What are you currently using for hydration?

Racing, I use First Endurance EFS and/or Gatorade Endurance (on course) for liquid calories and add in a few gels to target about 60g carbs per hour total. Depending on race pace/effort, can also add in a Picky Bar or similar for more solid/“real” food. IIRC, GU/Clif/Hammer probably some others, all vegan.

In training I tend to eat a lot more actual food during indoor rides, especially aerobic stuff, as all that stuff gets expensive. Fruit, bagels, whatever I have around. Save the simple carbs for harder efforts.

My stomach tends to handle most anything without major issue. YMMV.

I just sent you a PM.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Please define "gut rot"... I know some vegans like to bring up mythical theory that meat causes gut to rot.. really it's the stomach bacteria rotting the meat. Almost all gels are vegan anyways.. maybe some animal based one's with amino acids. And I guess if you are religious vegan , avoid honey based gels

Curious, what is a "religious vegan" mean? I know from your previous threads/posts that vegans and veganism rubs you the wrong way.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Not a vegan but mostly plant based so take with a grain of salt. First of all dates also have fiber, that could be why they are bothering your GI tract. You could try pairing them with some nut butter for some more calories (because one an hour isn't many calories) but they still have fiber.
I am ramping up my training for a half and eventually a full later this year, so I eat lots of wholegrains, beans etc. You will definitely need a lot of extra calories so keep that in mind, always a good idea if you can prep a few things in advance. I made a huge batch of quinoa salad a couple days ago that has lots of vegetables and nuts in it so great recovery meal just waiting in my refrigerator. Have good snacks around ( nuts, etc). I also try to plan ahead for healthy pre made lunches to take to work. We go through a couple jars of nut butter a week.
For what it's worth, I am on the light side so I will eat junk like Pop tarts etc on long rides to switch it up and to make sure I get enough calories ( I realize there are healthy ways to do this, but..) kinda sounds like you just need to experiment.
Is it possible you just aren't getting enough fuel on the long rides/runs?

I have never done a full Ironman but for very long rides (4-5 hours) for food I use a mix of gels and dates. Dates in the second part when I get a little "tired" of the gels. For gels I found that Huma gels (made with chia seeds, I'm not affiliated) is a brand that, so far, has never bothered my stomach differently from other brands. I use the plus type that contains electrolytes, some including caffeine. They are vegan obviously and they claim only with natural ingredients.

I'd love to hear about the sooper accurate, peta funded, scientific basis for this "gut rot" as well, as it may make me change my meat eating ways!!!

I've done a PB&J sandwich on a long ride, which I think should be considered vegan.

I also fuel primarily with dates and chocolate covered almonds, but my longest training ride will be 3.5hrs-4hrs.

Anything longer (fun), I'm usually stopping for lunch.

Religious vegan is one who doesn't eat foods sourced from animal labor - honey from bees. But honey, is not an animal so technically vegan

Actually you mean ethical vegan. Many ethical vegans are not religious (going to church, reading the bible, believing in a God, following Christianity, Islam, or whatever...).

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I'm using water.

I will look into First Endurance EFS.

I love the idea of eating straight up fruit and bagels for trainer rides. Because you're right, the costs add up quick.

It wasn't my intention to bring up any sorts of mythical theories into this thread.

I meant gut rot as GI distress.

You should check-out the Base Performance bars at 'baseperformance.com'. These bars are the on course bars provided at all Ironman North America events. I think it is good practice to use the on course nutrition during your training, that way you don't have to carry all your own nutrition products for the event. It the past I used figs and dates as solids during long rides and events but I could only consume them in small quantities before I experienced GI distress. Once I switched to other fuels such as First Endurance, Base Hydro or Infinite Nutrition drinks with supplemental bars or gels I solved my GI distress issues. I understand that it is expensive to train with these products all the time but for longer training and racing sessions it sounds like you need to change something.

Matt Miller of Base Performance replied to my email a couple years ago after I inquired about which products were vegan. Here is his response:

Base amino is duck feathers
Omega is fish oil
Bars have honey

That is all. Everything else zero animal.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I have serious stomach sensitivities. There are a lot of Skratch products (skratchlabs.com) that are vegan and pull me through distance races without any gut issues. They have great electrolyte drinks (with or w/out caffeine), energy chews and bars. It sounds like you need to add an electrolyte and more calories at a minimum. There are also other completely liquid vegan products like Ucan where you don't eat anything else with exception of adding salt.

Only vegetarian but I take one cliffbar/ hour for the first 3 hrs and then switch to liquid where I put about 600 cal of powder in one bottle as concentrate for the additional time.

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-shoki

Have you thought of Skratch Labs? Their hydration mixes are vegan friendly....https://www.skratchlabs.com/...?variant=42708341957 I use their products (whatever you can get in Europe) and I love them.

Tizzle

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"see the world as it is not as you want it to be"

I thought (most) Clif Bars were vegan?

Most Cliff bars if not all are vegan (I think there used to be one with honey or something else). The poster was saying he/she's vegetarian (not vegan). That's all.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Dates are a great snack, but they are very high in fiber. Fiber is something that will definitely cause you stomach issues on race day. You want to eat low fiber the day before and the day of an Ironman.

I believe I heard a vegan explain "Gut Rot" is when your GI Tract is overwhelmed with "Toxins" due to having "blown out your adrenals".

Yummm. And they think WE are crazy for not eating a steak.

+1
The above has worked for me well.

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"Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit."
Nikos Kazantzakis, The Rock Garden

I believe SIS beta fuel is vegan. I hear that's pretty awesome stuff

I don't understand how vegan nutrition would be different from a normal athlete during an IM, its not like we're cooking a burger at T1 to eat on the bike ?

Energy drinks (750ml/hour or more if its hot), first 90K ill eat 3 to 4 nut based bars, last 90K around 6 gels. During the run, I'll use gels and energy drink.

I'll chime in, most gels and bars from cliff/gu are vegan, I'm plant based (90% vegan) but still have the occasional slice of cheese (I'm french so it's hard to pass on some of that...).

For training rides i try to train to eat "real food" since I have a hard time with that so I do bananas, dates bars and gels sometimes, on race day I do Maurten 320 drink mix for the bike - 1 per hour in 500-750ml of water so around 80grams of carbs and 320 Kcal per hour, no fiber no protein a bit of salt so really easy to process, I also usually grab a bottle of whatever drink mix is on course for a bit more electrolytes - They are vegan but not certified (as per their website)
For the run i use Maurten gels 100 - 100 Kcal 25g of carb - 1 every 35-40 minutes add to that coke and water after the first hour to get settled in.
If you have gut issues I find liquid nutrition much easier. I find the easiest to process a lot of calories on race day is to try and eat at least as much if not more during training, getting used to using those calories is really just as trainable as SBR.

Step 1: Introduce nutrition during training.
Step 2: Apply what works. Discard what does not.
Step 3: Hope like hell race day conditions mimic training conditions.
Step 4: Consult ST with your findings to ensure what works for you actually works.

I might be talking out of line here but I don't remember seeing a lot of "animal based" bars or gels. So with that, was this a long winded way of letting us know you're vegan?

To be fair some products do have animal products as additional ingredients or used to have them. GU used to have aminos derived from duck feathers in their gels. Base Performance still has a product with duck feathers (confirmed by an email I got back from Matt Miller). GU is pretty good now and they even list their vegan products on their website. The gels no longer have duck feathers (YUCK lol). My coach recommended that I try power bars during the bike portion of an IM when we first started working together. They have whey (a dairy byproduct) and dairy bothers my stomach. So this is a legitimate request.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Agree with the comments about fiber. I would add that a few days before the race you should consider cutting down on vegetables and ramping up on wheat (pasta, bread, etc.)
If you can get one or two poops in the morning before the race you will not need to go through the whole race. avoiding disgusting porto-potty is a big plus...

For the race, you can look at (if you don't like all the processed products) banana bread. It has some fiber, but not as much as dates. Its not pure sugar like the gels and for me it digests much better. May not be enough energy/carbs if you are not very efficient at fat burning

But yet again, Honey is vegan.. not religious vegan. I like the word religious, as it's not based on science :)

Vegans don't consider honey as a vegan food since it's made by an animal (same with eggs and milk). Eat honey if it makes you happy. No one wants to take away your honey. Why the obsession with these vegan threads? When something bothers me I try to ask myself why? I get it that you don't like vegans or veganism and that's fine. But I would look into this obsession (for lack of better word) since you keep following this thread closely.

Again religion has nothing to do with being a vegan. But we are all entitled to our own opinions.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

After being vegetarian for 23 years I finally made the switch to vegan Jan 1st of this year. I am training for IMLP and had to change almost all of my on course nutrition as I was using Pacific Health Labs products and I discovered they have milk in them. After some trial and error I now use Tailwind, Huma Gels and RBars.

Yeah, you're out of line. There are quite a few products out there that aren't vegan. The attitude is not necessary, if you don't like the thread move along.

Eggs and milk are created internally using the cells of the animal, so you are eating the animal in that case. Bees just transport nectar. And I am sure there are industrial ways to reduce flower nectar into honey

look at F2C Nutrition (http://www.f2cnutrition.com). The product taste great and works

And just for the record, I'm not throwing stones at anyone who eats honey. I'm well versed in veganism and the lifestyle. I'm just stating the reasons most vegans do not consume honey. I swim with a guy who has bees and I would never judge him.

And if there is an industrial way to produce honey w/o involving the bees than yes, that would be vegan. Not sure if there's such a thing?

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...al-honey/?redirect=1

Better your question, how much honey on the market is 100% from bees? Many Chinese manufacturers dilute it with other sugars. There is a documentary on Netflix about this

How does the purity of Honey matter to someone who doesn't eat Honey on principle?

All we need to know here is that a sports food that contains any honey isn't interesting to the OP.

LOL. This is the problem with the vegan cult. They are NOT willing to eat a natural food supply out of some moral stance, but have no problem doing bodily harm by eating something made in a factory and called vegan.

I eat more veggies than most vegans, but will never go full vegan just because I dont want to be associated with them.

At this point I don't think we've established that factory honey exists. So I don't think we know what a Vegans stance on it is, let alone if it's harmful.

It almost seems like you've made up a narrative to fit your view of Vegans. Of course if you have specific knowledge on this food stuff and it's toxicity then please share.

Why do you care so much? I like eating meat, but the fact that some people don't want to eat animal products doesn't bother me in the slightest

Also, vegan food is made by animals - humans. That almond milk, tofu, and rice cake was packaged and sold by somebody that was a living animal!!! Therefore, vegans shouldn't eat it.

Interesting fact.. big almond tree farms transport beehives out of natural habitat across US in order to pollinate trees (aka to religious vegans = animal slave labor) .. where is there an end to the religious vegans pursuit ?

People mock and fear what they don't understand. Thanks for being cool :-)

In regards to honey, I actually prefer pure maple syrup made down the road less than a kilometer from our house. I always thought honey tasted too sweet.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Also, most vegetables are grown in a garden, and farmers use fertilizer. Fertilizer comes from animals, therefore vegetables are not vegan since they are made by animals :)

You know they force humans to go out in the freezing cold and stab the maple trees and drain them of their blood to get maple syrup? Just because we can't hear the trees scream doesn't mean they aren't.

If the goal is to real foods with low fiber, try potatoes. You can ziplock several of the small red ones with a dash of salt to snack on. White rice is also good and you can mash it into bars with other stuff. Both are basically pure starch.

Potatoes are resistant starch... Aka can be fiber when raw or cool down.

Been vegan for 10 years. I got away from EFS because of the high magnesium content. It made me poop to much. 💩 Now I use tailwind on the bike with some cliff gels and salt tabs. On the run, cliff gels, salt tabs, and water. I’ve also just switched to gluten free so that’s going to add some pre-race complexity.... Basically just try to avoid fiber the day and morning before the race. And if you eat super healthy, add some extra salt onto your food the couple days prior.

Almost everything GU Energy makes is vegan, and they will likely be the on course nutrition at your race. Plus they are making big strides to become more and more environmentally friendly. I've used GU for all my training and racing the last 3 to 4 years and it's been a good move (also more affordable than a lot of stuff out there)