IMLP will be my first ironman race and I’m curious as to how many bottles I should have on my bike. I’m using Powerbar Perform as my primary drink along with a mix of gels and honey stinger waffles for nutrition( yes weird but its been working for me). Since they serve powerbar perform on course could I realistically get away with only two bottles on the bike? Seems like you’re never more than 15 min from an aid station on course. I do use a BTA bottle during training but I find it pretty annoying.
1 BTA refilled by water or energy drink at aid stations.
If not using sports drink supplied on course, carry a BTS with concentrated sports drink mixture of your desire and take a pull from it now and again.
Utilize your training time to experiment and find what works for you. Do your long rides with a couple different setups until you find the one that you are comfortable using and then use that for the race. Trial and error in training is where you figure out your game plan for success on race day.
I’m doing my first IM this summer. My plan is to have two bottles of my preferred drink on board, then feed off the course with water/perform until I get to special needs, where I will pick up another two bottles of my preferred beverage, which should do me just fine until the end of the bike.
IMLP will be my first ironman race and I’m curious as to how many bottles I should have on my bike. I’m using Powerbar Perform as my primary drink along with a mix of gels and honey stinger waffles for nutrition( yes weird but its been working for me). Since they serve powerbar perform on course could I realistically get away with only two bottles on the bike? Seems like you’re never more than 15 min from an aid station on course. I do use a BTA bottle during training but I find it pretty annoying.
I believe that yes, you can get away with only two bottles on the bike for IMLP; one bottle for water and one for Perform. Since you’ve hopefully been training with Perform and it’s on the course, this simplifies if for you. But I don’t think you’ll find the bike aid stations 15 minutes apart. I believe they are about 10 miles apart so you are looking more at approximately every 30 minutes or so. But still, drop and grab a water at one station and a Perform at the next.
that is what they have on course. no need to carry more than two. take you time and get to every station, then take your time grabbing bottles. don’t put more than 2 bottles on your bike. you are lucky you like p-bar perform.
Two things to keep in mind:
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Your speed – for some people aid stations are 40min apart, or about 1 water bottle. For others they might be 90min apart. I botched a bottle exchange on my first IM and went a long way with very little nutrition.
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Heat – I like to always try and grab and extra water bottle to help cool off.
So for me I might not neccessarily carry a lot of bottles, but it’s nice to have places to put them when you go through the bottle exchange.
I’ve only been using perform. No water. I had done a great deal of research on doing that and it seems a lot of people don’t use water at all because of the lack of electrolytes or calories. I think I read it first in Rappstars IM nutrition post awhile back. The combination of perform, gel, and honey stinger waffle puts me around 400 cal per hour which for me at 6’4" and 195lbs has been working great
That’s is a very good piece of advice thank you. Maybe just keep the BTA cage for water to keep myself cool with if it’s very hot. Thanks man.
If you are using the nutrition on the course then why more than 1 bottle?
jaretj
You should only need 2 bottle holders, and you can always grab 2 bottles at any aid station if you need to. The only time I take in water is if my stomach is feeling crampy…but I’m taking in about 600-650 calories an hour for IM with 2 bottles of perform an hour. I’m about your size (just over 200 pounds).
It depends on what you train with… I carry 3 bottles, one between the bars, one on the downtube and one behind the seat. I train with EFS and use EFS liquid shots. 3 bottles should get me to my special needs bag to repeat, if not I’ll pick up a water. I think the extra bottle weight is far better than dealing with the bottle exchanges where you need to slow down and can be congested. Like others said what you train with…
My first I was one of those guys with FOUR bottle cages. Had Infinit BTA, empty downtube, and my second Infinit bottle and a bottle for a flat kit behind the seat. It was overkill even using my own nutrition. Next time I’ll have a BTA and possibly a behind the seat for the second bottle of Infinit and just toss water bottles as I get them.
I only ever carry 2, one has concentrated maltodextrin for calories and the second is for fluid, so I swap the fluid bottle as needed. If I need extra fluid, I grab the first bottle at the aid station, drink as much of it as I can through the aid station, then drop it and grab another bottle at the end of the station.
I went “heavy” my first IM with a Torpedo BTA about half full of water, and ALL my nutrition on my down and seat tube (concentrated). I never stopped, would grab a water bottle at each aide station and drink then toss…maybe top my BTA bottle off a bit if nervous. Special needs is just that…special, and you should not plan on being special come race day. No need to stop unless you screw up. 2 bottles are only needed if you are carrying ALL your calories, if not, you don’t need more than 1. If you want to be paranoid 1 with calories and 1 water.
2 bottles per hour? Aren’t you having to go to the bathroom a lot on course? What else are you using for calories?
I’m doing my first IM this summer. My plan is to have two bottles of my preferred drink on board, then feed off the course with water/perform until I get to special needs, where I will pick up another two bottles of my preferred beverage, which should do me just fine until the end of the bike.
Where’s special needs located on the course? Isn’t it @ about the 100-120k mark? Last year Challenge was at 120k so I split my needs accordingly. 2/3 before 1/3 after. I “think” Whistler’s special needs is at approximately the same distance BUT (notice that’s a big but lol) there’s a big climb at the very end and I’m sure that’s going to have an affect on nutrition strategy too.
1 BTA refilled by water or energy drink at aid stations.
That.
2 bottles per hour? Aren’t you having to go to the bathroom a lot on course?
Ideally, yes, I’ll pee twice on the bike. Or, once on the bike and once in T2 as I did at B2B last fall. I did IMLP twice using 1 bottle per hour and failed miserable both times and ended up in the hospital last year due to dehydration.
Pat McCrann from EN set me straight (he’s also a large guy) and sent me to Core/QT2 to get a race fuel plan. The couple hundred bucks is honestly some of the best money I’ve ever spent in this sport. The fact is, most race fuel plans you’ll read about here are for guys much smaller than us and woefully inadequate especially when it comes to Ironman and other ultra-distance events. I got away with things in half ironman’s to a certain extent (except when it was hot and I ended up dehydrated)…but you can’t get away with it in ironman. I literally doubled my hydration and calorie intake. It seemed insane when I started and it’s something you have to practice to get used to. But I feel much stronger in long workouts and in racing as a result, and I can’t imagine taking in less fluids any more. I have an alarm set for every 10 minutes on the bike, which is my cue for drinking. The one downside is, I routinely leave with 5 bottles (2 on the bike, 3 in my bike jersey) for my workouts now…so my “nutrition” bill is a bit higher.
The interesting thing to me is, when I used to get done with a long ride (for example), I’d end up drinking a ton of fluids and eating a ton of food when I got home. Now, I get home and feel pretty much normal (aside from being tired).
My calories come from a mix of perform, solids (powerbars) and gels. Roughly 2 bottles, 1/2 powerbar, and 1 gel per hour.
I have one open cage on my down tube and a BTA and have never needed more on the course. During training I’ll have to make more stops than if I had had more cages, but I don’t mind.
On the course, I’ll put water in the BTA system (Profile Design Aero HC) and whatever liquid nutrition the race provides in the down tube cage. I know some will frown on drinking water in addition to a sports drink, but I have ok results with it.