway - what do you take from this?

• is a focused build and taper just "marginal gains" at best
• is your race prep actually not as effective as you thought - anything you will change in future?
• were you just in incredible shape and could have have done incredible things with a proper prep
• ...

My theory is that it's the benefit of focus.
1. Not swimming only cost me 5 mins
2. I was in good bike shape (that's why I entered). As good as in any other race build.
3. Run prep was more race specific and with no long runs. But that only seemed to cost be about 15 minutes.

So my take away is: a) being in great bike shape makes a huge difference and b) if I continue my current run training just add some more volume I should be able to beat my run PR.

Maybe c) Texas is a fast course and we had great conditions so that's worth quite a bit.

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

Rob, I think you observations are in line with what I have seen for lots of experienced ahtletes.....20 min seems to be the delta between good/basic prep and optimal/finely tuned prep. To some degree, to maintain sanity in the rest of life, its a matter of where you want to "give away time". Lars' build is a great example....he ended up 20-30 min off what he could optimally do. In your case, you wanted to work your bike fitness, do the run on "maintenance mode" vs "no stones left unturned mode" and roll the dice that swimming is massive investment to get the marginal gains and that you can do a lot of swimming in the "taper period" and quickly get back a lot of the proficiency.

Interestingly, Lars skinned the cat the other way. With his ultra low hours he realized that he could really jack up his threshold with more swimming focus at high intensity that would carry over to his low volume intensity running. His running, I'd describe as minimalist, but in the same ranges as you for both of your performance. Maybe the takeaway is you can't turn off the run and get through the marathon but the swim and bike you can balance between the two (volume and intensity in each). Recall your 2014 IM South Africa on a low volume (for you) plan.

i'm going to echo rob. i'm not uber biker by any means. my best IM bike split has been 5:20 off of 150 watts (i'm 5'3 123lbs race day), and i put down well over 2500 calories on the bike. though my daily maintenance caloric intake during season is about 6k calories (who knew eating was the most expensive part of ironman).

john

Hey Dev - my next experiment (for IM Boulder) will be to repeat my bike training structure (regular riding, mostly above .80 IF, not much more than 3.5 hours), continue my run approach of race pace focus - but now since I have a decent 26 mile run under my belt, I can increase my "race pace runs" to about 14-16 miles. And as for swimming I am 100% back in the game now. You probably experienced this with all your recent swimming; once I swim on enough consecutive days it becomes something I really look forward to every day. I'm now at that point - been swimming every day this week, so I'm planning to put in a solid swim block and seeing where that gets me. My IM swim PR was set during Ultraman, so let's what happens if I do my UM swim training before doing an IM!

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

Very nice!!! What paint scheme are u doing on the small dimond?

---

Follow me on Twitter @CK21TRHC
I use what I love: ISM, Blue70, Trek, FLO

probably something a bit less complicated, which will make it easier to replace individual parts (like fork or beam). I'm thinking about mainly black frame, but with the spine and logos still using the orange "fiery" theme. Maybe just a simple fade orange to yellow.

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

How much lower do you think this will make you?

---

2024: Bevoman, Galveston, Alcatraz, Marble Falls, Santa Cruz

What's this about a small Dimond? I thought you were going to get in line behind ME for the orders LOL? Hopefully this cortisone injection works out and I can get back to riding so I have an excuse to blow money.

I think about 2.5cm. I could probably also raise my saddle a little (5mm), effectively "dropping" me 3cm.
That is as low as I can go with the geometry, without moving to a bike with lower stack. The small Dimond is about the same stack as a medium Trek SC I think.
I have ridden a small, and it gets me a bit closer to what your position looks like.

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

get in line! I already have it - just awaiting some new storage box lids to arrive and then I send to paint

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

My wife is probably happy that I have spent zero $$$ on race entry fees and gear and travel in 2 years....hoping to reverse this scenario!!!! So what you are saying is that I need to get a small Dimond and bring it to Kona and be on your UM race crew and we can use my small dimond as your backup bike by adjusting the saddle height and fore/aft? I kind of like that plan.

Fantastic "training day" and report, Rob! Thanks for sharing - lots of valuable information in there.

How have you found your post-race recovery has compared to the IM races you have done with more volume in your legs?

---

Are YOU in the Zone?
http://www.discomfortzone.com

Thanks Mike - surprisingly recovery has been really fast (like when I was "young"!) - my current theory is that fast recovery may have been because most of my run training was faster than race day pace.

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

Hi Rob,

Do you add the ginger beer to your nutrition purely for taste or does it help you absorb more calories? Just interested how you got to 500 calories. Did you experiment with different drinks?

(My limit with is 350cal/hr which is 100cal fructose/250 cal malto)

Thanks,

Will

Hey Will - mainly for taste, and also the ginger helps settle the stomach a bit. It also gives me an extra 150 calories or so. It doesn't help me to absorb more. I got to that high intake purely by accident. Back in 2012 I was using EFS liquid shot in races. That's 400 calories in a bottle, but one bottle per hour would cause some bloating for me, so I would aim for 4 bottles over 5 hours. I wanted to use it in training too, but it was very expensive to do that with the actual EFS, so I bought some maltodextrin powder and fructose powder to make my own "simulated EFS liquid shot". I just mixed it in a 2:1 ratio and then went out on a training ride. It worked quite well, but when I got back I realized I'd make a calculation error, and taken in 600 calories on my 90 minute ride. And I felt just fine! I was building up to IM Los Cabos 2013, so I started experimenting with 500-600 per hour during my race sims (120 mile bike followed by 8-10 mile run), and everything went fine. So at IM Los Cabos 2013 I dialed it back a little because it was hot. I think about 450 per hour if I recall, and I had a great race. The success seems to be the inclusion of both malto and fructose (they have different transport systems) and then the addition of gummy worms seems to help too (for me anyway). If I try maltodextrin alone, or fructose alone, I cannot take in that much. Recently I have also been concentrating my Glukos energy powder (commercial drink mix) and that seems to work well too (probably because it's so simple without complicated ingredients)

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

Many thanks for the detail Rob.

I might try and change my ratio of fructose to malto and see what happens.

Will

and try some gummy worms! I'd be interested to see if that gets you another 50 cal/hour

---

____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |