Nutrition: I usually have a lot of trouble with solid foods so I tested going into it with nothing but gels and gatorade.
Can you elaborate on ‘going into it’? Do you just mean the run here, or the whole race? thx
When Im pushing hard my digestive system tends to shut down. I have had trouble with vomiting on the bike in the past. I figured that since I usually am still very thirsty and drinking doesn’t tend to piss off my stomach I would give the liquid diet a try. My experience with bike racing showed me that I could handle gels and energy drink even when going hard but I had never tried it in a long course tri before.
I first figured out a rough estimate of the calories that I would burn in a 4.5hr time span at about 165bpm. I could do this because I had done multiple vo2max tests and LT tests in the lab. This has allowed me to figure how many of these calories that Im burning from fat and how many from CHO. Next I had to test it with some longer hard efforts well before the race with standard gatorade that I would recieve on the course and play with the amount of gels that I would need and if my stomach could handle it.
I found that come race day it did work out pretty well, but one more gel or another bottle of gatorade would have been better. does that answer your question?
Seth
Yes, this is very helpful thanks. I’m sorting out some issues pretty much described exactly in your first paragraph. I think I have the math on the calories all figured out, now I just need to dial in the gels/liquids/solids ratio also.
Yes Swim is important and biking (or even running) after a swim is not the same as biking fresh.\
For me, my poor swimming skills show up on the run and not on the bike (even though I probably push a bit too much on the bike >23mph for 1/2 IM but what the hell, I have $5K between my legs and this is not for cruising :)) and actually I run out of energy and “matches” before running out of legs.
Fred.